“Proactivity?”
Matteo winked and I almost reached for him again. Instead I pulled the blankets up to my chin as another barrier between us.
“Luca looked furious.”
“He’ll get over it. He always does. He would have had Bardoni killed anyway. It was only a matter of time.”
I had a feeling this wasn’t ordinary bedtime talk. “When did you kill your first man? Kindergarten?”
Matteo propped his head up on his arm, smirking. He ran a finger down my arm in a very distracting way. “No. I was a late bloomer in comparison to Luca.”
“Really? That seems unlikely.”
“Not really. Luca made sure I didn’t get in trouble when I was younger. He was a protective big brother.”
“I can’t even imagine Luca being a kid, much less him making sure you stay out of trouble.”
“He did. Is that really that surprising? Didn’t Aria try to protect you when you were younger?”
“She still does,” I said with a grimace.
“See. Luca’s the same way. Of course now I’m making it harder for him to keep me in check, just like you make it hard for Aria.”
“I think there’s a huge difference between the kind of trouble I stir up and the trouble you cause.”
“Give it some time. I have a feeling you haven’t reached your full potential yet.”
A laugh bubbled out of me. Damn it. Why did he have to say things that made me laugh? “You didn’t answer my question. When did you kill the first time?”
“It was a few weeks after my thirteenth birthday.”
“That’s what you call a late bloomer? Most guys that age worry about their sprouting pubic hair and not killing someone.”
“Oh, I’ve come to terms with my pubic hair a long time before,” he said in a teasing voice. “And most guys aren’t the second son of the Capo of the New York Cosa Nostra.”
“Good point. But Luca can’t really have protected you very well if you had to kill when you were still so young.”
Matteo’s gaze became distant. “He did what he could. Our father wanted me to kill one of the boys Luca and I had been hanging out with occasionally because he’d tried to get out of the mob.”
My stomach tightened. “And?”
“Luca pulled his gun and killed the guy before I could. Father was majorly pissed. He beat Luca within an inch of his life.”
The idea that Luca had done something so considerate for his brother was strange, but it wasn’t all that surprising if you watched how those two interacted. It was obvious they cared for each other, cold-hearted bastards or not. “Luca is huge. How could anyone beat him?”
Matteo smiled wryly. “Luca could have wiped the floor with our father if he’d tried, but he never fought back. Father was Capo and would have put Luca down like a rabid dog if he’d raised his hand against him.”
I sometimes forgot that things weren’t all sunshine and rainbows for men. They had more freedom when it came to promiscuity and going out but they had their own burdens to bear. “I guess your father found someone else for you to kill pretty quickly after that.” I’d barely known Salvatore Vitiello but he’d seemed like a creepy fuck.
Matteo nodded. “He found out about another traitor a couple of months after that. He made me slice his throat.”
Girls weren’t given many details about the induction ceremony, but Umberto had often let something slip when he’d guarded us. Usually the first kill of an initiate happened from afar with a gun. “He didn’t let you shoot him?”
“No, it was probably meant as additional punishment because I’d wormed my way out of killing the first time. Shooting is easy, it’s less personal. Using a knife is dirty work. You have to get close to your victim, have to get blood on your hands.”
I held my breath. His voice had become very quiet. Slowly I raised myself up on my arm. I wanted to touch him but I didn’t. “That sounds horrible. Could you do it?”
“What do you think?”
There was the scary shark-grin. The one that made me believe Matteo was capable of anything.
“You killed him.”
“I did. It was messy. He was tied to a chair, so he couldn’t fight back but it still took me three tries to cut his jugular. I was covered in blood from head to toe. I still found blood under my nails the next day.”
“Then why do you prefer knives to guns? You really don’t seem to mind getting your hands dirty anymore.”
“In the beginning it was to prove to my father that I was tough and that he hadn’t broken me like he’d probably intended. And once I got really good with the knife and everyone admired me for my skills, it seemed like a waste to give it up.”