Page 87 of Bellini Born

Knock knock knock.

Everything stopped dead. Me. Matteo. Hell, even the turning of the Earth.

Knock knock knock.

Then, “Matteo! I know you’re in there! We need to talk!”

“Fuck.” The curse was uttered low as he slipped from inside me and pulled my dress back into place.

Throbbing with denial, I stumbled on my heels when I turned around. “What? Who?” My lust-soaked brain was misfiring, the interruption taking a moment to process.

Matteo didn’t spare me a glance as he tucked his shirt into his pants and fastened his belt. “My uncle.” He didn’t offer morebefore pulling out his phone and bringing it to his ear. “I need you to come get Miss Reynolds.”

Pocketing his cell, he spoke to me. “Rico will take you downstairs. I’ll come find you when I’m done.”

His tone brooked no argument, so I didn’t bother to try.

A knock with a different cadence came from the opposite direction of the door. Matteo crossed the room, pressing a button at the side of a built-in bookshelf before it swung open to reveal a passageway.

“More spy shit,” I muttered.

“Safety precautions,” Matteo corrected.

I poked his chest with a finger as I walked past him. “You owe me.”

He caught my wrist, bringing my hand to his mouth as he dusted the knuckles with a kiss. “I’ll make it up to you, I swear.” When I shot him a doubtful look, he used his hold to haul me close enough so that he could speak low in my ear. “Tonight, when we get home, you’re in charge. I’ll submit to your every command in the bedroom. How does that sound?”

Well, that was an interesting turn of events, but I made sure to lean into it, purring, “Oh, Mr. Bellini. I can’t wait to make you beg.”

Chapter 20

Matteo

Notforthefirsttime, the thought crossed my mind that the wrong twin died.

Though they shared identical DNA, my father and my uncle could not have been more different. Dominic Bellini had earned the respect of his men by serving beside them in the trenches before taking on the mantle of Don. Dario remained on the sidelines, instead leaning heavily on the fear that came with his powerful bloodline.

My father was strict but never cruel when it came to raising his sons. Dario . . . Well, Dario took a different approach to child-rearing. Since we grew up under the same roof, I had a front row seat to the verbal and physical abuse my cousins suffered. Never once had he attempted to hide his contempt for Gemma, constantly pointing out that by virtue of being born a girl, she was practically useless, her only value reduced to what she could buy us in terms of an alliance through marriage. Though he tried to literally beat it out of her, she held onto her inherent spark,eventually using it to escape the life she’d been born into. Enzo hadn’t fared much better, coming to the dinner table with a split lip and a black eye more times than I could count. There was absolutely no love lost between Dario and his children.

Adjusting my painfully hard cock, I sealed the secret passageway and walked to the office door, pulling in a deep breath before opening it.

“Took you long enough,” my uncle said in way of greeting as he pushed past me and into the room.

I closed the door and turned to lean against it, arms folded. “What do you want, Dario?”

He kept his back to me as he helped himself to the wet bar, pouring a glass of fifty-year-old scotch before bringing it to his lips. “Times are changing. We need to pivot our business model.”

There was no containing the bark of disbelieving laughter that burst from my chest. “And what qualifies you to make that decision? Pretty sure I’m the one with the MBA.”

Dario scoffed. “Your fancy degree doesn’t outweigh my decades of experience.”

I decided to humor him. “All right. So tell me, Mr. Experience, what’s wrong with our current business model?”

With his free hand, he gestured toward the casino floor visible through the glass wall. “With the rise of legalized sports betting and online casino games, all of this will become obsolete.”

We’d been monitoring that development carefully, especially once laws allowed residents of Illinois to place bets via mobile apps. While we’d initially seen a decrease in revenue, both inside the physical casino and through our bookies—Dario’s domain—it had bounced back within a matter of months. Mainly because we offered something those online platforms didn’t—the ability to borrow the cash needed to gamble, instead of the bettors being restricted to what rested in their bank accounts.

Directing my attention to the room full of powerful men willing to drop half a million for the chance to score a seat at one of our ultra-exclusive tournaments, I countered, “Can’t do this online.”