Page 135 of Tragic Empire

But he’s not anyone else. He’s a Moretti. And contrary to how some assholes will see it, he isn’t offering her a pity dance. Matteo doesn’t do anything he doesn’t want to. Hewantsto dance with Anya, to make her feel safe and a part of the night.

“Can I, Father?” Anya asks, her voice a bit unsteady. “Please?”

Anton hesitates, but ultimately dips his head in approval. The smile that spreads across Anya’s face in response makes him freeze, like he hasn’t seen it in months or years—and maybe he hasn’t. From what I know, the worst day of her life occurred over three years ago now, when she was fifteen. I doubt she’s spent much of her time smiling since.

Matteo smiles too, standing still while she tentatively rounds the table. “You want my hands behind my back or do you want to step under them? I won’t touch you either way.”

“Would it be too much work to put them behind your back?” she asks, her pale cheeks turning pink.

Matteo chuckles happily. “Nah, I got this,” he tells her smugly.

Bending down he steps through his connected hands one foot at a time. When he straightens back up, he has his interlocked fingers firmly behind his back.

“We’ll go dance near Dmitri and Jade, okay?”

Anya looks hopefully at her father, and again, he pauses before nodding.

“If anyone gets too close to us, I’ll sic Nico on them,” Matteo tells her, walking slowly by her side. “He looks bored anyways, he’d love an excuse to shed some blood.”

Anya giggles and it’s like the sound scares her. She clasps a hand around her lips and her eyes go round. A second passes before she shakes off her shock and she looks up at Matteo.

“You didn’t have to do this,” she says shyly.

Matteo scoffs off the comment. “No onehasto ask the prettiest girl at the party to dance, but I could hardly miss the chance.”

Her face flames and she gapes at him like a fish out of water. “You can’t mean that. You don’t have to be so nice to me, you know?”

“Oh, I never lie about pretty girls, Anya.” He chuckles. They’ve stopped walking and are now just standing in the middle of the dance floor, in no rush to start. “Well, I do give Emilio shit about Melani, complimenting her a lot. She’s beautiful of course, but married women aren’treallymy thing. Don’t tell anyone I said that, I have a reputation to protect.”

“A reputation as what?” she replies, looking amused to share a secret with him.

Grinning, he tells her, “I’m a bit of a tease. Someone has to keep my tight ass brothers on their toes.”

Anya hides her smile, a bit of her honey blonde hair falling in front of her face as she looks down.

“You can hold my shoulders if you like,” Matteo offers. “Or we can kind of just hover around each other. I’m game either way.”

Ivan holds his breath as his little sister tentatively reaches out, extending her hands to set them lightly on Matteo’s shoulders.

“Fuck,” he breathes in disbelief. “He just made more progress with her in two minutes than we have in two years.”

I nod proudly. “Matteo tends to have that effect on people.”

Ears twitching with awareness, I turn my head from the scene. It’s subtle, but I pick up on the sound of a confrontation.

“Watch him, will you?”

Before Ivan can agree, I’m abandoning him to locate the noise. I’m not the only one who senses something amiss, Apollo is heading in the same direction, shoulders straight and jaw hard. After distancing further from the crowd of wedding guests, the sound of yelling becomes clearer.

We move faster, zeroing in on the conflict, no discussion needed to get involved. Especially since what we find is un-fucking-acceptable.

A teenage boy is guarding a woman with his body while a grown ass man crowds him, shouting in his face and shoving. The woman is struggling to push the teen away, trying to keep him safe, I imagine. She’s here with the catering staff based on her outfit, but she isn’t a civilian. The company we hired is owned and operated by The Casa Nostra.

Known for being a particularly ruthless Italian mafia, our alliance with them was forged when Emilio married Melani—who is the daughter of one of the group’s most prominent Underbosses.

“I swear to God, Federico, don’t you put your hands on him,” the woman hisses, still trying to get between them. “You can hit me all you want, but if you touch my little brother even once, I will poison you in your sleep! Wives get away with that kind of thing all the time, and I won’t be the exception.”

Hearing her offer herself up to be assaulted leads me to believe he’s put his hands on her before, and that won’t do. It doesn’t matter what family she belongs to. She’s at a Moretti event, and that makes her our business. Apollo seems to agree, because he doesn’t even stop to confront the man—he comes out swinging.