Chapter 2 Two

Matteo’s POV

The file on the Moretti family was pathetic. Thin. It told a story of slow, quiet failure.

I threw it onto my desk. The sound was sharp in the quiet room. Inside was the usual junk. Bank statements. Lists of things they used to own. A history of poor decisions. It was boring.

My consigliere, Ricardo, stood waiting. “The father signed,” he said. “This morning. Everything is agreed.”

“Naturally,” I said. My office is at the top of my building. All glass and cold stone. From here, Naples looks small. Manageable. “The man has no spine. He’s made of warm butter.”

“The debt is secure,” Ricardo nodded. He’s a practical man. He knows the money isn’t why we do this. The money is just the score we keep.

I didn’t answer. I was bored. A deep, hollow feeling in my chest. I looked past him to the city I control. The chaos, the noise, the wanting was all beneath me. I’d won. And winning, I’d discovered, is mostly a boring job of making sure you stay on top.

My eyes drifted back to the sad file. A photograph was clipped inside. I’d seen it before. A staff photo for a museum ID. I hadn’t really looked.

This time, I did.

Elena Moretti.

She wasn’t smiling. It was a serious picture. But you can’t hide a certain kind of fire in a black and white photo. Her eyes were dark and they looked straight into the lens. Not with fear. With a clear, sharp focus. Like she was trying to solve the person holding the camera. Her hair was tied back, but a few pieces had come loose. They didn’t look messy. They looked like a quiet challenge.

She looked alive. Not just living. Alive. In a way that made everything in my quiet, clean office feel dead.

I picked up the file again. Ricardo waited, silent.

“She works at the museum,” I said.

“Restoration,” he confirmed.

I flipped past the numbers. Found her personal pages. Her work history. Her university records. Her master’s thesis.

The title was: “Subversive Symbolism in the Devotional Works of Artemisia Gentileschi.

I almost smiled. I knew that name. A painter from centuries ago. A woman who took her rage and her pain and put it on canvas so it could stare back at the men who hurt her. She painted victims who looked like they were planning revenge.

Subversive symbolism.

I read the summary. Elena wrote about hidden meanings. About anger folded into the paint. About quiet defiance in the eyes of a saint. She wrote about seeing the secret story beneath the pretty surface.

The boredom in me cracked. Just a little. A small, hot spark lit up in the dark hollow.

“Tell me about her,” I said. My voice was quiet.

Ricardo knows everything. “Twenty-six. Quiet life. No boyfriends. She works, she goes home, she reads. Her friends are scholars. She is… bookish. Serious.”

“Quiet,” I repeated. I looked at the photo. At those watchful eyes. “I don’t think so.”

I shut the folder. The plan was simple. Take what was left of the Moretti family. Swallow their business. The daughter was part of the deal. A piece of the furniture. Marry her, make the Valtieri name look soft and respectable. It was clean. It was business.

But it felt dull now.

That spark needed to grow.

I stood and went to the window. Below me was a city of easy targets. People who wanted my wealth or my approval. They were simple. Predictable. Like playing a game where only I knew the rules.

A fight is more interesting than a surrender. An animal that bites shows you its true nature.

“The father thinks he’s dealing with the old Don,” I said. “With my… reputation.” The reputation of Silvio Valtieri is a useful story. They think I’m a crude, old monster. A beast in a suit. Let them think it. Fear of the unknown is stronger than fear of a known threat.

“The myth is intact,” Ricardo said.

“Good,” I nodded. A sly, new idea was forming. It was more fun than the original plan. “I want you to leak more information to the family. To the stepmother. Be detailed. Tell her the man her stepdaughter is marrying has… particular tastes. That he enjoys beautiful, fragile things. That he likes the sound they make when they break.”

Ricardo was quiet. He is not a man who questions me often. “You want her to be afraid.”

“No,” I said, turning to him. The spark was a flame now. “I want her to be terrified. I want her to believe she’s being shoved into a cage with a wild animal. I want her to lie awake at night. I want her to scream, to fight, to look for every single way to escape.”

“Why?” he asked.

“Because scared animals run,” I said, and I could feel the smile on my face. It wasn’t kind. “And I want to see which way she runs. I want to see what she thinks is safety. Fear is simple. It makes people stupid. But rebellion… that makes them clever. It makes them show you who they really are. I want to see who she really is before she ever walks down the aisle.”

He understood. It was a test. A game.

“The wedding is in one month,” he said.

“Plenty of time,” I said. “Let the fear soak in. Let it turn to panic.”

After he left, the silence was perfect again. I sat down and took Elena’s photograph out of the file. I held it under the light.

She just looked back at me. Steady. Unblinking.

Most people in her spot would be already defeated. Crying. Begging. Trying to make deals.

But she wasn’t most people. She studied women who painted their fury into history. She fixed broken art for a living. She looked for hidden knives in beautiful pictures.

My original plan was to own her. To put her on a shelf.

But that was before I saw the fight in her eyes.

The new plan was better. I would corner her. I would let her think the worst was coming. I would push her, hard, and watch what she did. Would she crumble? Would she try to hide? Or would she do something… unexpected?

The flame of interest in my chest burned warmer. It was attraction, but not the gentle kind. It was the pull you feel toward a cliff’s edge. Toward a storm. I wanted to see that quiet intensity in her photo up close. I wanted to see if it would snap into something wild.

I pressed a button on my desk. A screen lit up on the wall. It showed four different black and white video feeds. Live footage.

Her apartment building lobby. The hallway outside her door. The back entrance of the museum where she worked. The quiet street where she parked her little car.

I’d had them installed weeks ago, as part of the standard background check. Now, they served a new purpose.

On the screen, the door to her apartment opened. She stepped out, a bag slung over her shoulder, her head bent over a book. Even in grainy, silent video, she had that same focused air. Like the world around her was just a distraction from the important things in her head.

She didn’t look scared. She looked… busy. Normal.

You have no idea, I thought, leaning back in my chair, my eyes fixed on her moving image. You have no idea what’s coming for you. Run, little painter. Make it interesting. Show me your teeth.

The game was no longer about merging businesses or fixing a debt. It was simpler, and much more fun.

It was about seeing how hard I had to push before a woman who studied defiance finally practiced it. On me.

I watched her walk down the hall, completely unaware of my eyes on her, and I knew the first move was mine. The trap wasn’t just set.

It was already closing, and she was walking right into the heart of it, her nose still in that book, thinking she still had time.

She didn’t.

And as the feed showed her turning the corner, out of sight, I made a decision. The gentle pressure wasn't enough. It was time to turn the screw. Time to make the shadow real.

I picked up my private phone, the one with no number, and dialed. It rang once.

“The stepmother is too subtle,” I said, my voice calm in the empty office. “Send a man to Elena’s museum tomorrow. Not to touch her. Just to watch her. Let her see him. Let her feel it. Then, have him follow her home. Close enough that she can’t pretend it’s a coincidence.”

A pause on the other end. Then a simple, “Yes, Don Silvio.”

I ended the call. The spark was now a fire, bright and hungry in the silence.

Let’s see how you like the feeling of being the art, I thought, my gaze returning to the empty screen where she’d just been. Let’s see what you do when the painting starts to watch you back.

Tomorrow, the game would truly begin. And the first real scream, I knew, would be silent, trapped behind those intelligent, defiant eyes as she finally understood.

Someone was coming for her.