Mafia's Final Play (Mafia's Obsession #3) - Summer Cooper Page 0,10
aren’t sick or something? You’re smiling. You don’t smile. Not like that, anyway.” Her accent wasn’t as refined as his, hers was more Bronx, the sound of the public school she’d attended. He was used to it, but he did miss the sweet, slow sound of Marie’s accent.
“I’m a man with a wife that keeps him happy, Penelope, is that a bad thing?” It was probably the most he’d ever revealed about himself to her and the shock made both of her eyebrows shoot up her forehead.
“You’re sick. I’m going to order you some soup for lunch.” She muttered the words as she walked away, taken off guard by his candor.
“I’m fine, really, Penelope,” he called out but she didn’t answer, she just sat out there muttering about newlyweds and how weird they were.
Matteo chuckled quietly and opened his laptop to begin his day. He had to go down to one of the warehouses to meet Anton after lunch, but for now, he needed to go over the information he’d received about the casino in Louisiana. He had several reports to go through for the other businesses they had up there in New York as well, so when his Skype started to ring, he breathed a sigh of annoyance. There was only one person that called him on Skype.
“Hello, Celeste,” he said as he got up to close his office door. When he came back around the desk, he saw her face on the screen.
Her face was in shadow, cast by a large-brimmed hat she wore, her eyes covered with sunglasses as she sipped at a glass of dark red wine. “Hello, Matteo. How are you, my boy?”
“I’m fine. How are you, Aunt?” His voice was crisp and to the point, without any emotion. He always shut down when he talked to her or was anywhere near her. That’s how she’d wanted him, emotionless and cold, so that’s what he gave her.
“And your little backwater wife? How is she? Knocked her up yet?” She popped an olive into her mouth and Matteo would have wondered where she was if he’d cared.
“No, I haven’t, and she’s fine.” He tried not to grind his jaw, but she made it hard not to. “What do you want, Celeste?”
“I want a lot of things, Matteo, but you defied me when you married that trashy girl. So now, I have to decide on new things to want. Unless you’d be kind enough to divorce the girl? She’s not our kind, you know? She’s far beneath you. Not at all what I had in mind for you.”
“We’re Catholics, Aunt, we don’t divorce, remember?” Matteo leaned back in his seat, his hands crossed in his lap. If he didn’t lean back, he’d hang up on her, and he didn’t want to do that. It would show her that she’d got to him and he’d never let her know that.
“There is annulment, Matteo.” She spoke the words softly, a sibilant note in her voice that turned into a dangerous hiss. Was she ordering him to annul his marriage?
“That would be a bit hard to do, Celeste. We’ve consummated the marriage, we were both of age, in our right minds, and whatever else the grounds are for annulment. It’s not happening.”
“I know a priest here, he’ll do as I ask.” Her face wavered on the screen but then settled. She was in Italy, so the connection wasn’t going to be that good anyway.
“Celeste, drop it.” He barked the words out, an order for her to stop her nonsense.
“Oh, now there’s the manhood you somehow lost when you married that little bit of trash of yours,” she gloated across the miles, and it only irritated Matteo even more.
“If you make one more remark about her, Celeste, one more…” he started but she just laughed a trilling, spiteful laugh, before she looked directly into the camera.
“You’ll do what? Run off with her and never speak to me again? I highly doubt that.”
“Don’t push me. That’s all you’ve done my entire life and I’ve had my fill of it. You put me in charge here, so I suggest you let me do my job and get on with it, instead of calling me up to insult my wife.”
“Oh, like that is it?” She leaned into the camera to look more closely at his face. Her lips pursed in cruel delight as she saw what he couldn’t hide from her. “Interesting. Fine, have your way, Matteo. But take care you don’t get burned.”