Page 1 of Falling for the Enemy

MATTEO

Gallagher. Any time someone says the name, they spit. It doesn't matter if we're standing in our kitchen or on the floor of a casino. A Gallagher is synonymous with filth.

So why do I yearn for Autumn Gallagher so badly? A wild-eyed redhead whose smile could light up a room. Tight and taut in all the right places, curvy and voluptuous in all the others. I know men in the organization that would love to see her strung up by her ankles and beaten within an inch of her life. Not for her own merits, but simply because of her name. Autumn has never done a cruel thing in her life.

She is the most innocent of Gallaghers. The rest of them are dogs, but she is an angel. They are dangerous murderers, but she's never hurt a fly. The family would ask how I know, but I know exactly how anyone else knows things. I watch. Specifically, I watch her. All the time.

When duty doesn't call, I follow Autumn. I watch her on the streets of Las Vegas. She attends college classes during the day, getting her degree in Hospitality Management. She used to skip her science labs to grab lunch with the girls. I've watched them pay off men on the strip to get them foot-long margaritas. They stroll through the streets giggling as they sip their drinks, dodging cops so they don't get busted for underage drinking. Autumn knows her limits, but she's poured her friends into an uber a time or two. She's a good friend.

I can't tell you when my obsession with her began. Was it the day that I saw her sneaking into a club at sixteen? I beat the shit out of some guy in the bathroom that thought he was going to take her home. Maybe it was her eighteenth birthday. She and her friends got fake IDs and gambled their way through the Bellagio. The Vitale family kindly let them off with a warning, but not before threatening to kick her brother's teeth out. They'd never touch a woman, but a woman's closest male relative wasn't off-limits.

I know it was after that day that I started watching her more closely. I found myself wanting to breathe her air. I wanted to smell the sweet scent of her floral perfume. I wanted to hear her laughter. Nothing was uninteresting about Autumn.

Last year her father bought her an absurdly large single-family home for her twentieth birthday. Four bedrooms, three baths, the kind of space a family with two kids needs. Autumn used it for parties. And more, of course, but the parties were legendary.

I purchased a home across the street. It was an expensive way to keep an eye on her. I could have gotten a security system put into her house, but getting it past the one her father installed would have been tricky. I thought about sending her an anonymous note regarding her dad's eye in the sky, so to speak, but that was a fight I didn't want to start. What if it ended with Autumn moving away? I couldn't risk losing her.

Instead, I spent several hundreds of thousands of dollars and moved in next door. The Vitale brothers thought I was a little far outside of main Vegas, but they didn't ask too many questions. Sweet, cordial Autumn brought me homemade cookies the day I moved in. She introduced herself and one of my brothers spit on the floor when she said her name was Autumn Gallagher. Needless to say, she was abruptly taken aback. "He has a tick," I explained. "And he's going to clean that up." He started muttering curse words in Italian under his breath, but he cleaned it up.

For eight long months, I have lived next door to Autumn Gallagher. A family rival, the obsession of my life. I am caught between love and loyalty, between desire and duty.

Tonight I watch Autumn through my bedroom window. All of my downstairs lights are on, but it's dark up here. Even if she were to chance a glance in my direction, she wouldn't be able to see me. I wonder, not for the first time, if she ever thinks about me. What does the Gallagher family tell her about the Vitales? Does she look at me and think that I'm evil? Does she even remember who I am at all?

There is no party tonight. The cul-de-sac is free from the sounds of her high-end speakers. Instead, anyone looking can grab a peep show. Autumn walks around in a tiny little robe with every curtain thrown open. She has her phone pressed to her ear and every other minute she throws her head back laughing. I wish I could hear what she was talking about. But even without subtitles, Autumn is a sight for sore eyes.

As always, I vow to myself that one day she will be mine. I will sow up the feud between the Gallaghers and the Vitales. I'll be the one who brings our families together and mends the fences. I don't even know why we hate one another, but when she and I get married, that will be the end.

In subsequent fashion, the thought of our union makes me hard. I grip myself as I watch Autumn walk from room to room. With a firm eye on her luscious legs, I handle myself like a pump-action shotgun. It doesn't take long before I'm filling my hand, calling her name.

Like a light switch, Autumn's head turns in my direction. I know there's no way that she could have heard me, but I still step back into the darkness of my room, veiling myself in the shadows. There's a grim look on her face as she stares right at my bedroom window. I grab a tissue and clean myself off. When I return, her lights have shut off and her garage door is opening.

With a sigh, I grab my phone and watch her leave. Her car is a blinking blue dot on the map of Las Vegas. She drives toward the strip and I contemplate following her. It's been a long day, but I always have time for Autumn. She could get into a lot of trouble on the strip; she could use my help getting out of it.

I should let her be for tonight, but I'd never forgive myself if she got hurt and I could have been there to stop it.

Autumn is everything to me. She may not know it, but she is the air in my lungs. The man that I have become is because of her. Every day I strive to be better and stronger for her. She is young, but she will understand one day soon.

AUTUMN

I'm no fool. Someone's had their eye on me ever since the day I was born.

My nannies were the worst. In between fucking my father, they reported back my comportment issues. Autumn doesn't know her salad fork from her dinner fork. Autumn keeps mixing up M and N when she's writing. Funny, when Autumn stabbed one of them with a pencil by accident, they disappeared in the back of a black van and I never saw her again. It was only in the hand. I heard a few of the maids mumbling that she was paid off and sent overseas, but I was ten, what did I care.

My dad started paying bodyguards to watch me after that. Big, hulking male ones who didn't wither under a frightening ten-year-old's gaze. I didn't think it was very scary, but apparently the nannies he was diddling on the side did.

Sean Gallagher, my father, had a name to uphold. The best way to do that was to make sure his progeny were perfect. That included my older brother, Liam, who wore the family name like a badge of honor. He was groomed to take over the Gallagher empire from the day he was born. He was a walking billboard for the family. If you stood Sean and Liam next to one another, you'd swear they were twins except for the salt and pepper in my dad's hair, right down to the receding hairline. It would be kind of cute if I wasn't afraid that Liam would do right by my father and have me followed for the rest of my life.

I'm sure there's going to come a day that dad hands over the rights to the cameras in my house to Liam. He'll tell his son that he needs to keep an eye on me, I'm a handful and I need to be watched for my own protection. There's no telling what I'll do if I'm left unattended. Knowing their sick obsession with my life, they'll watch the film together in some kind of weird circle jerk, wanking off to me walking around in a robe discussing the finer politics of table setting with the girls from my college classes.

They aren't the only ones watching me. Within days of moving into the home my father bought, three others bought homes on Sycamore Street. Two of them looked like people I'd seen growing up, probably family spies sent to keep an eye on me and make sure I'm safe. But the third one was a little different.

Matteo Vitale, a name that brought a corrosive look to my dad's face when I brought it up. "AVitalelives on your street?" He asked disdainfully. "Disgusting, Autumn. A waste of space and air."

I knew they had a feud, I wasn't that oblivious to the family politics. I tried to stay out of them, but I wasn't stupid. "He seems like a nice guy. I brought him cookies the other day."

"Stay away from him, my love. He is nothing but trouble." Liam nodded his head in agreement. He had nothing to add, but he always had our father's back.

Matteo didn't strike me as the bad boy type. After years of being surrounded by my father and his cronies, I could tell the difference between men who were good at heart and men who would cut out your heart. Though I didn't talk to my handsome neighbor all too much, I could read his face like a book. We locked eyes across the street on a number of occasions and the depth that I found said that he couldn't possibly be the type to get involved in silly little family wars like my father's.