Page 8 of Falling for the Enemy

I think of my father sitting in my living room, listening to my brother's version of last night's events. "I think we should get dressed." It's time we answer for our crimes.

* * *

Matteo gives me a shirt to wear over my slip since it's warmer this morning than it was last night. We cross the street with entwined fingers, passing half a dozen bodyguards standing on the street outside my house. I know most of them by name and they all look at me with shame evident on their features.

Someone announces my arrival and in the living room, we hear everyone get to their feet. Liam starts yelling when he sees the flash of my hair. "You whore." The rest of the words are almost too much to bear, thank God I don't have to.

"Talk to my wife like that again and you'll be spitting up teeth, Gallagher." Matteo clenches his free hand and all the knuckles pop menacingly.

Liam looks from Matteo to me and back again. I can see the madness in his eyes grow with each passing second. A smile starts to spread across his lips and then he starts clapping. "Bravo," he bows, "I thought I'd seen all the shows in Vegas. But this one?" He shakes his head and takes a step back. "I didn't even have to buy tickets to see this farce."

I don't know what to say, so I bite my tongue. Matteo raises an eyebrow but he doesn't take the bait.

"Let me guess," Liam goes on, "you thought you'd teach me a lesson by staying out all night with this clown. Well, the joke is over, Autumn. Your reputation is already in shambles. O'Sullivan wants a virgin bride."

Matteo tightens his grip on my hand and smiles at Liam. "I already had the virgin bride, Gallagher. Tell O'Sullivan he missed out. Next time, perhaps? A sister? A different virgin? A quicker wedding? I don't know, but this woman is mine."

The smile on Liam's face slowly begins to fall. The madness in his eyes grows darker. I look toward our father and plead for him to interject before something happens that our family can't draw back from.

"That's enough, Liam," Sean Gallagher sighs. "Matteo Vitale, right?"

Matteo stands imperceptibly taller. "Yes, sir. My sincerest apologies that I did not ask you first for your daughter's hand."

My father sighs again, this time in what feels like defeat. "Since this is not a betrothal, there will be no dowry. Our family owes you nothing, but we expect everything. You are our son-in-law now, Matteo."

To his credit, Matteo doesn't shy away from my father's dramatic request. "Sir, I will take care of Autumn until the day I die. If it's before she dies, I'll make sure that she's taken care of after my death. She is a Vitale now. I will do what I can for your family, but my family comes first and now that includes your daughter."

I can see that in some ways he wants to argue, it's written on his face. If I had married an O'Sullivan, he would have had a son-in-law to do his bidding and a family to use to his advantage. With Matteo, he has someone who will live and die for his daughter, but that's it. He does not have the unstoppable force that he thought he would.

He looks at me with inscrutable eyes and asks, "Why do you want to be with this man?"

Questions like that are never simple. There isn't a black and white answer. I haven't known Matteo all my life and I can't tell you that we share some deep, unbreakable bond. "Chemistry." I guess that's kind of a bond. "I look at Matteo and I see the next fifty years of my life." I look up at the handsome, dark-featured man next to me and I know that's true. "Laughter, tears, children, memories. I know that they're all possible with him."

That's the cold hard truth. You don't always have to have the meet cute or the decades worth of memories to build upon. Sometimes all it takes is looking at someone and knowing in your bones that they're the one.

"Fuck your memories." Liam reaches for his gun and pulls it out. I feel like the next few seconds pass in slow motion. Someone pushes my brother and the shot fired off doesn't go quite as planned.

There's a sharp pain in my stomach and then I'm falling. My face is pressed against the cool marble tile and in the distance, I can hear yelling. I never noticed that there were gold flecks in the tile. Is that blood? Why is the ground red? Gloopy, drippy, red.

Then I fade away. The room goes dark and all the yelling disappears into the abyss.

MATTEO

"Liam fucking Gallagher shoots his own sister andI'mthe one handcuffed to a chair. Where's the justice?"

Rafael looks like he has a headache. He looks over the clipboard of Autumn's diagnostic chart and takes what sounds like a restrained sigh of annoyance. "You threatened to kill him, Matteo."

I narrow my eyes. I would cross my arms in defiance, but one is cuffed to a chair. "I didn't though."

"Because four guys pulled you off of him," he reminds me.

Details. "He shot my wife, Rafe. What did you expect me to do?" Just let the guy go? As if. I've seen men do worse for less. I have been the men doing worse for less before.

Rafael puts the clipboard down by his side in exasperation. "Jesus Christ, Matteo, you were choking him to death."

And I'd do it again, but I think if I say that, I'm never going to get out of these cuffs. "How about you tell me how Autumn's doing, will ya?"

The doc rolls his eyes and returns his gaze back to the clipboard. "Your wife is going to be fine. It looks like the bullet passed through her stomach and missed all her major organs. It was a shitty shot, frankly."