Good Cop Gone Bad ~ Rewritten

24| emergency

•Matteo Rossi•

          I woke up that same day with Aria in my arms, in her bed. We had only slept for a few hours after Laura's presentation. We had spent only a few minutes talking after that before going back to her room and laid in bed together, quickly falling asleep.
          But now my phone was ringing constantly. I had let it ring the first time, and just turned my attention back to Aria. She was still asleep after the first ring but after the second, she was woken up by my phone. "Matteo." she called my name.
          "Sì, melodia?" I groan, not wanting to pay attention to anything else.
          "Your brother is calling you. And you have a lot of messages from mamma." she explained. That was not necessarily out of the ordinary, but usually if I did not answer they would not call me again until I called them back.
          I slowly sat up on the bed and Aria did the same. She handed me my phone just as it stopped ringing but started again not even a second later. This time, it was Lia calling me.
          I answered it right away. "Hey Lia Emma." was all I said before I heard the commotion going on from the phone. Lia's voice was frantic, and I heard sobbing in the background, as well as Alessandro telling someone that everything would be fine.
          "Matteo! Please you have to come to the hospital in mamma and papà's estate! Papà is hurt, it's bad. They don't know if he is going to be okay." she was sobbing. I was still half asleep but those words were like a shock to my system and I shot up out of bed. What the fuck was going on?
          I hung up the phone and quickly got up. "Matteo? What's wrong?" Aria asked me as I was quickly putting my shoes on. My mind was everywhere, I couldn't remember where my keys were and I was trying to form words but they were not coming out of my mouth.
          I stopped for a second, took a breath, and at least tried to process everything. Tears stung my eyes but I forced them back. I would never cry. I don't cry, and even if I did I know papà would tell me not to. That I had to be strong, no matter what. "Just some family things, melodia. Papà is in the hospital and I have to go." I said frantically and continued as I was before. I still could not find my car keys.
          Aria stood up as well, putting some boots on, and miraculously finding my car keys quickly. She grabbed my hand in hers. "Let's go." she said.
          "No, melodia, you do not have to go. Just go back to sleep I will-" she stopped me with a tug on my arm, she was pulling me towards the door.
          "Let's go." she repeated. I could hear the determination in her voice as well as see it in her eyes. She was not letting me leave this apartment unless she was going with me. I nodded and we left, heading down to my car.
          As soon as we got in, I turned it on and sped towards mamma and papà's estate. I did not know if I was breaking the speed limit, but I was going fast and Aria did not seem to say anything the entire ride. She kept my hand in hers, rubbing her thumb on the back of it softly and slowly in a very calming motion.
          When we got there, I basically jumped out of the car, Aria following behind me as we ran into the hospital. I quickly found my family and they ran towards me as well, meeting me in the middle. Lia hugged me quickly as well as mamma. Surprisingly, Alessandro hugged Aria, Sofia did as well. Vittoria was in Sofia's arms asleep but she seemed to have been crying before.
          All of them know where I stand with telling Aria about the mafia, so Sofia gives me a look as she takes Aria to sit down with her and mamma. Alessandro pulls me into a different hallway. He does not waste a second before telling me what has happened.
          His voice wavers as he tells me. "He was apparently out shopping for mamma's birthday presents and we just found him in an alley near the shopping center. He was beaten up and he had a bullet wound. It was bad, Matteo. I don't know what happened exactly. I do not know how he is still alive, but we found a note near him." he pulls a piece of paper out of his pocket and hands it to me.
I take the paper from his hand and examine it. Regular notebook paper, nothing special about the writing except that it is familiar and incredibly sloppy. It looks like a child wrote it.
          It had three simple words on it: La Prossima Generazione.
The words obviously were familiar to me, but put together in a phrase, they seemed like a clue. It seemed like something I had hear before, something that jogged a memory somewhere in my brain. I turned the paper around and there was more writing on it the same handwriting.
You are normally better than this, Rossi. Only two dead bodies? Step it up. It's practice for the war.
My eyebrows furrowed as I tried to dig up every memory I had and find these phrases within them. It was so close and yet so far away. Then, I heard her footsteps approaching, about to turn corners.
"Matteo?" Aria called, both of our heads turned to look over to her. She was standing there, Vittoria was in her arms and sniffling against her shoulder. "Your papà is asking for you." she said and I nodded. She walked up to Aless to see if Vittoria would want to go with him but she shook her head and hugged Aria tighter. Aless looked offended as she walked away before we could follow after her.
I gave Aless a look to tell him that we would talk about it later and he nodded as I went towards papà's hospital room. I passed my family and went right into the room they had all pointed at as if they knew why I was walking towards them the way that I was.
The nurse sees me and begins to walk out. He bows his head to me and walks out, closing the door behind him. I saw my father laying on the bed, there were injuries all over his visible body. Bruises, cuts, dried blood, a black eye. I sit in the chair next to my fathers bed and he begins talking right away, his voice sounding hoarse and weak. "Matteo, listen to me. This situation that has been going on recently, it is bigger than we imagine it to be. They have so many people, and it is not just someone spying on you. It is an inside job. Someone who knows all of these things about you already. Now is the time where you have to use all the training I gave you. They may be strong but we are stronger. I'm not talking about just physically, but mentally. Don't let them crack you, ever." he instructs me and I nod. Never letting myself even blink at him. He groans a bit, I assume at the pain. "I don't know if I have much time left." I hear him mumble.
"Oh come on, papà do not say things like that." I groan out, looking away from him as I had a look of discomfort on my face.
He chuckled which made him cough. "I just wish I could have done more for you that just train you for business. I wish I could have taught you to be a nice person. Figlio in your 27 years of life I only ever saw you cry when you were a baby. You don't like showing emotion, even though it is healthier than whatever it is you do. I wish I could have taught you to be an amazing husband for that kind girl out there. And do not tell me that she is not even your girlfriend yet, because she is the first girl you have ever even shown us so I doubt that you are not serious about her."
"But you did, papà. You worship mamma so much. That is what Alessandro and I want to be for Sofia and Aria. You did not necessarily tell us but you showed us what to be like. And yes, I want to be serious about her." I tell him, and surprisingly, his natural stone face turned into a smile. He chuckled and turns away from me, his face still not reverting back to its natural state.
          He sighs before continuing "Ah, figlio. You have no clue how much strength they can give you. It is so much easier to wake up in the morning and know that you are going to have a great day when you wake up and she's right there and she's smiling at you. It's a good feeling."
          If there was one thing I knew about my papà is that he was definitely in love with my mamma. It did not matter that it had started off as them fake dating, in the course of them knowing each other, they had fallen in love and he was not going to do anything to let her go. He was completely enamored with her. He was obsessed with her, not in a creepy way, but in a way that she never had to question whether he loved her because she automatically knew. And even though she knew, he still said it over and over again. I have had this amazing example of love in my life that I knew could never be forced.
          Maybe we were moving fast. But maybe we just view commitment as fast. I don't know how slow people would consider slow now. We are grown adults and we can make those decisions for ourselves, sleeping over and spending a lot of time together, that is what people do. We are not other people and we should not base our relationship off of the societal expectations that people have for other people our age. If Aria wants to go slower then we will go slower. No matter what she wants to do, I know that she is the one that cleared my mind, and made it known to me what change it was that I needed. I needed someone there, when I fell asleep, when I woke up, someone to call or text whenever I wanted.
She could break my heart over and over and I would still beg for her to come back because she is the one who helped me see the light in the world that I had only ever fought to see the dark in. She showed me something that I never thought I would even want to see, but now I think I cannot live without, and my father was the one that taught me to care for her like that.
It was not until now that I saw just how much he did for me. Unknowingly did. Up until now I thought he had just prepared me to take over the world, and although he did just that, he also prepared me to find someone that would be there taking it with me.
What an amazing father he is.
           "You still have a lot of fight left in you, papà. Do not let some cowards who do not know what they are getting themselves into change that." I tell him and he chuckles once more. We spend some time talking before everyone walked in, mamma first. She immediately goes to my fathers side and holds his hand.
          He responds quickly and happily by kissing the back of her hand. Aria comes next to me, leaning on me. I wrap an arm around her and Vittoria looks at me. She holds her arms out for me to carry her, so I take her from Aria, also pulling my arm away from around her. Vittoria very quickly leans against my shoulder and whispers in my ear "I love my new Zia. She's so nice."
          I chuckled and whispered back "Yes she is great." I switched arms so that I could put my arm back around Aria.
We all spent a good amount of time talking before my father made a very odd and random request. "May you all leave so I can speak privately with Aria?" We all looked confused, as did she, but we complied, too curious to see what would happen.