ILARIA (book 3)

76. ILARIA

I missed having Matteo around.

I randomly hug him again and he just smiles. "What's with all the hugs?"

"I just missed you." I look over his shoulder, he's reading a case file. "Thought you stopped helping the feds. Or are you spying on Xena?"

"Her new boyfriends a melt." He closes it. "How is Asahi?"

I shrug.

I'm mad at him.

I haven't seen him in two weeks, barely heard from him. Just texts like 'love you.' or 'i'm fine, see you soon.'

So I'm mad.

Matteo smiles. "Go on."

"He's been back to work all of two weeks and I already feel like a secondhand character in his life... again. And we were literally discussing marriage right before he left-"

"Hm..." He starts typing on his phone.

"And he's barely spoken to me since then. He just left his dogs here and-" I stop. "You're not even listening."

He holds his phone to his ear. "Hey Asahi, it's Matteo."

"You bitch." I feel my eye twitch.

"Yeah, my sister actually just won't shut the fuck up about you, can you put her mind to ease." He hands me the phone.

I hold it to my ear. "What?" I sigh.

"My love, deepest apologies. Maybe, just maybe, if you said all of three words to me every time I called you, I would speak to you more." He clears his throat, rumbling happened in the background.

"Okay maybe if you acted like you wanted to speak to me-"

"Baby, i will be the warehouse in like 20 minutes with good news. We'll speak then. I love you."

"Hmm."

"Say it back, pretty girl."

"Love you too." I hang up, throwing the phone back to Matteo. "Ass hat."

"Cry me a river." He smiles. "He's just busy."

"Yeah, whatever." I walk out of the office and into the foyer. I just wait by the fountain that a finger was floating in.

Romeo walks past, I grab his wrist. "Who does the finger belong to?"

He smiles. "Buckley."

I smile too. "You know, papa said he knows one of the agents in the prison Underson was sent to."

"Yeah, they wanted to send him there so he made sure he made alliances." Romeo raises an eyebrow. "What you thinking?"

"Let a guard slip it into Undersons cell."

"I like your brain sometimes." He walks away, yelling for one of the juniors to bag up the finger.

True to his word, my boyfriend waltz on in. He was wearing his FBI vest, a pair of sunglasses on his face, two braids on the side of his hair, mixing in with his curls.

"Ilaria." He visibly relaxes.

"Who braided your hair?"

"My mother." He takes his vest off, leaving it on the floor. He walks over, and just hugs me. I could feel his tense body relax, and then he lets out a breath. "I missed you."

"I missed you too." I pull away. "What's this good news?"

"In New York again, been a really big lead in a human trafficking ring and we're staying here." He looks behind me. "Hey man, you're looking well."