Ties of Blood (Book One)

Chapter 25 ~ Matteo

Matteo Morreti

Giannas suggestion of finding my mother stuck with me longer than I'd like. I had lived a majority of my life just fine without her and I was doing just fine.

I didn't need a mother figure and I hardly had a father figure. Me and Romano basically raised ourselves. We only grew distant when my father discovered I was smarter than most kids my age and before I knew it I had a private tutor in every subject anyone could think of.

I was sitting cross-legged on the cold marble floor of my father's office, coins scattered in front of me. I was supposed to be playing quietly while he worked, but my mind couldn't sit still. I'd seen these coins a hundred times before, but today I wondered something new.

"Dad?" I called out, glancing up with a curious look. He was deep into his paperwork, barely glancing my way.

"Hmm?" he murmured, clearly not paying attention.

"Did you know if you add 1 and then keep doubling the answer, like 1, 2, 4, 8, 16... it grows really, really fast?" I asked, fiddling with a small stack of coins. "By the time you get to the 10th number, you already have 1,024!"

He looked up then, blinking like he wasn't sure if he'd heard me right. "And where did you learn that, Matteo?" he asked, his voice curious despite the distraction.

I shrugged. "I didn't learn it anywhere. I was just thinking about it because I wanted to see how fast I could count the coins. If you double each time, you'd have a lot, really quickly! It's way faster than if you just keep adding the same number over and over."

I grinned, feeling proud of myself even though I didn't really know what I'd discovered meant anything. It was just fun to see how the numbers worked, how they grew so fast.

He put down his pen, frowning slightly. "And what if you kept going past 10 times?" he asked, almost like he was testing me.

I felt my eyes light up at the challenge. I furrowed my brow, doing the math in my head. "Um... at 15 times, it would be 32,768. And at 20 times... it would be more than a million!" I clapped my hands, excited by how big the numbers got so quickly.

For a moment, he just stared at me, completely silent. I could tell this wasn't something he expected to hear from an 8-year-old playing on his office floor. The papers in front of him suddenly seemed a lot less important.

"Matteo," he said slowly, his voice softer, almost thoughtful, "do you like numbers?"

I shrugged again, still rolling a coin between my fingers. "I guess. They make sense. You can always figure them out if you try hard enough."

He nodded, and for a split second, there was a strange look in his eyes, something I didn't quite understand back then. It was like he was seeing me differently, not just as his son but as something else. Someone else.

He didn't say anything else after that, but I could feel the shift. It was small, barely noticeable, but it was there. The way he looked at me changed, like he was sizing me up, trying to figure out what to do with me. 

And from that day, things were never really the same, 

Lorenzo always took more of an interest in me and before I knew it I was whisked away into all the Mafia troubles.

Romano never acted jealous and we were still on good terms, he said that he didn't want to be part of it and I didn't force him.

And I hardly thought about my mother or where she might be, when I asked my father about it he would give me vague answers that hardly meant anything so there was no doubt that he would do it again if I asked.