Her Mafia Prince ✔️

Chapter 15 - Just Be Straight With Him

~ Gabriella's POV~

I couldn't stop thinking about Matteo, especially when I finally took the time to read the messages he'd been sending me while my phone was off.

He seemed so concerned about what was going on and why I wasn't speaking to him and part of me just wanted to call him and tell him we were okay and that I was sorry for leaving him like that when I got out of his car and didn't bother looking back.

But I didn't know if I could do that.

I thought I was okay with him being in the mafia - back then when I found out, it didn't bother me. I always thought he would just keep it separate from me and it would never become an issue. But the more I think about it, the more I realise that idea just doesn't work.

I hate secrecy. I've had to watch my parents marriage become a shell of a marriage while my father kept so many secrets from my mom over the years. I also think there should be total honesty and transparency for a relationship to work.

If Matteo was keeping one half of his life a complete secret from me, I would be constantly wondering what he was up to. I would never know if something was wrong, if he was ever stressed there would be no way I could comfort him since I didn't know what the problems were.

Even if we did sort out the secrecy issue, what about the violence? The thought of it before didn't bother me but now after seeing how Dean changed and the way he hurt me, I was so much more wary of Matteo.

There's always a side of someone that they don't want you to see. A dark side they would rather keep a secret.

Dean was just a normal guy who owned his own legal company. He wasn't a good person but he wasn't a criminal.

Matteo was a guy who worked for the mafia - an organisation known for being ruthless and violent.

Doing the math it's quite clear to see who would be more likely to be violent towards me.

Maybe I was being dramatic and unfair and maybe I was just traumatised by what happened with Dean. But it was better to be like this than to be sorry. Maybe this was a wake up call. Sure I had feelings for Matteo and he was an amazing friend to me, but there's always a reality you have to face.

The rest of that night after I spoke to Giovanni I ended up finishing my research on the Italian Mafia. I suppose I'd been putting it off for so long since I did actually want to be with Matteo - first just as friends and then of course as more than that. But now it's like there's this thing inside me telling me I should know the reality of the mafia, like knowing it will make it easier to stay away from Matteo.

I just had to remember what Dean did and it became a lot easier to keep Matteo at arms length without even knowing much about the mafia.

By the time it was time for me to sleep before work tomorrow I knew there was no chance I was going to fall asleep. All I could think about were the numerous articles I found on the mafia in Italy and the things they all said the mafia were responsible for.

Sale of drugs and weapons, money laundering, corruption of higher government officials, murders through planned assassinations and attacks, sex trafficking and prostitution rings and also human trafficking for slavery.

The more I read on each of these different crimes the more sick I felt.

Matteo did all of that.

It wasn't just some random casual crime organisation like how he portrayed it to be. It ruined people's lives - it ended people's lives. Sure when he lied it was an acknowledgement of how bad the mafia is and so he couldn't tell me, but when he did tell me, he didn't seem to care much about it.