by Zavi James
“The way things get to yours?” she replied without missing a beat.
I sucked in a breath. “Shot’s fired.”
“Don’t act like it was anything more than a stroke of dumb luck,” he told her. “You came to me after that fight or don’t you remember?”
“Does anything not end up in sex with the both of you?” I asked. It was hard to miss the hickey Luc wore, barely hidden by his shirt collar. I quickly dodged a cushion that Mia threw my way from the couch. The sound of someone hammering on the front door sounded from the house, causing Cerb to start barking. “Hush, boy,” I said and jumped up, seeing an escape. “I’ll get it.”
As I left the room, Cerb following me out, I heard Luc say to Mia, “You were the one who wanted to give him a key and make him godfather. We’re never going to get rid of him.”
I chuckled as the hammering on the door continued. Cerb left me and trotted up the stairs to find his peace with Link.
“I’m coming. Fucking hell, where’s the fire?” I asked as I pulled it open, and Vittoria stepped over the threshold without invitation. “Tori?” She was the last person I expected to be on the doorstep.
“I assume they’re both home since you’re here,” she said, looking ready for a fight. “Do you want to tell me what Angelo’s doing at yours?”
“Fuck,” I uttered the word. I knew I should have caved my skull in when I had the chance. Tori knowing that Angelo was around did not bode well for our plans.
Luc’s voice rang out clearly into the hallway. “Who is it?”
Tori turned on her heel and stalked through the house, following his voice and I trailed her. By the time she walked into the living room, I saw Luc shoot up so quickly that he almost knocked Mia out with his fat head.
“To what do we owe the pleasure, Vittoria?” he asked her, but it was tight, and I supressed the urge to pull her back and away from him. Tori didn’t need protecting. She never had.
“I want to know what you two are up to, Lucas. She turns up to Silas’s funeral like she’s a member of the family when Gabe wasn’t even allowed to be there. Chas told me. I want to know what the hell you’re both playing at.”
He rose to his feet and Mia followed, standing beside him. “I have no idea what you mean,” he answered her smoothly, but a vein throbbed at his temple. He was about to get into an argument with Mia, so Luc was anything but calm.
“You can cut the bullshit,” Tori told him. “I’ve just seen Angelo and there’s no way you didn’t know he was around. Especially after she asks for help to find Dad.”
“A request that you declined,” Luc reminded her. “And no one was more surprised than I was when your brother decided to help out instead.”
“Luc,” I said, watching the shock hit Vittoria at the revelation.
“Oh, didn’t he tell you?” Luc asked, cottoning on. Tori had come in prepared for war, but she was completely unarmed. “Looks like Gabe’s shaken up his priority list. We told him who went for Chas and he gave us some information in return.”
“You should be ashamed of yourself,” Vittoria said, recovering. Sometimes I wished she would stay put when she was knocked off the high horse, but this woman never knew when to quit. “Whatever vendetta you have against Dad after everything he’s done for you.”
“Vittoria, maybe we should save this conversation for another day,” I said, trying my best to avoid an argument. This fight had been brewing between them from the moment Luc had accused Gabe after the shooting. They just hadn’t had the chance to be in the room together long enough to hash it out.
“My vendetta against your dad is because of everything he’s done to me and my family.”
“We’ve known you for years, Luc! We were your family first!”
“More than you know!”
My jaw dropped and Mia’s eyes widened. It was an unspoken rule that Luc was the only one to share the truth of his paternity. Although it had affected us all, it was Luc’s secret, and we wouldn’t run our mouths. We hadn’t banked on him spilling his guts because he was trying to score points. I should have seen it coming. How long could we keep the hothead locked in a box?
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Tori asked narrowing her eyes.
“You really want to know what your dad is capable of?” Luc asked, seething. He couldn’t fight her the same way he could Gabe, but he still knew how to make it sting.
“Don’t,” Mia warned him, putting a hand on his arm and moving to stand in front of him. We could still salvage this but Luc was already on the edge. He’d been there for a while. Every step was dangerously unstable, and no one could talk him down these days. Mia’s recent meddling meant that even she’d lost the small voice of reason that usually grounded him.
“Go ahead and ask him, sis.”
Tori’s face fell. All of the self-assuredness drained away into the floor as she absorbed the blow that Luc sent her way.
Infidelity was what split us apart the first time. Vittoria Moretti had strict ideas on how the men in her life should behave and loyalty and commitment to women was a cardinal rule in her world. She may not have idolised Xavier, but she assumed they preached from the hymn book as far as that was concerned.
“You’re lying,” she spat, but there was a waver.
“Why would I?” Luc asked in return. “Why would I want to lie about being a bastard?”
“I don’t believe you,” she tried again.
Luc just shrugged at her as if he couldn’t care less. Because he couldn’t care less. Whether Tori believed him or not didn’t change the fact that it was truth.
“He’s telling the truth.” Even Mia, with her quick smarts, couldn’t figure out how to stuff the cat back into the bag. “I found out and—”
“You’d say anything to destroy this family,” Tori told her viciously.
Luc stepped forward but Mia planted her palms on his chest. “Don’t,” she warned him firmly. She turned around to look at Tori. “You walked into my home, Vittoria,” Mia said. “You demanded answers, which you got. I’m not trying to destroy this family. I’m trying to protect mine. I won’t apologise for that anymore. Not to you. Not to anyone. You know where the door is. You can see yourself out.”
I thought Vittoria might argue but she turned, not even sparing me a glance and stormed away.
Mia sagged against Luc and he kept her upright. “She’s going to tell everyone,” Mia said, looking at him.
“Let them know,” Luc said. “They can all tear a strip from him when we find him.”
“I’ll be back,” I said, leaving the doorway and jogging after Tori. When I caught up to her, she had a hand on the car door. “Vittoria!”
She looked at me. “I don’t want to hear it,” she said sharply and held a single finger up before wrenching open her door. I dashed to her side as she got into the car and stopped her from closing the door on me. “Move, Dante!”
“Are you planning to make me?” I asked. Tori looked like she was about to take aim at my crown jewels, and I dropped to a squat on the driveway. I’d rather her aim for the face. When the punch didn’t arrive, I continued, “What are you going to do?”
“I don’t know,” she said through her teeth. “Is it true? Do you believe them? Seriously believe them?” Vittoria turned her head and looked at me properly, her eyes were glassy, though, whether it was from anger or hurt, I couldn’t tell.
“They’ve got no reason to lie,” I told her. “It’s why Mia left. Xavier threatened her.”
Tori bit her bottom lip and nodded her head. “Okay,” she said eventually. She blinked rapidly, ridding herself of the tears. “Okay. Even if it is true, that doesn’t give them the right to try and get rid of him.”
“But it gives him the right to get rid of them to keep his secret?”
Her face crumpled before smoothing out again. Vittoria would rather die than be vulnerable, but this hadn’t been what she expected and she was struggling to keep her emotions in check. “Does Mom k
now?”
“You think Maria would be breathing if she did?”
“Gabe?”
“If he does, it wasn’t from us. It’s not something we’ve tried to advertise, given how fickle the family can be.”
Tori sniffed and rolled her neck before sticking her key in the ignition.
“Tori?”
“I need to get home.”
“And then?”
“And then I don’t know, Dante.”
“Are you planning to tell Gabe?”
“Why is it you’re always clearing up his mess, D?” Tori asked, gripping the wheel so tight that her knuckled turned white. “Why are you always defending him?”
“I’m not doing anything that you wouldn’t do for Gabriel.”
It was an infinite loop, the argument of why I chose to side with Luc rather than stay loyal to Tori. To stay loyal to Tori was to sit with the Moretti family and I wouldn’t get a return on investment. The loyalty and respect I had with Luc, the love I had from my found family was something I didn’t want to swap for ridicule and the constant need to prove myself. But I needed to word it in a way that would hopefully talk her off the ledge. That might finally get her to understand my point.
“He’s never once lied to me, no matter what the repercussions might be,” I explained. “He’s the family that I can rely on and I know he won’t turn his back on me. Why wouldn’t I defend that, Tori? That’s hard to come by in this life so I’m going to hold onto it.” Something that she didn’t have because the Moretti family may have looked perfect but looks were deceiving. There was a coldness that seeped through and kept them all eerily distant when they were alone together.
“I’d like to leave now,” Tori whispered.
I had no confirmation that she’d keep quiet and I wouldn’t get one either. Quietly, I unfolded myself and straightened up. “Drive safe,” I told her and shut the door. Vittoria left without glancing back, and I walked into the house again.
Chapter Twenty
Lucas
Mia was nestled against my side, head on my chest, radiating warmth as she slept. Vittoria's impromptu visit last night had led to an argument that had Dante escape for home and left us going to bed on a frosty note. Mia could hold a grudge and I struggled to crack her last night before she fell asleep at the far end of the bed, refusing to even brush against me. Apparently, her subconscious was a little more forgiving. In the silence of the room, I looked at my woman completely at peace. The opposite end of the spectrum from how she'd been when she looked moments away from throwing Link’s bottle at my head.
It was rare that I was awake before Mia, she was fine tuned to the sound of Link's subtlest movements, but when I was, I wondered what she dreamed of. I was curious if all those books she lost herself in unwound in her brain and let her live a thousand lives or if they'd become disturbed like mine, so filled with blood and pain that the waking world felt like more of a comfort.
Mia stirred against me and I drew my fingers up her spine in a feather-light touch and watched as a tired smile tugged at her lips. She pressed up against me to save herself from the ticklish sensation. "Stop," she mumbled, turning her face into my chest.
Then the spell was broken.
She opened her eyes, sticky with sleep, and registered where she was and attempted to put some space between us. As if it would be that easy. My arm was wrapped around her keeping her securely on the spot and I placed a finger against my lips, knowing she wouldn't want to wake Link early. She gave one more half assed push to try and separate us before accepting that she wasn't going to win this battle.
"We are still fighting," Mia informed me, then promptly dropped her head back on my chest.
I laughed quietly and kissed the top of her head. "Whatever you say, love."
"I mean it, Luc." Her sternness was marred with sleepiness, losing the effect she wanted.
"You know," I told her, dragging my fingers down her spine this time so that she stayed as close as possible to me. "You're not meant to go to bed on an argument. You wouldn't want the last things we said to each other to be in anger."
For someone who wasn't fully awake, Mia's slap stung, and I hissed as her palm connected to my chest. "Don't joke about things like that," she said sadly.
"I wasn't joking," I replied, the skin heating up from where her hit had landed. "There's no guarantees." It was a low blow to play the mortality card but a sure-fire way to get her to talk to me again.
She let out a long, slow breath, mulling over my words before shifting herself under the covers and straddling me. Mia hadn't won with words so she moved to a position of dominance. If it made her feel better, she could stay there. "Are you planning to die on me before we get married?"
"Not if I can help it."
"Then you need to keep better hold of your temper."
I reached up to kiss her, lips barely brushing as she pulled back. My hand went to the back of her neck and pulled her back down to me to get what I wanted. She melted into the kiss, eventually breaking away from it and mumbling, “You never fight fair.”
“I fight to win. Fuck fair.”
“You weren’t fighting to win last night,” she pointed out. Mia wasn’t about to let this go. “You never should have told off Tori like that. I don’t even want to know what’s waiting for us today.”
Vittoria barging her way into our home last night and demanding answers had tipped me into the foulest mood. I was sick of Morettis walking around and acting as if they were better than the rest of us. They deserved to be brought down a peg or two and, in my anger, and eagerness to deliver the lesson, I’d let go of the truth. I couldn’t deny that there was a lasting sense of smugness at watching Vittoria’s face fall.
“Luc,” Mia said, disapproval in her tone. “This is nothing to smile about. We’re going to need to deal with the fallout of this.”
“And we will.”
“This was not our plan. This is not what I worked for.”
Not we but I, and it was a fair assessment. She was making a point. After all the flack I had given her for attending Silas’s funeral. After all the fuss I’d made about how it would look to the family, and I’d trumped her. Mia had put in more work than I had to win people around. She’d started from scratch when she came back from her stint with Carmen, and we reaped the benefits of her labour.
"Do you want to stop?" I asked her seriously, curious to whether I’d pushed her a step too far with my antics last night.
"No," Mia answered honestly. Her forehead rested against mine, nose brushing my own. "I enjoy the power." It was just the two of us awake and safe in the darkness where she could let the mask slip away. We’d tapped into a hunger that she possessed, and Mia enjoyed feeding the beast. “But if Vittoria tells everyone, we’re going to end up with nothing.”
“We’ll never end up with nothing, Mia. We’ll have our family and the business.”
“You know what I mean. They won’t accept you properly. You said that yourself.”
Quietly, I moved us so that she laid beneath me, the power balance shifting again. I’d asked more from Mia than I’d ever intended to when we first met. I’d asked her to accept my life, to actively be involved in it and to raise our boy in all the madness. I’d asked for more than I’d given to her, and I knew with every breath that I took that I was completely undeserving of this woman. A better man would have let her go. But I was the worst of them and losing my salvation wasn’t an option. It never would be.
“If they find out and if they don’t accept me,” I said to her. There was no ‘if’ about it. Tradition and protocol dictated everything in this life. “We’ll have to work from the ground up.”
Mia stared up at me with her doe eyes. “From the ground up?” she repeated as a question, sounding unimpressed at the idea.
“It won’t be as bad as it sounds.” Looking at Mia’s face now, there was a sliver of guilt that unwound in my chest. Last night, my anger had served to satisfy my ego. A wholly s
elfish spur of the moment that hadn’t taken her into account. “What did I tell you?” I asked, brushing stray hairs out of her face.
“Not everyone has to like you. They just need to respect you.”
I kissed her gently. “If they find out the truth and don’t want me in that spot, I’ll take out every single person until they have no other choice.” It wasn’t beneath me to take it by force. “I promised you the world and I’ll make good on that promise.”
“I never asked for the world,” Mia whispered. The uncertainty that came with the morally grey ground we stood on, seeped into her. Mia may have liked power and she gained it through dinners and sugar sweet words, but for every diplomatic play she made, I had one that was more bloody and violent, and they weren’t always as well justified as she would have liked.
“Even more reason to give it to you.” Mia had never expected anything from me, never asked for a thing. Last year had proven that Mia did not need me. She was intelligent and time around us had sharpened her and made her resourceful. As long as she stayed calm, Mia could master most things without help but she chose to stay by my side after everything we’d put her through. “I need you to trust me. I need you to trust that I’ll give us a life that we deserve. That Link deserves.”
She looked me in the eye and reached up, gently taking my face in her hands. “I trust you with my life, Lucas James Foster.”
“I won’t let you down.”
“You never have.”
Lies. I’d let her down plenty during the short span of our relationship, but I vowed it would never happen again.
“Will you be okay today?” I asked her. If she wanted, I could leave Dante with the responsibility and work from home.
Mia took in a deep breath through her nose before nodding her head. “We might have nothing to worry about,” she said hopefully but I doubted she believed those words. “I’ll be busy getting everything ready for Franco’s dinner.”
I groaned and buried my face in the crook of her neck. “Let’s cancel.”