by Lux Miller
“I love you too, Lucario Anton Barresi.”
He tenses and glances over me to look at Dante, who waves around the clipboard. “They expected her to handle the mountain of paperwork.” Luca’s expression is unamused, but Dante isn’t bothered by his brother’s sour face. He ignores him and goes back to filling out the papers. “You’re welcome, by the way…”
Luca grumbles something that sounds like a thank you as the guard unchains his feet, but I don’t know who he’s talking to until he looks pointedly at Dante. “Any other secrets of mine that you felt pertinent to share?”
Dante shrugs as he flips another page and continues writing. “Just the one where you like to sacrifice feral cats on the full moon so you can drink their blood to keep you immortal. She was bound to find out eventually, anyway. Especially once the two of you...talk...”
Luca groans softly and slides his hand under my chin, tipping my face up to his. “Please call me Luca. Nobody calls me Lucario, except my mother when I’m in trouble.”
I giggle softly and nod. “Ah yes, trouble names. The fastest way to make a child cringe in horror is to holler out their trouble name. I knew growing up that anytime I heard Emily Kailani, I’d better double my speed of moving and be prepared to grovel at my mom’s feet. She was the disciplinarian, while my dad was the fun dad… at least in Hawaii… before the sickness took my mom. Then, I didn’t know who he was anymore. It’s like the dad I knew and loved died with my mom, and his death five years later was just a formality.”
Luca nods, smiling down at me sadly. It’s a tender moment of understanding, meant only for me. It almost instantly erases the knot of tension that has been balled up in my belly since we walked into the building. The relief is short-lived, though, as Dante walks up to us and thrusts the clipboard into Luca’s hands. “Here, you finish filling this out. I can answer most of them, but I’ve no idea what you weigh. Why the fuck do they need to know what you weigh on release paperwork? To make sure they fed you while you were wasting away behind bars like a proper criminal?” He nods at the papers knowingly, then walks back over to where he was sitting and flops down again.
Luca rolls his eyes at Dante’s theatrics, but he does start to scribble on the papers. I stand on my tiptoes to peer over his shoulder, and it’s funny to see the three different handwritings scattered across the page.
Mine is frilly and calculated cursive that takes up all of the answer lines where I’ve written. There’s very little of mine on the page, though, because I don’t know most of the answers. In fact, I was doing good just to get the address right. Despite dating the man for months now, I don’t know any of Luca’s personal details.
Dante’s is loopy, but impressively clear for a man. There’s far more of his on the page. In fact, well-over half the page is dotted with the masculine cursive. He’s answered the majority of the questions like name, date of birth, and race.
Luca’s handwriting surprises me, though. His is print, tiny, and slanted as he fills in the blanks. It looks like a doctor took a calligraphy course, and Luca landed somewhere in the middle of the two extremes.
I’m reading the information one line at a time until I reach the ‘Marital Status’ line. I have to reread it three times to comprehend the surprising word that I find written there in Luca’s handwriting. In anyone else’s hand, I would chalk it up to misinformation, but Luca just wrote it on there.
I know better than to yell out the personal information of any mobster in a prison, but this is my boyfriend we’re talking about. It takes every ounce of willpower in my body not to scream at the top of my lungs when I see the one word you never want to see anywhere in relation to the man that you’re dating: MARRIED.
TWO
I gasp in surprise, and Luca cringes as he finishes scratching in the last answer on the page. He drops the hand holding the clipboard and rests his wrist against his thigh as he turns to me. The look on his face is pleading, but if he expects me to let this go, he’s lost his damn mind. I hoarsely whisper under my breath, “You’re married?!?”
Luca slides his hand possessively onto the small of my back and pushes me away from the guard who’s still standing near us. I don’t think the guard heard me, but he’s watching us carefully, his entire body stiff with his hand poised over his gun. This man obviously trusts Luca about as far as he can throw him. Considering Luca’s easily his size, that wouldn’t be far.
“I’ll explain it outside,” Luca whispers back, a sense of urgent demand in his voice that makes the hairs on my arm stand up as goose flesh prickles across my skin. He finishes writing in his answers, then hands the clipboard to Dante with a nod. Dante sighs heavily, but the look that Luca gives Dante is withering. Dante exhales heavily, then crosses his arm over his body and pats his fist against his chest with a curt nod of his head.
I turn to watch Dante walk over to the reception desk, then wheel around to face Luca. “Did you seriously just pull rank on him?”
Luca grabs both of my hands in his with a heavy sigh. “Look, Emily. I told you that I had secrets, and that you wouldn’t be willing to accept all of them. Many of them are things I’ve done for the good of the family, my biological family. The others I’ve done for la famiglia. Those are the ones I know you’ll have trouble accepting. This is one of those things. I will explain it to you, I promise, but not here.”
He squeezes my hands and tugs his bottom lip into his mouth. It’s such a vulnerable, un-Luca-like move that it catches me completely off guard. I nod, then wonder to myself what the hell I just agreed to do. “Stay here, please. Let me change out of this beacon that screams I just got out of jail… and I’ll explain everything to you.”
I watch him as he turns away from me and disappears into a holding room. When he’s gone for over five minutes, I walk over to Dante and point a finger at him. “I will respect his privacy and give him a chance to explain himself, but I need to know if you knew.”
Dante refuses to look at me. He sighs and nods. “I knew, but not for the reason you think. You’ll understand when he explains it, but it’s not my secret to tell.”
I stamp my foot and huff. “He pulled rank on you, Dante. There’s only one reason you’d let him pull rank on you. I’ve seen you with him. He may be your superior, but you don’t blindly follow his commands, Dante. This is something big, isn’t it?”
Dante nods, bringing his green gaze to mine guiltily. I close my eyes and inhale a deep breath, holding both hands up in front of me. I open my eyes again and exhale. “Am I going to hate him for it?”
Dante glances back over his shoulder in the direction in which Luca disappeared, then turns back to look at me with a quick shake of his head. “I can’t read your mind, Emily, but my gut tells me that you’ll understand that it’s for the good of the family. I can’t speak for you, but I don’t think you will.”
I look beyond Dante as Luca emerges from the holding room, and despite me being frustrated with him, I feel a jolt of need scurry to my core upon seeing him in a pair of fitted jeans and a bright blue button-down worn untucked, except right in the front where it’s perched behind his belt buckle. I whimper and squirm slightly at the sight of him and when he looks up, he catches me staring.
A hopeful smile spreads across his face as he turns to the guard and asks him a question. I slip around Dante to eavesdrop on Luca’s conversation. I don’t hear everything he asked the guard, but I do hear his final statement. “I know the conditions of my bond state that I cannot leave the area and that I cannot go to the supposed scene of the crime on Bourbon Street. This isn’t my first rodeo with an ankle bracelet. I don’t intend to be coming back here… ever…”
The guard chuckles and shrugs his shoulders. “Good luck with that Barresi. You’re free to go today, but I hear they’ve got enough evidence against you to put you away for good… where you belong…”
Luca’s body stiffens and his eyes narrow in response to the guard’s bold statement. I don’t like where this is going. I’
m sure that decking an armed prison guard is not going to bode well for any of us, especially Luca.
I jump into action and grab Luca’s arm gently. “Let’s go. Before you do something you’ll regret.”
The guard scoffs. “Yeah, Barresi, listen to your handlers. Seems she at least understands the gravity of the charges you’re facing. They may not have a body, but there’s witnesses to some super shady stuff that went down. I wouldn’t be surprised if the DA’s looking to send you on up to Angola to rot with your Pop.”
Luca’s strong. Incredibly strong. And his entire body is rigid right now as a low growl rumbles in his throat. I tug on Luca’s arm and start walking toward the door. “Come on, Luca. He isn’t worth it. Don’t throw your life away on somebody that shouldn’t matter to you… somebody who won’t matter to you in a few days, or months…”
The guard crosses his arms over his chest again and leans against the wall as I slowly usher Luca toward the door. He calls out to me as we reach the exit. “Seems you might ought to consider taking your own advice, ma’am. He may not be a dead man walking, but if the case against him is as strong as I hear it is, it won’t matter anyway.”
Using all of my strength, I push Luca out the door and into the bright New Orleans sunshine. I wince and cover my eyes, but Luca doesn’t budge. He stands there, seething, for what seems like twenty minutes before the tension in his body relaxes. I turn to face him, and he catches me off guard, pushing me back against the exterior brick wall of the prison.
Before I can protest, his lips are on mine, and his tongue is begging for entrance into my mouth. Despite the dozen questions bouncing around inside my head about his marriage, the charges he’s facing, and why the hell the guard is so convinced he’s going to prison, my traitorous body responds to him the same way it always does - with wanton need. I groan and part my lips for him, and his tongue is on mine in seconds.
He assaults my mouth, and every bit of me is tingling with want. Finally, I have to pull back to catch my breath. As I do so, I lean my head back against the wall, my chest heaving with my struggle to breathe. “Luca… you have...a lot of… explaining… to do…”
He nods and slams both of his hands against the brick wall beside my head. He leans down over me, blocking out the sun as his eyes scan my face intently. With his arms caging me against the wall, there’s nowhere for me to go. “I’m not married, Emily…”
My heart does a little flip flop of hope in my chest, but none of this makes sense. Sure, Luca’s not the most upstanding citizen, and I wouldn’t put it past him to lie about things, but not on a prison release form. That’s the kind of shit that gets people locked up for a long time.
I shake my head, bringing my hand to his face. My voice is barely above a whisper as I ask, “Anymore?”
He shakes his head in response, resting his forehead against mine. “Yet, Emily… I’m not married, yet…”
I tilt my head to the side and stare up at him in surprise. “What do you mean, you’re not married yet? Are you engaged to someone, because honestly, that’s just as bad…”
Rolling his eyes, Luca responds, “I’m not engaged to anyone. And before you ask, no, I haven’t knocked anyone up. That I’m aware of, anyway… and I think anyone that I’d had sex with before you would know by now if that were the case. Besides, I haven’t had sex with anyone without a condom… until you. So unless you’re pregnant and haven’t told me yet, there’s no accidents floating around…”
My heart thump-thumps in my chest with his declaration. “Okay, so if there’s not anyone else, why did you lie on a federal form? That could get you in trouble too… and we’d right back at square one!”
He leans his body against mine, and I can his rapid heartbeat. “I haven’t lied to you, Emily. I swear.” He brushes his lips over mine so softly that they barely touch. He doesn’t pull away, his lips moving against mine as he continues, “And I didn’t lie on the form… as long as you agree to marry me.”
My breath catches in my throat, and I cough, caught completely off guard by his statement. He tries to distract me with a full blown kiss, but my fight or flight mode kicks in, and I push on his chest, pulling my lips from his. “Is this a joke, Luca? Did April Fool’s come late this year, and I missed the memo?”
Luca shakes his head and closes his eyes with a heavy sigh. “I was afraid you’d react this way. I thought that maybe, if you had feelings for me… that maybe you’d be willing to—”
I cut him off by putting my hand over his mouth. “You know I have feelings for you, Luca! For fuck’s sake, I’m standing outside of a prison where I just chucked fifty grand in cash on a counter to free you. And no, that money didn’t come from your accounts. Dante and I had to get creative. How could you even think that I’m not in this completely when I damn near had to move heaven and earth to free you?”
Luca nods slowly, keeping his eyes closed. “Then keep me free.”
I shake my head, irritation growing in my voice, “How does me marrying you, which for the record, that was a pretty lame proposal… how does that keep you free?”
Luca stands up straight and turns away from me. He’s agitated, and it’s unnerving to see him so flustered. He doesn’t normally let things get to him like this and when he does, it’s certainly not over a woman.
“Luca, what do I have to do with your freedom?”
He looks back at me, and I can see the conflict on his face. “Emily, they’ve upgraded the charges. They say they’ve got evidence to prove that Andre is dead, and that they can link me to his death.”
My head bobs back and forth between my shoulders. “That’s impossible, Luca. They can’t charge with the death of a man they can’t prove is dead! They don’t have a body…” I lower my voice, “...and I know they never will. How can they possibly charge you with murder?”
Luca drags a hand through his hair, then down on his face in defeat. He locks his eyes on mine, and my belly tightens. I shake my head quickly. “No…”
He nods and rests one hand on each of my shoulders. “Yes… they have an eyewitness who can testify against me that Andre died that night. I’ll be lucky to get prison time with the kind of testimony they can get from this person.”
He lowers his face to mine and our gazes lock. I already know the answer to my question, but I ask it anyway. “And who is this star witness? And what does it have to do with me marrying you?”
Luca sighs, “You. They can prove you were there, and they can force you to testify against me to put me in prison for the rest of my life… or, if the DA gets his way… in the chair… unless…”
My heart soars for a moment when he says ‘unless.’ Then realization comes crashing down on me as it dawns on me what he’s asking of me. “Unless we’re married. Because a wife can’t be forced to testify against their husband.”
Luca nods, his face hopeful. “I know it’s crazy soon, and I know I’m asking something of you that is so monumental that I can’t ever repay you for it if you agree to do it. But, if I’m being totally transparently honest… this is the way we’re probably headed anyway, Emily. You’re the first woman who’s ever made me feel the way I feel when I’m with you. It wouldn’t have been now, but I have no doubt in my mind, my heart, or my soul… that you’re the only woman in this world who could ever tame me.”
My heart is racing as Luca lays it all out on the line. I swallow hard as I consider it, though is there really anything to consider? Even if I wasn’t in love with him, which I totally am, I couldn’t let him be sentenced to a lifetime in a federal prison or even death… not when I can save him. Inhaling sharply, I ask, “When? If I agree, when would we get married?”
Luca’s body is rigid as he replies. His voice is so quiet that I almost don’t hear him at all. “Now…”
I blink at him, swallowing down the lump that’s formed in my throat. “Right now?”
He nods, a hopeful look playing on his face. “I know it’s back asswards as hell, but really… when
have we ever done anything by the book? Our entire relationship has been one rule-breaking moment after the next. I never know what to expect, and I honestly believe that’s part of why I’m so hopelessly in love with you. You’re the piece that completes my soul, and I’d be a god damned fool to let you go without a fight. And I will fight if I have to… I’ll burn this city to the ground if that’s what it takes. So, Emily… will you marry me right now?”
I stand frozen in front of him, my heart thudding in my chest, but my mind is already made up. I don’t have to think about it. I inhale and exhale quickly, then look up at him and nod. “How could I say no?”
THREE
To say that I’m a nervous bride is the understatement of the year. I’m wearing flip-flops for Pete’s sake. When I left the house this morning, I was expecting to spring my boyfriend from prison, not end up a married woman by sunset. It’s still mid-afternoon, but the process of getting approved to get married is more complicated than I’d ever imagined. Yet, here we sit in the Orleans Parish Courthouse as they process our expedited marriage license application.