Mafia Prince: A Second-Chance Mafia Romance (Moretti Mafia Book 1)

by Lucia Black

  Giovanni hummed. “Still deflecting. And I know you haven’t spoken to dad yet.”

  Alessandro tugged on his seatbelt restlessly. He couldn’t declare his love for her if she didn’t feel the same way about him. He’d been rejected. He couldn’t go to his father and tell him the wedding was off just because he loved her. Not when that love was unrequited. His seat belt snapped against his chest. “It’s not a huge discrepancy and I’m not feeling particularly violent at the moment, so even if he did it on purpose—”

  “You’re running out of time, you know.” Giovanni ignored the conversation Alessandro was trying to have and continued the one he wanted to have. “Are you going to tell him or not?” It wasn’t judgmental or pushy, just a question out of innocent curiosity. And that made it worse.

  Alessandro snapped his seatbelt again. “You would have done the same in my place, I know you would. Anyone would. My actions were completely justified, but they were still wrong because it wasn’t my place, and I stepped on her toes.” It all came rushing out. Giovanni stared at him in mute concern, blinking rapidly. Alessandro threw his hand in the air helplessly. “I fucked up.” Then softly and half to himself, he said, “I fucked up.”

  The noise of the air conditioner whirring through the car vents filled the space between them for a moment. When Giovanni finally spoke, it was a quiet question. “What happened?”

  Alessandro didn’t appreciate the gentle tone. It wouldn’t calm him down, only rile him up more. “I would have killed him,” he admitted. He would have. If Logan hadn’t pulled him away, he would have wrung that man’s greasy neck right there in the hospital. Right in front of Lorna and God and everyone.

  Giovanni exhaled slowly. “Who?” His eyes were full of concern for his brother. “Who would you have killed?”

  “Her uncle.” The distaste in Alessandro’s voice could wilt a flower. He wasn’t sorry. That man deserved much worse. He only regretted what happened because of Lorna’s reaction. There were too many people like that uncle in the world. People who thought they could take what they wanted from anyone. That rules of morality didn’t apply to them. That they were above the masses and above understanding basic human rights. It boiled Alessandro’s blood, and part of him wished he had killed him.

  “Her uncle?” Giovanni looked a little lost. “Why—”

  “Reasons.” It wasn’t Alessandro’s place to tell, and he’d learned about staying in his lane and not overstepping her boundaries. She could tell Giovanni once they were married if she really wanted to. His heart clenched painfully at the thought. “I had reasons,” he reiterated.

  Giovanni nodded slowly. “All right, so you tried to kill her uncle, and she’s mad at you for that?” He waited while Alessandro didn’t react. He sucked air through his teeth. “Not gonna lie, that sounds pretty reasonable of her.”

  Alessandro dropped his head back against the headrest with a groan. “I can’t make her care.”

  “No,” Giovanni drew out the word, searching his brother’s face. “No, generally you can’t force people to feel things.” Alessandro sat in miserable silence until Giovanni nudged him with his elbow. “Talk to me.”

  Another groan tore out of Alessandro’s throat. “I’m in love with her. I love her so fucking much. I’d do anything for her. I would kill for her—obviously—I would die for her. . .” he trailed off and shook his head. “But I can’t make her choose me.”

  “Are you sure she won’t?” Giovanni asked. His optimism wasn’t soothing. It was annoying and made Alessandro even more conflicted.

  “For a while I would have said she would,” he said. “Then I would have said I wasn’t sure what she would do . . .” He thought back to her words in the garage. Don’t show up at all. “She’s made it clear. She wouldn’t . . .”

  There were times he thought she loved him. Times she held him like she cared. Times she looked into his eyes and saw him more clearly than anyone else did. She’d grabbed his hand weakly, with so much emotion in her honey-brown eyes they were ready to swallow him whole, and she’d asked him to stay. But then there were times like the parking garage when she put up a wall to keep him out. Locked herself in an ivory tower proclaiming that she wasn’t his princess, and she wasn’t a damsel in distress, and she didn’t need a white knight to save her. He knew she could stand alone. She was perfectly capable and independent. She didn’t need anyone to complete her. She was complete on her own. He knew that. But Alessandro didn’t want to complete her, he wanted to complement her. He wanted to support her when she needed someone to lean on and cheer her on when she won her own battles.

  He licked his lips. “I love her more than anything, and I’ve ruined it. I’ve ruined everything,” he admitted. He could feel her slipping through his fingers like sand at the beach, or like the moonlight reflected on the water that you try to touch but can’t quite grasp. He snapped his seat belt again. No, it was more that she was slipping through his hands the way a rope did when you tried to climb it, and your arms gave out from exhaustion, and the roughness of the rope burned your hands more and more the harder you tried to hold on.

  Giovanni’s hand on his shoulder brought Alessandro back to the present moment. The hum of the car engine, the buzz of the air conditioning, the barely-there scent of the car freshener hanging from the rearview mirror, the city going past the window in a blur of gray and brown and red and green and white. Giovanni squeezed his shoulder. “I won’t marry her.”

  Alessandro looked at him. “What?” He’d been so adamant before about Alessandro taking responsibility and earning their father’s respect.

  Giovanni exhaled sharply. “You’re obviously head over heels for her. I can’t marry her when you love her like that.” He said it like it was obvious, like Alessandro should have known. He removed his hand from his brother’s shoulder and shrugged. “You wouldn’t marry Delilah if you were supposed to.”

  Alessandro smiled softly. No, he wouldn’t. He wouldn’t be able to live with that choice, knowing that his brother loved her and couldn’t have her because he did. It would be torture for all three of them. No one would win. Luca’s words returned to him. He picked the option he could live with.

  He folded his hands together and cracked his knuckles, thankful that he had a brother like Giovanni who could do something impossibly kind and heartfelt. Even though she’d said for him to stay away, Gio wouldn’t marry her and rub salt in his little brother’s wound.

  He took a deep breath and looked down. It pained him even more to say what he needed to say, knowing that his brother would step down and defy everyone for the sake of their bond.

  “You have to,” he finally managed. “You have to marry her. That was the plan. She doesn’t want me. She doesn’t even want me near her, and there is nothing I can do to make her care. To make her choose me. She had the chance. I can’t let either one of you take this hit for me.”

  Giovanni’s brows furrowed. “This isn’t what you want. I’m not going to—”

  Alessandro shook his head. “None of this is what I wanted. None of it. But it is this way. And you have a responsibility. I almost came in between it. Don’t screw it all up. Not for me.”

  Giovanni sighed, then nodded. “If that’s what you want me to do.”

  “I do,” he said.

  The bile rose in his throat, and he shoved it down, the lie threatening to consume him.

  27

  Lorna

  Lorna dodged Logan’s rhythmic punches easily and without thought. Distracted. Exactly what she wasn’t supposed to be when she trained. Logan noticed and threw a different kind of punch. Lorna’s arm automatically rose to do the same block she’d been doing, which did nothing at all to stop his fist connecting with her shoulder.

  She stumbled back a couple steps and rubbed her shoulder. “Ow,” she stated and frowned at her trainer.

  Logan crossed his arms over his chest. “Wake up.”

  “Hard to wake up when you never went to sleep to begin wit
h.” She hadn’t been sleeping lately. It showed in her sluggish movements and the bags under her eyes. She didn’t even bother trying to cover them up anymore.

  Fluorescent lights buzzed above them in her family’s private gym, harmonizing with the ringing in her ears from the sleepless dread of her swiftly approaching wedding. The blue mats beneath her bare feet felt familiar and comfortable. She liked the way the skin on the bottom of her feet stuck to the plastic coating. The smell of the room—sun-warmed concrete, sweat, faint bleach, and spilled sports drinks—felt like home. The way Logan was frowning at her in that same old white tank top and grey basketball shorts he always wore was right out of a memory. She might still be a child struggling through her drills and falling on her face when she tried to roll away from an attack. And wouldn’t that be nicer? To go back to those simpler times? When the biggest thing she had to worry about was whether Sarah at school would wear her pink heart sweater on the same day Lorna did, or her mother finding out that she didn’t eat the carrot sticks she packed in her lunch. When she never even considered a future where she would be trapped in a loveless marriage with a man she didn’t care to get to know because she only wanted his brother.

  Logan handed her a water bottle and she accepted it, numbly unscrewing the top and tipping the cool contents down her throat. Logan took it back when she was finished and set it beside the mat. “You’re not really here with me, are you?” he asked, waving a hand in front of her face.

  Lorna sank to the floor and pulled her knees to her chest. “No.” She shook her head slowly, eyes fixed on a discolored splotch on the mat. “I can’t focus,” she admitted.

  Logan sat next to her. “Tell me where you are.” He spoke gently, not as her trainer, but as her friend.

  Her eyes were still fixed on the splotch of darker blue which resembled a rose with ragged edges. Mina wanted red roses for the wedding. Lorna told her to do whatever she wanted, so there would probably be red roses in bowls around the altar and tied in bundles to the edges of the pews with big white bows. There would be soft red petals strewn down the aisle for Lorna to walk on. Her stomach twisted. Everything would be beautiful. The wedding of someone’s dreams. But it was Lorna’s nightmare, and it was only made worse by the fact that she knew Mina and Mrs. Moretti would do a fabulous job planning and facilitating everything.

  She dragged her eyes up to Logan’s face. “I’m in this same place I was ten years ago when we taught Alessandro Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu.” It was a much more pleasant place to be than her present moment, or any future moment on the path she was walking.

  Logan nodded. “Alessandro,” he said. “You know he cares a lot about you.”

  “Yeah.” He did. She wasn’t so sure after their argument. She could still see all the hurt and anger on his face before he walked away.

  “You can’t blame him for what he did.”

  “I know.” She did know. She’d stopped being angry about that relatively quickly and started being angry with herself for falling so hard for him. Her entire life would be easier if Alessandro didn’t have a death grip on her heart.

  “You think you can do it?” Logan asked, genuine concern laced through his voice. “You think you can walk down that aisle with Giovanni at the other end of it?”

  “I have to.” It didn’t matter whether she thought she could or couldn’t. She would. Just like everything else in her life. It didn’t matter if she’d thought she couldn’t run the business in Los Angeles, she’d done it. It didn’t matter if she thought she couldn’t take care of Ernesto, she’d done it. It didn’t matter if she thought she couldn’t walk down that aisle and say “I do,” she would do it.

  Logan recrossed his legs. “He’s a good guy.”

  Lorna knew she should be grateful for that. Giovanni could be awful. He could be the kind of person who expected her to stay in the kitchen and rear children and give him a foot rub every evening when he got home. He could be abusive, emotionally or physically. Or, even worse, he could expect her to love him. Giovanni wasn’t misogynistic, he wasn’t cruel, and he wasn’t unreasonable. But he wasn’t Alessandro. And she absolutely could not forgive him for that.

  Logan seemed to understand. He pushed himself to his feet and offered her a hand. “Come on. Fight out your feelings.”

  She accepted the hand and let him pull her upright, but she sagged under the weight of her responsibilities and duty and honor and broken dreams. “I’m tired,” she said. She tried to excuse herself, though it sounded like a hollow excuse even to her own ears.

  Logan shook his head sharply. “No, you’re not.” She stared at him. She was tired. She looked it; she knew she did. How could he tell her she wasn’t? It wasn’t a good excuse, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t true. Logan dusted his hand on his basketball shorts. “You’re not tired, Lorna. You’re conflicted and you’re stressed, but you’re not tired.”

  “Yes, I am.” She stood up straighter and spoke with her hands like her father did. “I am tired of being the good, obedient, dependable daughter who bites her tongue and crosses her legs and does what she’s told. I’m tired of putting duty before everything else in my life. I’m tired of faking smiles and laughter and pretending everything is alright when it’s not. And I am sick and fucking tired of being in love with Alessandro Moretti.” Her voice had risen to a shout by the end of her statement.

  Logan nodded like he’d expected that. “Good. Acknowledging your feelings is the first step to reconciling them.”

  Lorna stared at him. “When did you become a psychologist?” She sounded more bitter than she wanted to, but maybe he was right. She hadn’t said it out loud before and it did feel like some of the jagged pieces of her heart slid into place and weren’t poking the inside of her chest anymore. It was no great sudden relief, and it didn’t change anything, but maybe Logan was right, and it was a step in the right direction.

  Logan smiled. “Come on, Lorna. I’ve always been your therapist.”

  She wrapped her arms around herself like if she squeezed hard enough, all her love for Alessandro would burst through the top of her head and she would be able to marry Giovanni without constantly breaking her own heart. “I don’t know what to do, Logan,” she admitted. “I’m in love with one brother, but I’m promised to the other.”

  Logan stepped forward to wrap his arms around her. He always joked that she was the daughter he never had, but Lorna could feel it now. He wouldn’t tell her what to do because even if he knew the best option, it still had to be her choice. He never pushed her into decisions. He would give advice when she asked for it, but he never told her how to live her life. He always said it wasn’t his job. She already had a father who did that.

  She hugged him back because her father was in the hospital and couldn’t hold her, and even if he could, she wouldn’t tell him how she felt, so he wouldn’t know she needed to be held. But she knew that if Logan’s hug had the power to solve all her problems, she would wake up in the morning already married to Alessandro.

  28

  Alessandro

  Alessandro used to enjoy weddings. Weddings meant good food, free drinks, cheerful people. They were fun. He had fun at his sister’s wedding. He had fun at friends' weddings and family weddings and the weddings that he and Antonio used to crash when they were younger for the free cake. But now ‘wedding’ meant watching his older brother fake a smile while Lorna avoided looking at him.

  The wedding rehearsal dinner had only just begun, but Alessandro was ready to go home. He couldn’t appreciate the gothic architecture of the cathedral or minimal, tasteful decorations that had been set up for the day. Nor could he appreciate Lorna’s little pale blue dress and carelessly perfect updo. Not when she stood beside his brother not quite close enough for one to believe that this would be their wedding. He knew Giovanni’s looks, and he could feel the ache in his brother’s cheeks from pretending to enjoy this. He also knew Lorna’s looks, and she was at the top of her game today, her discontent only evident in
the tension in her shoulders and the way she held her hands clasped too tightly in front of her.

  Alessandro walked up the aisle with his brothers when he was instructed to, coming to stand at Giovanni’s side. Luca was the best man, then Antonio stood behind him, then Alessandro was last. On the other side of the altar stood Lorna’s maid of honor—her cousin, Alessandro thought, he hadn’t cared enough to catch her name—and Tessa. Lorna didn’t have friends that she wanted to invite to her wedding. Alessandro wondered if that would change if she were marrying someone she actually cared about. If she were marrying him instead of Giovanni, would she invite her friends? But that daydream was too painful.

  She walked up the aisle too quickly, and the priest teased her for being overeager, but Alessandro knew she was only anxious to get it over with. Everyone had hearts in their eyes and smiles in their voices as the priest walked them though the motions and instructed Lorna to give her bouquet to her maid of honor and take Giovanni’s hands.

  Neither moved at this instruction, only nodding their understanding that at the actual wedding, they would have to touch. Alessandro’s parents giggled at them, calling them “love birds” and other filthy names like that. It put a foul taste in Alessandro’s mouth.

  He zoned out for the rest of the rehearsal. He didn’t care what the priest had to say about love and fellowship and family and listening to each other and the golden rule. He didn’t care at what point the music would come in. He didn’t care that his mother was getting emotional and hugging Lorna like her life depended on it. It couldn’t end fast enough.

  They booked out a whole restaurant for dinner, but Alessandro wasn’t hungry. He skipped the buffet and beelined to the bar to order two shots of whiskey. He threw them back and focused on the burn as the liquor slid down his throat. It didn’t do enough to distract him from the dull pain throbbing in his chest. Part of him wondered if one day Lorna would forgive him. If she did, he wondered if Giovanni would care if he continued to see Lorna after they were married. He might not. He might allow it. But then again, that would be even worse. Knowing that she was his, but never being able to say so in public. To never be able to claim her. To never hold her hand or walk with his arm around her waist. To never call her “honey” or “babe” or “mine.” To have to stand by and let Giovanni step in at all family events. He wouldn’t be able to live like that. He was too possessive when it came to her.