“He’s heavily connected, then?” Cris asked.
Rome nodded. “And well financed. Seems like he’s ready to do business with us.”
Dad leaned forward in his chair. “And you think he’s here in New York for the next auction?”
Once again, my gaze found Cat across the room, who was giggling at something Gia was whispering to her. I hadn’t told anyone about Luciana except for Rome, and this sure as hell wasn’t the place to share with everyone else.
“Most definitely,” I answered Dad. “There’s no doubt he’s deeply involved. I have another fight in a few days—”
“And we have a plan to flush information out of him,” Rome interrupted.
My jaw clenched, my fingers clutching the cushion so hard I heard a seam pop.
It was his dumbass plan and one I’d never agreed to. Wouldn’t agree to in a million fucking years. Because this one put Cat’s life at risk, and that was something I would never allow. Even if it could get Ivanov to spill his bloated guts, it still wasn’t worth putting Cat in a situation where her safety would be comprised.
That was unacceptable. Period.
“What’s the plan?” Ace asked.
I glowered at my twin, whose expression said you got a better one?
Bless my sweet, saint of a mother because she saved me from answering the question.
“No, no, no,” Mom sang from the rocker next to Lexi. She was waving her arms at us like she was guiding an airplane around the tarmac. “I forbid any business talk. All your surly faces tell me you’re discussing something unpleasant at my grandbaby’s shower.”
Nico frowned at us from his chair on Lexi’s other side. “What am I missing?”
Mom pushed to her feet, tripping over the area rug, to stand in the middle of the room. It was no secret that Valentina “Val” Rossetti was the biggest lightweight in Brooklyn. “Not today, boys. I’m not hearing it and neither is my granddaughter.” Then she lifted her glass in a one-woman cheers and knocked back its contents.
Roxy and Jasmine looked ready to catch Mom in the event she started to tip over. Lexi was rubbing her five-months swollen belly with a dreamlike expression, as if she hadn’t heard a word Mom said. Nico was also rubbing his wife’s belly, but he only had eyes for her.
And Gia was recording everything on her phone.
“Mom, you know that’s hard pink lemonade, right?” she mused.
Mom’s brow furrowed as she examined her empty glass. “You don’t say. I guess that explains why I couldn’t stop laughing every time Lexi said ‘Boppy Pillow’ earlier.”
That set everyone off.
Rome spit out his beer. Dad shook his head, smiling widely at his wife. It looked like Lexi was crying from laughing so hard. Pretty sure Jasmine may have fallen out of her chair too.
And Cat…she was smiling.
But it was almost sad. Longing.
“That reminds me of when you chaperoned my eighth-grade winter dance,” Gia wheezed. “You remember that?”
Mom waved her off. “It wasn’t as bad as you make it out to be, Gianna.”
“What happened?” Cat asked.
Gia wiped the tears from her eyes. “It was a Sadie Hawkins dance, where the girls ask the boys to dance, right? But everyone’s being kind of shy and no one’s really dancing. So, my chaperone mother here took it upon herself to get the ball rolling and drag every boy in my class onto the dance floor with her.”
Cat pressed her lips together in an effort to contain her laughter. “How does alcohol come into play?”
Gia jabbed her thumb toward our mother. “The woman didn’t realize some of the boys in my class had spiked the punch. After five cups, she was three sheets to the wind when she tried teaching my first crush how to mambo.”
Cat slapped her hand over her mouth at the same time Roxy snorted. Ace hid his smile behind his hand while Nico took a healthy pull from his glass of whiskey.
“I got called into the counselor’s office Monday morning,” Gia added. “She was concerned about whether or not my mother was receiving treatment for her alcoholism.”
“Did anything happen with your crush after that?” Cat asked, still giggling.
“Oh, yeah, something happened. He walked up to me at my locker a week later and handed me a folded-up note. I, of course, thought it was for me.” She shook her head. “Nope. He’d fallen in love with another Rossetti woman.”
Cat bit her lip. “You’re kidding.”
Gia sighed. “The first line of the note literally read, ‘Will you be my Valentina?’”
The whole room burst into another round of guffaws.
Cat was full-on belly laughing, while Cris barked out a loud laugh from beside me. I even heard Rome chuckle once.
“It’s a damn good thing I never had a sister,” Gia grumbled. “If she had tried pulling that crap on me, she wouldn’t have left adolescence alive.”
“Uh, hellooo.” Roxy bumped her shoulder with Gia’s. “You do have sisters now.”
Gia scowled. “Yeah, but you guys are all so dick-whipped, there’s nothing to be concerned about.”
Four people spoke at the same time in response to that comment.
“Gianna Isabelle!” Mom scolded. Then went to refill her glass.
“Damn right,” Cris postured, puffing out his chest.
“Thank you.” Ace raised his beer bottle.
“At least we know mine works,” Nico quipped as he went back to rubbing Lexi’s belly. “Can’t speak for anyone else.”
One second I was grinning, and the next I was staring across the room in horror. A tear slipped down Cat’s face. One she quickly wiped away to replace with a jubilant smile. But I saw it.
Ah, Jesus. Way to go, dumbass.
I couldn’t believe I’d never considered how being around my family would affect her. Of course, it would remind her of Luciana and the rest of her family she’d left back in Mexico. Of course, she would be reminded of how much danger her sister was in and of her own fear for Luciana’s safety.
Of course, the despair was inevitable.
And I saw the moment it began to sink in with her.
I had to rectify my mistake.
Once we left my parents’ place and I had her all to myself, I planned to do exactly that.
“What’s going on?” I watched Luka flip on all the lights in the gym’s weight room. “Why are we in here?”
Ever since we left his parents’ house, he’d been pretty quiet, but wheels had been turning behind his eyes like mad. Now, he was acting like he was on some kind of mission. The thing about Luka was that he always had energy brewing beneath the surface. You just couldn’t always tell where it originated from. Anger, concern, apprehension, fear. I couldn’t imagine what in the world could scare this particular man, but everyone had at least one fear, right?
“I’m sorry you got upset earlier,” he said over his shoulder. “I didn’t think about how being there would affect you.”
I shoved my hair off my face, my own anxious energy amplifying. “Why do you think I was upset?”
Hadn’t I hid it pretty well? No one else had seemed to catch on when I’d slipped up and let my emotions leak through the cracks. Surrounded by Luka’s close-knit family, I’d felt like an interloper. They’d shared stories and laughter, and I just…didn’t belong.
Then the guilt had struck.
I’d been smiling and having such a carefree time while my sister was being held against her will somewhere. What the hell kind of person did that make me?
Luka’s gaze collided with mine when he answered, “Because I saw the light leave your eyes when Gia was talking about sisters. You were thinking about Luciana.”
Sí, I had been.
Watching the bond between Gia and Roxy had brought so many memories of Luciana and I to the surface. Despite our seven-year age difference, we’d been inseparable throughout most of our younger years. I’d looked out for her as the big sister, and she’d followed my every move.
For her sake, I’d learned how to make a game out of everything, particularly during the bleak times. When there was hardly any food in the house, or when Papí stumbled home in the middle of the night, drunk after tying one on at the local watering hole. She and I had always found ways to make a joke out of even the most morbid of circumstances. Desperate for any excuse to smile.
I bet Luciana isn’t smiling right now.
When I turned around, I jolted in surprise. Somehow, Luka had snuck right up on me with the stealthy silence of a panther. Former Army Ranger.
“I told you I’d help you find her.” His voice sounded like he’d swallowed broken glass. “And we will find her. You trust me, don’t you?”
To my amazement, I realized that yes, I did trust him.
But maybe I shouldn’t.
My entire upbringing had been a series of lessons about why safeguarding one’s emotions was the key to self-preservation. Life experience had instilled in me the knowledge that self-reliance was paramount. No one can be trusted. No one is afforded the benefit of the doubt. All of this had been engrained in my psyche from a very young age.
Fate could be a harsh teacher.
But ever since I met Luka, I’d been rejecting the curriculum.
I’d seen his darker side and still knew him to be principled. Noble. I knew what pure evil looked like, and it was not Luka Rossetti. And now having met his family, I was even more convinced of the man he was.
Family could say a lot about a person.
I wasn’t sure what my own said about me, but I saw Luka’s character as a reflection of his parents’ raising. Same with his brothers and sister. I wasn’t a genius. Wasn’t a psychic. Wasn’t even a great judge of character. But all that hard-knock life experience had taught me how to sniff out the liars.
And Luka wasn’t one.
“Yes,” I answered firmly. Confidently. “I trust you.”
His Adam’s apple bobbed in a way that told me he might have actually been unsure of my answer and was grateful for what he’d heard. When he started walking backwards without looking away, curiosity forced me to follow.
“I may not know what you’re going through,” he said, heading toward the bench press, “but I know what guilt feels like.”
I tilted my head but said nothing. It was unfair of me to want to learn everything I could about this man, to hear the intimate thoughts he didn’t share with anyone else, when I was such a closed book. I had no right to pry into his mind if I wasn’t willing to let him take a crowbar to my own.
“My special ops team was on a mission to take out a dangerous arms dealer who was supplying weapons to Salafi jihadist groups in Syria.” He walked behind the bench press and gripped the metal bar, lowering his head. “The situation heated up when he figured out we were closing in on him. He started setting off bombs and threatening the lives of dozens of civilians. We were eventually given orders to move in.”
My feet were silent as I slowly closed the distance between us. “What happened?”
The veins in his arms bulged as he squeezed that bar. “It was the middle of the night. Our intel showed no one else was in the structure he was hiding in, so my team was given the green light. Myself and one of my team members went in first. By the time we eventually found him, he was holding a civilian hostage. He’d been hiding her beneath some kind of trap door that wasn’t on our blueprints.” He let out a long, shuddering sigh. “He was ready for us.”
I waited on bated breath for him to continue. Something told me this was a story that he never talked about, with anyone. What deemed me worthy enough to hear it?
“I won’t relay all the details,” he went on, “but the hostage took us by surprise, and my team member got caught in a…trap. The target basically gave me a choice—save the hostage or save my team member.”
Oh, Luka.
His throat worked as he swallowed several times. “I thought I could save them both, but I had to work fast. I mean, civilians are always priority in those situations. No civilian casualties was always impressed upon us. But it’s different when you’re in that situation and death is on the line. I’d known that man for years. We’d been through training together, dozens of missions. We had both put our lives on the line for each other, and I had never seen this woman before in my life. But you could see it all over her face…she was terrified of dying.”
I couldn’t imagine being in that position. Having a human life in your hands, let alone two of them.
He shook his head. “My team member saw my hesitation. He knew I didn’t want to make that call. So, he made it for me. I took out the target, the hostage survived, and my team member left a wife and two children behind.”
My eyes welled with tears.
What an unbearable burden to have on his shoulders.
“I’ve asked myself a thousand times, why him? Why wasn’t that me?” Luka shrugged. “I didn’t have a wife and kids waiting for me at home. Why was I the one who came back with nothing more than a scar?”
He turned his head to the side and lifted the longer portion of his hair to reveal a vicious looking red scar on his scalp that I’d never noticed before. It was a long, angry slice that ran from his right ear, down to his hairline on the left side of his neck. I crept closer to examine it, my heart aching for this beautiful, scarred man. My fingers lightly ran over the scar tissue, sending a shiver up his spine.
“I’m sorry you had to go through that. I can’t imagine…” I couldn’t even finish the sentence because nothing I said could erase the past.
His fingers curled around my wrist as his gaze met mine. “I didn’t tell you that story to gain your sympathy, Cat. I told you so you’d know that I trust you too.”
Why did hearing that make it feel like a dozen doves just took flight in my chest?
“People like us feel things differently,” he rasped. “We handle our emotions in ways most people wouldn’t understand.”
“And how is that?” My voice was breathy, almost inaudible.
Still grasping my wrist, he lowered my hand to the metal bar. “By physically purging them.”
I felt the somber mood that had enveloped us for the last several minutes slowly ebb. What took its place was heady and dense and intoxicating. The heat emanating from his body permeated my skin. My lungs had to work harder to suck in oxygen through the thick cloud of lust gathering over our heads.
Luka watched the changes taking place on my face, his nostrils flaring in response. Letting go of my hand, he turned to pick up the large, round weight plates and slid them onto both ends of the bar. The little devil inside me licked her lips as he hefted those heavy hunks of metal with such ease. A throbbing sensation began in my lower belly that sent signals to all of my extremities. The urge to bring something into contact with my mons was so insistent that my thighs clenched without me telling them to.
Once he had the right amount of weight he wanted, he straightened, faced me, and ripped his shirt over his head. Leaving him in nothing but his loose joggers that sat indecently low on his hips. So low I could see the top patch of hair his treasure trail led to.
And all of that tattooed, eight-pack, muscled goodness was on display.
Just for me.
I swear, every muscle in his torso flexed as I took my fill of his body. “I’m going to lift, and you’re going to do whatever you want with me.”
My lips parted. “You’re saying you’re going to be on your back for me, completely at my mercy?”
His tongue dragged over his bottom lip. “That work for you, baby girl?”
I shrugged out of my gray leather jacket. I didn’t need to be coaxed into an offer like that. “You come up with the best ideas.”
“Stick around. I’ve got tons more.”
With that, he lowered himself onto the bench and scooted back until his head was at the end. His hands rose to grip the bar, fingers tightening around the metal. I had no idea how much weight he’d put on there, only that it was a substantial amou
nt. But when he straightened his arms and held the bar above his head, unsupported, it looked as if it barely required any effort at all.
The air surrounding us crackled with erotic sensuality.
When he bent his elbows, bringing the bar closer to his chest, every muscle in his arms contracted. His forearms tightened, his biceps strained, his stomach flexed. The sight enraptured me. So much so that when my body gave my mind an order, I didn’t hesitate to follow it. I undressed as quietly as possible, loathe to interrupt his “purging.” When I slid my leg over his waist to straddle him, I was completely naked.
His head shot up, his gaze snapping down to where I sat atop him. His eyes squeezed shut as his breathing shallowed, mouth tightening. “Ah, God. I should have known you wouldn’t pull your punches. Straight for the knockout, huh?”
I tsked. “No, no, no. I need you awake for this.”
Once my feet found purchase alongside his thighs, I carefully placed my femininity right over his manhood. And dropped all my weight onto him. Presión máxima. Maximum pressure.
He held the bar above his head for several seconds, his arms shaking a little. “Jesus Christ. This wasn’t a good idea. I don’t think I can handle whatever you have in store for me. Just fuck me, Cat. Please.”
I purred in sympathy as I scraped my nails down his bare chest. “Patience, corazón.”
He growled. “Fuck patience. Your bare pussy is humping my cock through my pants right now. Your clit is literally riding the center seam. If I have to suffer through your teasing, you have to suffer through my impatience.”
I moaned when he thrust said seam against me with a quick punch of his hips. “Mmm, you said I could do whatever I want. Maybe I want you to get a little mad.”
He shoved the bar back up with more force than I expected. I met the action with a hard roll of my hips against his erection.
Glitter and Greed (Brooklyn Brothers #4) Page 19