Page 3 of One Breath After Another

Luca’s mother sighed.

His father would never outright tell her to stop pushing the topic. Zeke wouldn’t shut his wife up just because she asked things that he didn’t like. He would, however, divert her on to something else which was a clear but silent that’s quite enough, darling.

The chair legs squeaked against the tiled floor of the dining room as Katya stood from the table with pursed lips. A good sign of her displeasure, not that she would voice it with Luca there. He couldn’t remember—in all of his twenty-four, almost twenty-five years—a time when his parents fought in front of him or his younger sister, Roz. Hell, his mother never even raised her voice despite the little shit he had been as a kid.

Zeke, on the other hand ...

He didn’t mind being loud.

“Grazie,” Zeke thanked his wife when she took the cup from his hand as she passed.

“You’re welcome.”

“Am I?” his father asked under his breath after his wife had left the dining room entirely. “That’ll be a fun chat later, I’m sure.”

Zeke went back to looking over the newspaper beside his breakfast plate like the entire thing hadn’t happened in the first place. Luca wasn’t quite as willing to pretend.

“You don’t have to do that,” he told his father. “I can handle Ma’s questions. She’s just ... worried.”

“Because you’re doing what you should be doing?”

“Because she’s not sure it’s what I want to do.”

The mafia wasn’t for the faint of heart, but especially not a man who was just beginning to dabble in the business. He was at the beck and call of any man in the Donati crime family who needed or wanted him for whatever they thought would serve their purposes. He barely had time to sleep and feed himself lately, let alone get any of the many papers done for college that had been due ... a long time ago.

He should just quit.

He rarely made it to class anymore. His grades were inconsequential because he wasn’t even doing the work to get a fucking grade. Katya had been right in stating he was wasting time and resources, but wrong that she assumed they were his to do so.

Someone else could take his spot at college. The money his parents paid for him to attend was someone else’s dream. He was very aware of his privilege and the fact he abused it. Luca wasn’t that much of an asshole that he didn’t care.

It wasn’t that at all.

He just ...

“Roz is a fucking pianist prodigy,” he muttered, referring to his little sister—by only a year—that would soon be returning from her stay in Australia where she had played for a massive company for several years. “My best friend is a literal genius.”

Naz, that was.

Who also dated his sister.

Luca shrugged, pushing the food around on his plate because now it looked a little less appealing than before if only because he wasn’t in the mood to eat anymore. A sense of unworthiness could do that to a person. He hated feeling like he wasn’t up to par with the people around him. Not that anyone ever voiced as much.

His parents didn’t compare him to his genius friend or musically inclined sister. Luca did that all on his own because he heard the things that were said and made of them what he wanted or needed to at any given time.

Zeke eyed him over the edge of the newspaper, considering that before he replied, “And you’re ... what?”

“Exactly. What am I, Papa?”

“What you should be, Luca.”

Was he?

“I wanted to be a defense lawyer,” he said.

Zeke sucked air through his teeth, saying, “I think you’re doing right by focusing on the family business. You balanced both for a while, but it’s hard to deny that one is now starting to suffer. Surprise, you need to make a hard choice. Comes with adulthood, son. We all reach those points eventually. You’ve hit yours.”

“And if I didn’t want college to suffer—”