AllFreeNovel
Share Us
He swivels around, then begins to walk down the steps.
17
Luca
This is not just ripping the bandage off; it’s tearing off sutures before the wound has completely healed. It’s breaking the cast and yanking off the plaster before the bone has had time to set. I keep the smile—at least, I think it’s a smile—firmly pasted on my face as I reach the last step and place my foot on the ground. Massimo watches me approach, a look of complete astonishment on his face.
"The fuck you staring at,stronzo?" I growl.
He blinks rapidly, then lowers his gaze to the woman I’m carrying in my arms. A sensation of knives stabbing into my chest assails me. An unknown emotion twists my insides.
"Eyes up here, youcoglione!"
"What?" He snaps his gaze up to my face. "I can’t look at her? Is that what you’re saying?"
"Yes," I say.
"I’m Jeanne, by the way," the woman I’m carrying pipes up at the same time.
"Pleased to meet you, Jeanne." He holds out his hand. I make a low noise in the back of my throat.What is wrong with me?Why are my guts twisting in on themselves. Is that jealousy? Possessiveness? A combination of all those emotions that I would have never associated with myself.
Jeanne holds out her hand, but Massimo has already lowered his by then.
"Apparently, my brother has forgotten his manners, but I’d rather not risk him losing his temper and deciding he wants to shoot me," he explains.
"That’s Massimo, and you can forget you ever met him." I brush past him and toward the crowd of people who are watching my progress with great interest.
I come to a pause in front of them. All of them watch me expectantly. The silence stretches for a few beats.
"You going to introduce us?" Karma finally asks.
"I can introduce myself." Jeanne struggles in my arms.
I tighten my grasp around her. "This is, ah, my wife-to-be, Jeanne…" I draw a blank. Shit, did I ask her for her surname? "Jeanne..."
"Watson," she supplies in a smooth voice.
"Jeanne Watson. We’re, ah, to be married," I declare.
There’s silence. Complete and utter silence. Every one of them looks at me like I have just crash-landed from the moon. Which, honestly, having heard my own words… I don’t blame them for reacting this way. The magnitude of the challenge I’m about to take on sinks in.
I’m going to marry to her. It’s a short-term affair; not going to last long—or only as long as it takes to convince my family that our union is for real. And why didn’t I put an end-date to the relationship when I had the chance? I'm acting completely out of character, but since I met her, my equilibrium has been compromised. Clearly it has to do with the knock on the head I took when thatstronzoFreddie ambushed me. Yes, that’s it. That’s the only reason I scooped her up in my arms and walked down the steps, and am now introducing her to the rest of my family. It’s the only reason I haven’t called this entire thing off and boarded that plane back to London.
"Jeanne." Aurora, Christian’s wife comes forward. "It’s lovely to meet you." She holds out her hand and Jeanne shakes it. Theresa, Axel’s wife and Elsa, Seb’s wife, close the distance to us.
"Umm, you going to put her down?" Theresa titters. "Not that it’s not romantic, but I’d like to hug my future sister-in-law and it’s difficult to do so when you’re holding onto her like you’re afraid she’s going to vanish if you let her go."
"What?" I glance down to find Jeanne looking back at me with an expression of bewilderment. One I assume is mirrored on my face. So I set her on her feet and take a step to the side. Instantly, the women cluster around her. Theresa kisses Jeanne on her cheek, Elsa throws her arms about my fiancé—um, fiancé? I try the word out on my tongue. It feels strange, and yet also, not. I watch her—or what I can glimpse of her from over the shoulders of my brother’s wives. She smiles at them, returns their hugs and kisses, and replies to their greetings. She seems so at home. She seems like one of us. Only she isn’t. She’s someone who happened to be at the wrong place at the wrong time. Or the right place, if I’m being honest. Which I’m not. She’s simply the woman who was there when I needed someone to take on the role of my wife and get my family off my back. Why is it proving to be so difficult to remember that?
"Luca." My oldest brother Michael’s voice cuts through the babble of excited voices. The tension in the air spikes. The women quieten as they sense the unspoken unease that crowds the space between us.
I walk past them to where Michael stands in the center of my brothers. Tension prickles up my spine. My pulse rate increases. I’ve done nothing wrong, and yet, it feels like I’m being called to heel. I don’t need a shrink to tell me that I have a problem with authority. Probably due to the fact that I never trusted my father, and when Michael filled in the role of an authority figure in my life, I wanted so much to please him. Only he left me. He opted to go study in LA when he turned eighteen. He left me behind. Oh, he sent for us in six months, but by then, the damage was done.
I’d grown to hate my father, hate my family, had wanted to run away—had actually run away, until my Nonna had sent men to track me down and bring me back home. And I’d hated her for that. I hadn’t wanted to go to LA, but luckily for me, Nonna would hear none of it. She’d bundled all of us boys and left Italy behind, and that had been the best thing she could have done.
New school, new friends... The change in environment had done me good. I had come out of the negative headspace I’d been in and found a new lease of life. Only, my bitterness for what Michael had done never really faded away. Instead, it grew over the years into something tangible. A chip on my shoulder I could never shake off. Didn’t want to shake it off. And when I realized that, as the second born, I’d never have the chance to be Don, it metastasized into the resentment I now carry around.
"Capo." He holds out his right hand in the formal gesture he uses with ranking members of our clan.
