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Sofia
Ileave Luca’s room, not knowing what to think.
I never expected any of what happened last night. Just like I’d told him, I’d expected him not to come home. To leave me here, afraid and vulnerable, until he was done with his weekend away. I hadn’t expected him to come rushing home.
But it’s not just that. It’s everything that happened afterward.
And I’m afraid—just as afraid as I was last night when that man stood in the doorway with a gun pointed at my face—but in a different way.
If I trust Luca, he has the potential to break my heart. He’s told me over and over again that he’s wrong for me. That he can’t love me. That he was never meant to be a husband. And yet we keep slipping closer to just that—to living as man and wife in reality, and not just on paper.
If Idon’ttrust him, I’m going to live a lonely life. One without pleasure, without happiness, without touch. Even if I could somehow escape him, eventually, I know that I’ll never be entirely free of him. I’ll always be looking over my shoulder, waiting for him to come after me, to reclaim what’s his. After that, I could never be in another relationship and put someone else that I might love in danger.
And after last night—I’m not sure if anyone else could ever quite measure up.
I’d known sex could be pleasurable, of course. Fun. Exciting. I’d heard Ana talk about it often enough. I might have been a virgin, but I wasn’t an idiot. I knew sex could run the gamut from disappointing to mind-blowing.
None of that late-night gossip had prepared me for the reality of last night, though. Somehow Luca had taken the pleasure I’d felt that night he’d teased me to the point of begging and doubled it, tripled it. I’m sore and raw and aching, and part of me still wants to fall back into bed with him right now, just to feel it all over again.
Something happened between us that was more than just ordinary sex. It was desperate, hungry, passionate. The kind of sex that I’d thought only existed in fiction.
But it had been real. And it was addictive.
You’re like a goddamn drug.I can hear Luca’s voice rasping in my ear, and I know exactly what he meant. I could lose myself in that kind of pleasure, forget everything other than how good it was. How it made me feel so alive, so connected to him.
I have to keep my head on straight,I tell myself as I get dressed, pulling a t-shirt over my head and quickly braiding my wet hair. Luca’s gone to talk to Raoul and the rest of the security, and I need to check on Caterina and Ana. I can’t afford to lose my head and fall into the trap of thinking that this is more than it is. For all that he told me he’d be faithful, Luca didn’t pretend this morning that we were suddenly in love. That we were going to be happily married.
In fact, he made a point of reminding me exactly the opposite—that hecan’tlove me. That he’s not the kind of man I would ever have wanted to marry, and he never will be.
The problem is, I don’t fully understand it now. I’d thought that Luca clung to his bachelorhood because he wanted to keep being the same playboy he’d always been, because he didn’t want a wife in his space, cramping his style, putting restrictions on what he could and couldn’t do. He didn’t want to have to sneak around in hotel rooms or go to other women’s apartments instead of bringing them here and then kicking them out.
But clearly, that’s not the case. He’d had no problem agreeing to fidelity—if I believe everything he said, then he’sbeenfaithful since the night he brought me home, even though I never expected it.
So if he doesn’t want other women, then what’s the problem?
Maybe it’s just me,I think as I walk downstairs.Maybe, you’re just not the kind of woman he could love. Too innocent. Too naïve. Too weak.
He’d have been better off marrying someone like Caterina, someone who knew how to be a mafia wife and what to expect. But instead, he got me.
Caterina and Ana are sitting at the kitchen table when I walk in. There are takeout containers in front of them, and Caterina has her hands wrapped around a cup of coffee, taking a sip of it just as I walk in.
Ana raises an eyebrow at my wet hair. “You look like you’re feeling better. Did you get any sleep?”
I flush pink, and Caterina sets her coffee down, looking at me suspiciously. “Sofia?”
“Luca came home last night.” I sink into a chair opposite them, glancing at one of the takeout containers. “Did Carmen send this over?”
“Yeah. It’s from that place a few blocks down that does really good brunch.” Ana shoves it towards me. “There’s some ricotta pancakes left. But let’s go back to the part where you saidLuca came home?”
“Someone alerted him about the break-in. He flew back last night.”
“Is Franco here?” Caterina asks hopefully, and I wince as I look up at her. I can see her expression faltering as soon as she sees my face, and I feel my heart break a little for her. I feel guilty for the hours of pleasure I spent in bed with Luca since last night—I was fucking my husband all night after he came home in a rush to make sure I was okay. Meanwhile, her fiancé is still banging models in some other country for his bachelor weekend.
You could be married to someone like that,a tiny voice in my head whispers.You thought youwere.
I can’t argue that. For all Luca’s faults—and I’m not forgetting them just because he gave me several orgasms last night—he cared enough to come back to me as soon as he’d heard what happened.
“Luca said he’s sending the jet back to pick them up,” I say lamely, knowing that it doesn’t make up for the fact that Franco isn’t here now. “He’ll be back sooner than they planned, I think.”
