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“Thanks, I apologize for intruding.”
Luca leans back. “You weren’t. Compared to what I did in Vegas, this can get a little boring. It’s a good boring though. I don’t mind. Problem with Celia?”
Sipping deep on the whiskey, I give a slight nod. “Always of my own making though.”
He doesn’t say a word, just waits.
I throw the whiskey in one gulp. “She wants me to discuss business with her. I don’t and now she’s mad. I would do anything to protect her from this world. I have done things she’ll never know. I would do them all again.” I shake my head as I squeeze my eyes shut. “I fucked up and didn’t protect her properly. Someone out to kill me put a gun to her head. She knew I’d trade my life for hers without hesitation—wouldn’t let me do it. Celia killed a man, for me. Blood all over her small, delicate hands. I never wanted that for her.”
Luca studies me. “Pop… at the beginning of me meeting him and getting to know him, I admitted I had no love for my mother. She saddled me with a fucker for a ‘father’ when I could have had Tony. The woman was a fucking basket case, tried to commit suicide after my uncle died when I was a kid. Then just drank her days away until cancer destroyed her. As she lay dying she could have given me Tony, by that time I had no relationship except business with my supposed father.”
I was always curious about how Luca only came to find out Tony was his real father two years ago.
His smile is nothing more than a small tug of his lips. “Most men who felt they were done wrong by an ex would have exploited my resentment to make themselves look even better. Tony, ever Tony, he didn’t. He tells me that to say you would die for your children—for anyone, it’s bullshit. Dying might be scary, but it’s easy. Nothing easier than letting go and slipping away. It’s the living every day, getting up and making it from one minute, one hour to the next that is love.”
Those years without Celia, come back to me. Waiting was hell. The hours crawled by and every day felt like two. If I hadn’t known I would have her in the end, I’m not sure how I would have gotten through the day.
“I gotta tell you when he said it, I might have heard him, but I didn’t get it. Until I was hanging from a fucking rafter with a dead eye bleeding out. Nothing in the world would have been easier than to let go. It wasn’t an option. All the pain was chump change to the payout that I had Bella waiting for me. Having her every day, and to find out she’s pregnant with twins…” He shakes his head as he smiles.
I hadn’t heard about the twins.
“Celia wants you to live for her, to livewithher. It doesn’t matter how young she is, she’s no weakling, she has fire. She was raised to be the wife of mafia. It didn’t matter Carlo said he never meant for her to marry intolafamilia. The way his mother raised her was mafia. Protecting her isn’t protecting her, it’s shutting her out. I know from experience running a city is so fucking consuming, you have nothing left for her if you don’t let her in.”
I admit my fear. “I don’t want her to see the ugly part of what I do. Of what I am. Once she did it, saw the ugly part—that our family and me used to be into trafficking and the look on her face... I never want to see it again. What if she sees something in me again and it pushes her away from me?”
“She saw it and you’re together now. She’s already seen all of you. It hasn’t made her love you any less. That’s a part of loving. Seeing all the dark and dirty and loving anyway. She has that for you. Sheisthat for you. You don’t get what you deserve in life, you get what you fight for. Celia is fightingforyou. Do you really want to keep fighting her?”
Celia
I’m curledinto the couch in a black velvet wrap dress. I don’t hear the front door, I feel Milo’s eyes on me. “I’m sorry.” I push the words out.
He takes off his jacket, tossing it onto the sofa. Then begins undoing his cuff links. “Take off your dress.”
I sit up wondering what’s happening…is it sex? It doesn’t feel like it. But I don’t argue. As he begins tugging down his tie, I unbutton where the wrap part is fastened and let it fall to the ground.
“Now your bra.” Deft fingers unbuttons his shirt faster than I ever have.
Allowing the bra to fall to the floor, I wait, watching with hungry eyes as his bare chest—
“Arms out.” He’s right in front of me now.
Obediently, I hold them out. Taking off his shirt, he slides it over me, careful with my arms. Then he’s in front of me, using the ends to tug me close.
“I’m sorry too. You don’t want to go out, we won’t go out. I need you to talk to me. Use your words, saying something other thanfuck youwould be good. What have I told you, over and over, Celia?” The words are low, with a hint of roughness to them I don’t understand.
“Good girls get what they want. But I thought I was being good by doing what you wanted,” I try to explain.
An eyebrow lifts. “Do you really think I want to spend the evening at the symphony when I could have you in my arms and bed all night? As much as that’s what I would prefer, I was trying to show you that isn’t all you are to me.”
“Oh.” I exhale.Do not fucking cry.
His chuckle skims up my tummy. “What do you want for dinner?”
“Pasta in marinara sauce, I don’t know if I want chicken parmigiana or meatballs though,” I rush to tell him.
A nod. “Okay, and do you want to eat at the table or in front of the television?”
“Television, please. There’s a new series I want to watch.”
