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I must not have been paying attention. Then what he said dawned on me. “Cosa Nostra. One of the Five Families.” While I wasn’t immune to mafia politics, my father had purposely kept me isolated, what he’d called protection. Yet I knew the names of the prominent Italian families who ruled various territories in Italy as well as surrounding countries. One of the largest was the DeLuca family. It was a popular name in America given the high percentage of Italians, but the possibility that it was a coincidence had already snagged my inner voice.
What I should have paid more attention to was the lineage of the various families, but I’d purposely chosen not to. “Franco DeLuca is your father?”
He smirked in much the same way as I’d seen before, but there was a glint of depravity in his eyes. “In a manner of speaking.”
“Riddles? What do you think you’re doing? Do you think this is funny? I stand a chance of losing everything I’ve worked so hard to achieve. My business. My friends. My apartment. My life. And you stand here acting like this is a game.”
“That’s because it is a game, Lucia, only up until now, neither one of us knew that we were the only real game pieces being juggled from one party to the other.”
“What are you trying to say to me? Either Franco is your father or not. If he is, that means your family is intent on destroying the union between the Lazarros and the Romanos. This is all about gaining power.”
“That’s exactly what Franco wants, but that’s not what’s going to happen.”
“Then what is?” I moved closer, daring him to keep lying to me. “Do you think you’re powerful enough to protect me from the lechery of my own father and the brutality of the Romano family? Why am I not being forced to marry Antonio?”
There was a blustery feeling in my stomach as I posed the questions. I was pushing him hard, trying to force his hand.
His casual demeanor remained, but I could read him well enough to know he was coming close to an edge.
“Why?” I closed the distance, standing as tall as my low shoes would allow.
“Because you’re going to marry me.”
I allowed myself to smile, even as I continued to seethe inside. “And just who are you?”
He placed his glass on the counter, pinching my chin between his thumb and forefinger. This time when he smiled, I took no comfort in the sexiness of his jaw or the fire crackling between us. The man was still going to devour me alive but in an entirely different way.
“You already know me. Look into my eyes.”
The lump that had formed in my throat increased in size, the burning embers in his eyes sparking something from a long time before. No. It wasn’t possible. I slammed my fists against him, but I couldn’t move. “I don’t… understand. Tell me your name.”
“My name is D’Artagnan Nicolo DeLuca. But you’d remember me as Dar Conti, the boy you once called a friend, the boy who lost everything in a fire including his innocence.”
The shock of what he’d just said almost splintered my mind. My legs began to shake as images of the past rushed into my mind, colliding with those from the present. The bloody fingerprint on the candle. The music.
The connection we shared.
As I studied his eyes, they became hard and cold, but it wasn’t possible. The man was lying, the horror of what I’d experienced, the grief and loss something I couldn’t go through again.
The man standing in front of me was the worst kind of monster.
So I reacted out of hate and rage, sadness and horror.
I cold-cocked him.
CHAPTER19
D’Artagnan
The hard punch wasn’t what I’d expected, her swing with enough force I was pitched to the side. That allowed her the opportunity to toss the liquid into my face, dropping the glass then retrieving the bag. She had the door open and was halfway out before I snagged her arm, yanking her backward. The alarm blared, the woman in my arms cursing.
“Get off me, you asshole. Get off. You’re not my friend. You’re not Dar.”
“Yes, I am,” I growled, kicking the door shut, immediately slamming my hand against the security panel.
She continued to fight me with everything she had, pummeling her fists into my face, maneuvering her body in an effort to knee my groin.
“He’s dead. My friend died. They killed him. I saw his charred body!” Lucia was more hysterical than I’d believed she’d be. But then, until recently, I’d thought she’d been partially responsible for the death of my family. Her horror was real, the shock of hearing the news not something she could fake.
