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"Hey, Luca," I said.
"Long day?"
"Long week."
Luca settled down next to me on the bench. "That makes two of us, but I suspect you've had it worse."
He wasn't pressing, but there was no mistaking the concern in his eyes. He'd been my protector since Sofia and I were kids, and the thought of telling him everything made fresh tears prick my eyes.
"You want to talk about it?" he asked.
"No. Yes. I don't know."
"Is this about the Irishman?"
I couldn't stop the mention of him from making my heart stutter, or the fresh wave of guilt from washing over me. I didn't trust myself to speak, so I just nodded.
"I thought so," he sighed, his gaze flickering to my puffy eyes and blotchy cheeks. "Your man show up today?"
I swallowed thickly. "He's not my man. Not anymore."
"So, he did show up."
"Does it matter?" I said. "You know what happened the last time I saw him. I can't do it again, Luca."
"I think it matters very much," Luca replied. "I think it matters a lot, given the way you were staring at him the other night. A hellcat ready to fight me if I hurt a hair on his head. You were terrifying.”
"Something like that." He was trying to joke, but my chest felt hollow. "It doesn't matter anyway, Luca. He's a McTiernan, and I'm a Moretti. It'll never work between us, and I...I can't let him get hurt."
Luca's expression softened. "Emilia..."
"Don't try to tell me you understand," I said, cutting him off. "You know what's at stake here for us, and if you're caught helping me, Lorenzo will have your head on a spike. I won't be able to live with myself if either of you got hurt because of me. I couldn't handle it if he took someone else from me. I'd rather have him hating me and alive than loving me and dead."
"I was going to say that you're right," he said.
I blinked. "Oh."
"You're right," he repeated. "I don't know what it's like to love someone like you love him, but I do know what it's like to protect the people you care about. If it meant protecting you, I'd walk through hell with my eyes open."
"Even if it meant betraying the Family?"
Luca gave me a look. "Especially then."
I looked down at my hands in my lap. "I just...I wish things didn't have to be this way. That they could be like the books I read, where the good guys win and the bad guys go to prison. Where you don't have to choose between your family and your heart."
"It's not as easy as it looks in those books of yours, is it?" Luca said gently. "But that's what makes the story worth telling, right?"
I let out a shaky sigh. "Yeah, I guess so."
Leaves rustled overhead as a few sparrows swooped down to the lilac bush nearby, singing happily. I watched them for a moment, their bodies darting in and out of the leaves. How simple their life was. How black and white. Free from cages, free from walls, free from the constraints of our world.
I wished I could be like that.
It wasn't that I regretted letting Alfie go. It was the right thing to do. The logical thing. The safe thing. How else could I remain loyal to my family and still keep everyone I love safe, even though I knew in the deepest reaches of my heart what I wanted?Alfie was reckless. Following his heart with no thought to his own safety. A sacrifice had to be made, and I was the one who had to follow through with it.
Luca was watching me. His dark features were more serious than I'd ever seen him, unfathomable in their depth, and he refused to look at me.
"Look." He swallowed heavily as if the words wouldn't come and frowned. "Look. I am loyal to this Family. I bleed for it. I've killed for it. I would die for it. But that doesn't mean I have to agree with everything it stands for. Loving something means taking the good with the bad, and trying to do what you can to make it better."
