Lucky Boys (Il Fortunato #1)

3. Brooks

CHAPTER 3

brOOKS

I wanted to punch Luca in his fucking perfect face. Seriously, no one should look that good. Was it petty that I’d secretly hoped he’d somehow aged seventy years since I’d last seen him and he now looked like Darth Vadar without his mask? Though, the fucker would probably still manage to pull that off.

It really wasn’t fair. I wasn’t awful to look at, but at most, I was cute. No matter how many tattoos or piercings I got, I still had a baby face that made me look younger than I was and had guys calling me things like pretty.

No one would call Luca pretty. But the sexiest motherfucker who ever walked on Earth? Yeah, that would track. The salt to pepper ratio of his beard was chef’s kiss, and it lined his rugged jaw perfectly. No bald patches or baby hairs could be seen, they wouldn’t dare, and it complimented his olive complexion perfectly. His dark hair was thick and soft with just a hint of gray at the temples, and his brown eyes were panty melting chocolate. I told myself I wouldn’t fall for those fucking eyes again, but as they stared into my soul . . .

No! The jackass had just suggested that I murdered someone. I would not be seduced by his fuck me eyes and that single dimple in his chin.

I looked at the flash drive I was still holding. Who knew what was on there? What if I was wrong? What if it was unrelated, and the murder had been a coincidence, and I’d overreacted for nothing? What if I wasn’t reacting enough and there was some world-changing, apocalyptic shit on there? Didn’t Lewis Covington work in pharmaceuticals? Maybe he’d found a way to make zombies and had been about to start the zombie apocalypse and Marshall had found out and had been trying to stop him and . . .

“Brooks.” My eyes snapped up immediately at Luca’s voice, which pissed me off. “Let me have the flash drive.”

His Dommy fucking tone set my nerve endings on fire and made me want to stab him at the same time.

I strode right into Luca’s face, my finger in his chest. “Don’t. Don’t use that tone on me.”

Luca frowned like he had no idea what I was talking about. “What tone?”

I rolled my eyes and sighed heavily. We didn’t have time for this.

“Your whole, ‘I’m a sexy Dom and you will do as I say’ tone. I’m not your sub, and it’s not fair to use it on me.”

Luca was still frowning really fucking hard. “I wasn’t—”

“Yeah, you kinda were, boss,” Skye helpfully shared. “I don’t think you even notice it half the time.”

I knew Skye a little, but not much. He was closer to my age than the two of them and played in a lot of the same scenes I did. He’d also helped me out of a bind about a couple years ago when some fucker had ignored my safeword. Normally, I could get myself out of any bondage with no issue, but I had been on edge and jittery all fucking day, so I’d been off my game and hadn’t noticed when the guy had slipped something in my water, dulling my senses.

Thank fuck Skye had been there, and now I only drank from sealed bottles of water and had never let a stranger completely bind me again. I had a brief spark of terror that he’d told Luca about the incident but squashed it down. He’d promised me he wouldn’t and I trusted that.

“Thank you.” Just to prove that I would not respond to Luca when he did that, I handed the flash drive to Skye, which pissed Luca the fuck off. Both Maverick and Skye thought it was funny though.

Maverick came up to me and squeezed my shoulder. “Nice to see you again, kid.”

I tilted my head up, and I mean all the way up so I was looking right in Maverick’s face. Luca was well over 6 feet, but Maverick even had a few inches on him. There was no reason for them to be that big. It was unnecessary. I wasn’t even that short, just about 5’10”. Above average, thank you very much. Yet these assholes just had to be giants to make me feel small, and that got personified because Luca and Mav were dominant as fuck.

“I’m not a kid,” I mumbled. Which made me seem more like a kid, but I was all kinds of on edge, had gotten no sleep, and was getting more nervous about Diego being alone by the second. He’d assured me he would be fine. He had been digging around on the dark web and all his channels, and so far there hadn’t seemed to be any connection to us. Besides, our house had more security than Fort Knox. Still didn’t like leaving him alone.

Maverick’s mouth tilted up in a half smile that made me all fluttery inside. I didn’t know Maverick well, really only of him, and had just met him a handful of times before Luca had fucked me up and ghosted me. I did know that he was exactly my type and if he’d just been some random stranger at a club, I’d have happily been on my knees already for him.

Instead, I crossed my arms and glared. “Can we all act like grown-ups and see what we’re dealing with please?” Skye snorted at my snarky tone, though Luca and Mav looked like they wanted to bend me over and spank me. Which . . . yeah, could not get that image in my head. “Diego said he’d walk you through the decryption process.”

“Thank you, Brooks,” Luca said in a very obvious effort not to sound as dominant. It was a losing battle, and he should probably give up. I wish I could keep things professional. Three years was a long time. I wasn’t that na?ve 21-year-old still figuring out their sexuality and needs anymore. Unfortunately, that battle seemed as lost as the one Luca was fighting. I was such a fucking mess. “Let’s see what we’re dealing with.”

I sucked in a breath, trying to keep some semblance of outward control, even though I was internally spiraling. I was pleasantly surprised at how serious they were taking this. Not that I thought they’d laugh me off, but Il Fortunato was the best of the best, and D and I hadn’t even branched away from our parents last time I had anything to do with Luca. I loved that they weren’t treating me like a child or like I lacked common sense, despite my jitters. While our reputation was building now, it was something I struggled with when I first started taking jobs on my own, since I looked young and ADHD meds only help so much. If it wasn’t for Diego’s quickly building reputation as a hacker, I doubt I’d have gotten hired at all our first year without Mom and Pops besides me.

Immediately, all three men were in work mode, going to the computer while Skye inserted the drive. I took my time following them. I really had no idea what was on there and wasn’t sure I wanted to know. Part of me still thought maybe it was some sick joke or just a way to set me up to take the fall for Marshall’s murder.

So instead, I wandered the room, taking it in.

The last time I was at Luca’s mansion was when I was sixteen for some big holiday charity party. I had snuck into one of the many rooms after cocktail hour and sucked some politician’s son’s dick. I didn’t know his name, but he’d been fucking huge for a 16-year-old and sure knew how to fuck my face. That was probably the day I’d realized I liked it rough, though I wouldn’t understand exactly what that meant for a few more years.

If this room existed back then, I had never seen it. A large table filled the middle of the space, and there was a SMART Board on the wall. The guys hovered over a desk in the back that held several monitors.

I went over to the kitchenette where Skye was earlier, eyeing the coffee machine. I’d never been much into coffee, hated the taste and it didn’t give me more energy than I already had. Still, all the options had me tempted to try something.

Then Luca cursed under his breath and brought my attention back to them. “Fuck.” He looked up at me, all business. “Brooks, can you call Diego? We can’t get in.”

Right, I was supposed to do that. “Sure.”

I started a video chat, and the top of Diego’s head popped up on my screen. “Ready for me?” he asked without greeting me.

“Yeah. I got Luca, Skye, and Maverick here.”

Diego’s eye twitched before he pulled himself together. D didn’t do strangers very well, even through a video chat. He sort of knew Luca, but he’d always been pretty antisocial, so even when we’d been younger, he’d hidden himself away whenever Mom and Pops had had people over.

“Okay, do they have a monitor clear? It’ll be easier if I can see all of you and you don’t have to hold up your phone.”

“Yeah, hang on,” Skye replied distractedly. He pressed a couple buttons and nodded to me to transfer him to the screen. I did, and Diego’s face was now covering a whole monitor.

I started to zone out as D walked them through the technical process. I just couldn’t follow it no matter how hard I tried. I focused on staring at Maverick’s thick thighs and sexy ass in his workout clothes as he bent over the computer, following Diego’s instructions.

Wow, he really could kill a guy with those thighs. What a way to go . . .

I was so lost in my fantasy, I didn’t realize they were in until I heard Luca curse quietly under his breath. I steeled myself for the worst, whatever the fuck that could be, and finally looked at the screens.

At first, I had no idea what I was looking at. There seemed to be a lot of contracts and legal documents, a birth certificate for someone—a lot of boring shit that would not be worth dying over, in my opinion.

But the clicking continued, or soon Diego did as he took over their system, and I realized that it wasn’t all as innocuous as it seemed. First, there were two birth certificates under the same name, a Matthew Covington. One listed Lewis and Michelle Covington as the parents, and the other listed a Leah Covington as the mother and no one as the father.

“Matthew Covington, that sounds familiar,” I shared out loud.

“Yeah, he’s Lewis’s son,” Diego replied distractedly, typing away, “Sixteen and at an all-boys boarding school in Connecticut. He has a fourteen-year-old sister, Lydia, and she’s at the sister school about ten miles away from him.”

“That’s right . . .”

“Then who’s Leah?” Luca asked. “And why would Fieldburg pay Brooks to steal this information?”

“Hold please,” Diego told him. “I’m looking. Apparently, I didn’t dig as far as I should have.”

Diego began mumbling to himself, so I took the time to look at some of the other documents. Luca had a nice setup going on here, with huge touch screen monitors so we could all access information without getting in each other’s way.

“This is an NDA,” Skye interrupted. “Signed nearly seventeen years ago between Fieldburg and Covington.”

“What’s it about?” Luca asked.

No one had a chance to answer before Diego started to curse to himself.

“Fuck, how did I not fucking see this?” More muttering and cursing and general berating himself ensued, causing me to flinch. I hated when Diego got like this.

“Diego.” Maverick’s deep and confident voice broke right through his self-flagellation. I shivered, standing a little straighter. Holy fuck, it wasn’t fair how sexy these men’s voices were. How was anyone supposed to think straight?

Of course, Diego being Diego, he didn’t react the same way I would and snapped at Maverick, “What?”

Maverick clicked his tongue. “What’s going on? And tell us without putting yourself down please.”

I swear to fuck, Diego stuck his tongue out at him. And people called me a brat? I wouldn’t dare, not with the way Mav was staring down the monitor now. At least not to his face.

Finally, Diego gave in. “Matthew Covington is not Lewis’s son. Or Michelle’s either. Also, Lewis does have two kids, but Matthew isn’t one of them. He has a daughter, Leah, from a previous relationship. Nearly seventeen years ago, she was quietly erased from the Covington family history, and no one has heard from her since.”

Luca whistled under his breath. “And she’s Matthew’s biological mother?”

Diego nodded. “Yeah, and get this. Marshall’s son—Bradley Fieldburg of fucking course—is the father.” He scowled in disgust. “He was 32 at the time of conception.”

“Fuck,” I muttered, trying to process all this information. “So that’s the point of the NDA and the faked birth certificate. They made some kind of agreement to pretend he was Lewis and Michelle’s kid so there wouldn’t be a scandal?”

Diego wasn’t looking at us anymore, but he still answered. “Yeah. I’m not sure what the arrangement was yet, I’m working on that. It looks like Leah spent a year institutionalized after giving birth and has been living in Germany with some distant relatives ever since she got out.”

My gut churned. That was fucking awful. The girl had been raped, had gotten pregnant as a teenager, and had then been thrown away. Had she even seen her son? It made me remember my birth parents, whom I rarely thought about. I’d always assumed they’d abandoned me, but what if it had been something more sinister? What if they hadn’t had a choice?

I shook my head. No point getting caught up in that right now. It made no difference. I had Mom and Pops, and I was fucking lucky. Whatever had happened to my birth parents, there was nothing I could do about it now.

“As awful as this all is, why did it come to a head now?” Skye asked reasonably. He moved away from the monitors and was back to the coffee machine. He was seriously getting more coffee? “This was a while ago, and they seemed to have it all worked out. It’s odd to hire Brooks and risk, well, getting a hit put out on you after all this time.”

No one had any insight about that. Sure, it was scandalous, but why now?

“Oh, shit on a stick.” I snorted, and even Luca looked amused at Diego’s outburst. That was, until he finally looked up and we all saw the panic on his face.

“Matthew isn’t enrolled at the boarding school. He hasn’t been in over a year and a half. In fact, there has been no sign of him anywhere in that time.”

What the hell? The knot in my stomach that I’d had since I’d found Marshall’s body grew. This . . . Something was very, very wrong.

“Is he maybe with his mom? His birth mom? Maybe he found out and chose to go live with her in Germany?” Maverick asked hopefully. That would be best-case scenario, but nothing about this entire shitshow was best case.

“Possibly . . . ” Diego muttered.

There was an uneasy silence that overcame all of us as Diego busied himself. The rest of us had nothing to do but wait tensely. I paced away from the computers and started to wander the room again, but there wasn’t much to see here. I really needed to do . . . something. I was crawling out of my skin.

Suddenly, an alarm went off on Diego’s side of things. We all froze, our attention on him and the fear that flashed across his face.

“D?” I asked, my hand on my knife like I could fucking do something from here.

“Someone just breached the perimeter alarm on the house.”

D and I lived in a small place right on the outskirts of the city. But despite only being about 20 minutes from the hustle and bustle, our home was fairly isolated, with only a few neighbors, who had all been vetted very thoroughly by Diego before we’d bought it, and a mile long driveway that kept them away.

While it was possible for one of them to inadvertently trip the perimeter alarms, it happened so rarely, we always took it seriously when it went off.

Another alarm rang out. “Fuck, fuck. Someone is here, and they’re messing with my systems. How? They shouldn’t be able to get in. I can’t see the cameras, Brooks.”

There was a loud bang like someone pounding on the door. Diego jumped.

“Diego, I need you to breathe.” Luca stood directly in front of the monitor, so he could essentially look my brother in the eye. “That’s it. Good. In and out. Good.” Luca breathed deep, giving Diego a rhythm to follow. I found myself breathing with him too.

“There we go.” Another deafening pound had both D and me jumping. “How likely is it that they can get in?” Luca asked so fucking calmly, I didn’t know if I wanted to punch him or hug him. How could he sound so calm?

“I, uh—” Diego sucked in another breath. “Since they seem to be hacking the system, pretty likely. I-I don’t know how. They shouldn’t be able to . . .”

“It’s okay, Diego. We can worry about that later. For now, I need to know, do you have a place you can go hide?”

Diego didn’t answer, so I did for him. “Yeah, we have a panic room. He’s also a killer shot.”

Luca nodded again. “That’s great. I need you to listen to me, okay, Diego?” He didn’t continue until D nodded. The rattling and banging got louder. I wasn’t sure if they were just trying to freak Diego out or what, but it was fucking working for both of us. It was taking every bit of my control not to run out of here and back home, even if I’d never make it.

“Get your gun, make sure it’s loaded and safety off. Then go and hide. Stay there. We’re coming.”

Diego swallowed but still didn’t move. “I’m also going to call my friend Wes. Do you remember Wes?”

Diego shook his head. “He’s a former SEAL,” Luca continued calmly, like he was having a conversation over afternoon tea. “He’s now a PMC, but he lives much closer to you than we do. He’ll get there first.”

This got Diego into action. “I don’t know him. He sounds familiar, but . . .”

I interrupted, understanding where this new panic was coming from. “I’ll send a picture, okay, D? I know it sucks, but Luca trusts him, and he might be a fuckhead, but we trust Luca in this situation, right?”

Skye laughed and I could feel Luca’s eyes on me, but I continued, “He wouldn’t send someone into your space you couldn’t trust. Just—just hang on. We’re coming, okay? We’ll get you out.”

That just got Diego more afraid. He looked toward the door, where they were still trying to break in. “I-I don’t know if I can leave.”

I swallowed, wishing I were there with him. “Don’t worry about that right now. That’s a problem for future Diego, okay? For now, just do what Luca said. Get your gun and go fucking hide.”

I met Diego’s eyes through the screen. I was trying to radiate calm, though I doubted I was succeeding. I was so fucking scared. I was barely paying attention to what was around me, but I could see Skye over by a blank wall, putting in a code on a security pad that hadn’t been there before, and Maverick was on the phone. It would be okay. It had to be.

That was when I heard the most terrifying sound of my life: the deafening crack of wood splintering as someone tried to break their way in through our front door.

“Diego,” Luca said sharply. “Go, now.”

With one last shiver, he nodded and the screens went black.