Chapter 10
Nights later… Trifling Tracy
Luca’s Maybach navigated through the streets as night pressed in from all sides. The streetlights stretched into long yellow blurs across the windshield. The inside smelled like leather and weed smoke mixed with his ginger and lemon tea.
La’Nova sat in the passenger seat, hands folded in her lap. Her back was straight like she was bracing for something that hadn’t happened yet. She called herself being mindful by not lighting up a cigarette inside of Luca’s car. The first day of her sleeping inside of Luca’s bedroom was the last.
She wondered why he hadn’t bothered her, better yet… La’Nova wondered why he hadn’t snuck back into her camper and carried her back into his room. After their intimate moment in the shower, La’Nova opted out of spending time with Luca like he had asked.
She left out of his home that day and drove her camper around mindlessly.
After grabbing much needed food and other supplies that she needed, she ended up right back on his estate, parked in the same spot.
La’Nova didn’t go back to House of Angels, simply because she knew Luca would eventually find her.
Luca had La’Nova shook in every way possible because, whatever happened days ago in that bathroom and in the shower, didn’t have a language that La’Nova could understand yet. It was all foreign to her. It left her feeling conflicted in so many ways.
Guilt weighed on her heart and mind heavily as she went over scenarios in her head over and over.
She glanced over at Luca and sighed softly.
He guided the car with one hand on the wheel, the other resting near the cup holder.
Even his side profile was sexy. His low Caesar cut was fresh, waves tight and disciplined.
The all-white tailored suit with a navy-blue collared shirt complemented his dusty brown complexion.
His thick chin strapped beard glistened like he slapped a handful of oil on it.
Luca lifted the Starbucks cup slowly and took a small sip. He let the tea soothe his throat awhile before talking.
“Why… the camper?” His whisper sounded rough but was clear and intentional.
La’Nova’s fingers twitched. She inhaled and exhaled slowly then looked out the window. She eyed a liquor store and felt the urge to tell Luca to pull over to get her a bottle of Don Julio.
Lord…even him whispering has an effect on me…. She thought as she glanced over at him.
“Because it moves,” She broke the silence then swallowed down before continuing. “I learned early… anything that can’t move can get trapped.”
Luca’s eyes flicked to her for half a second, not long enough to be obvious but long enough to register her words.
“Most people… choose houses for safety,” Luca replied, glancing back over at La’Nova, before placing his eyes back on the road.
La’Nova let out a short breath that almost sounded like a laugh.
“Most people ain’t been taken, put out, or hurt in a home either,” she retorted.
She turned her head and looked at Luca with a hurt expression covering her pretty round face.
“You ever notice how walls make promises they can’t keep?” She asked.
Luca’s grip tightened slightly on the wheel, he offered her his eyes with a look of recognition.
“I bought a camper,” she continued. “Because it reminds me I can leave. Anytime, without asking, waiting, or explaining. I get to change my scenery whenever my current environment gets to be too much. It makes me feel free of some of my past,” she uttered the last words lowly.
Luca nodded once. His nod meant something to La’Nova, making her feel content enough with it.
They drove another stretch in silence until the road dipped then leveled.
La’Nova noticed that houses grew closer, the neighborhood was rough.
Damn near every corner had people hanging out.
The streets were cluttered with trash, and graffiti was on the sidewalks and any establishment walls she looked at.
La’Nova had no clue where Luca was taking her.
He knocked on her camper this evening and asked her to take a ride with him.
She wasn’t in the mood to argue with him or even put up a fight.
She threw on a pair of purple sweats with a lavender long sleeve shirt and followed him to his Maybach with no resistance.
Luca lifted his cup again and took another slow sip before breaking their silence.
“Movement keeps you alive,” he whispered.
La’Nova glanced at him, surprised. A small smile tugged at the corners of her lips before she spoke.
“You get it,” she said.
“I do,” he whispered back.
La’Nova studied Luca for a couple of seconds. The restraint in the way he breathed, spoke, and drove wasn’t empty. He was a well composed man from what she observed of him in the short time she was around him.
“I wished you talked more, maybe it would narrow down some of my confusion with you,” she said in a soft tone.
“Talking… costs.” Luca smiled, this time not looking her way.
La’Nova nodded like that made perfect sense.
“I used to think quiet people were crazy, like they probably don’t feel shit because they’re too busy secretly plotting shit.” She shook her head and chuckled sympathetically. “Truth is… they probably feel everything but just don’t leak the same way as people who talk a lot.” She smirked.
For some reason La’Nova wanted to make Luca smile again.
Each time she laid eyes on him, his face was rested, eyes hollow.
He looked like he carried the weight of the world on his shoulders.
She remembered how he looked back in her camper when he really smiled at her boldness.
His perfectly aligned white teeth and stretched face had a spark radiating off it .
That smile brought life to his dark orbs and made him appear more human.
Seconds later, Luca’s mouth twitched into a half smile that was barely visible. He relaxed the tight hold he had on the steering wheel then glanced over at her.
“That’s why you don’t leak?” He asked.
La’Nova’s stomach tightened. This man is something else… she thought, licking her lips.
“I leak; I think you know how much I leak too….” She let her seductive words marinate in his mind before turning her words back into cold reality.
Luca licked his cinnamon lips; he tugged at his beard and reflected the way her pussy gushed out all around his nose, lips, and beard.
The taste of her was etched in his mind, so she didn’t have to remind him of how much leakage she spilled out for him.
“I used to leak all the time.” La’Nova thought about Kentrell.
“Crying. Begging. Explaining myself to people who already made up their minds, not giving a damn about my input… I had to stop that shit and accept some things and people for what and who it was… The camper fixed that too,” she added in a more serious tone.
“I taught myself how to fight… My parent’s spoiled me.
” She gulped down regretfully. “They spoiled me rotten…all I knew about when they were taken away from me was… coloring just to see their pleased smiles, homecooked meals, and going to private school. I had some good friends there that’ll I’ll never forget…
” La’Nova stopped herself from reflecting and expressing the past.
There were times she reflected and smiled, wishing she could turn back the hands of times with a time machine.
Back to a time when she was happy, pure, and innocent, having both of her parents.
La’Nova had no one earth that she shared that with.
She regretted sharing it with Luca since his father was the reason for her traumatic past. What made me so comfortable with telling him that shit?
She wondered, but her thoughts relapsed back to Kentrell.
The rollercoaster of different emotions he put her through really messed with her mental to this very day.
She shook it all off then glanced over at Luca.
“Who house we visiting?” She asked, lightly changing the subject.
The Maybach slowed as they turned down a residential street. La’Nova eyed the chain linked fences. They were in the middle of the hood over on the Southside.
“Kentrell’s,” Luca whispered, his jaw tightened as he came to a slow stop. “He has twins. I’m going to be raising them—”
“Because he refuses to acknowledge them.” La’Nova cut Luca off, feeling disgusted but not surprised by Kentrell’s actions. She wondered if Luca knew about his other kids…
“Yes… I’m going to kill him for that soon,” Luca declared.
Goosebumps spread across La’Nova’s arms as she looked over at Luca’s serious face.
Maybe… just maybe…this can be my way out.
Her thoughts started to get the best of her.
Luca saying he would kill Kentrell, the one person that knew her secrets and could use them all against her made her shutter with anticipation.
It meant an end was coming soon to all the madness she had been experiencing, except there was one more person lurking in the shadows.
Lennox, she hadn’t seen him since Kentrell took her far away from the dark cage she once considered home.
She looked over at Luca in a different light.
La’Nova finally acknowledged that Kentrell and Lennox hated and bad-mouthed Luca because he was nothing like them…
but then there was Dontrell Sr. She couldn’t get his face if someone paid her millions to do so.
He killed her father in cold blood without showing an ounce of mercy on his soul.
She looked out the window and saw Luca’s men march past his Maybach. In military form, they surrounded the run-down looking house. Some of his men went around the back of the house while some stepped behind dried-out bushes.
La’Nova swallowed down hard as she looked back at Luca. She instantly admired him for stepping up and raising Kentrell’s kids.
“Well, that’s good,” La’Nova said smugly. “Any man that can make kids and not take care of them deserves hell,” she continued.
“Do you love him?” Luca asked carefully.