Chapter 11
Alignment after a good ass whooping…
La’Nova now stood near the wall with her arms crossed, watching Tracy scramble.
Tracy’s tears had dried up a little too fast for La’Nova’s liking.
She watched her yank her jeans up her thighs with shaky hands.
Tracy’s shirt was half inside out. Her movements were frantic and sloppy, just as her appearance was.
La’Nova’s jaw tightened as she reflected on what Luca and Roy had said about the twins. They had been gone for days according to Tracy’s knowledge. The fact that she was cool with getting dick with no worries about where her boys were fueled La’Nova to the point of her wanting to explode.
“You got a lot of nerve,” La’Nova said, voice dangerously low. “Moving like you late for work instead of caring where your kids been.”
Tracy scoffed, still buttoning her jeans.
She glanced over at Roy; her eyes fell down to the gun lowered at his side.
She avoided eye contact with Luca simply because she could feel his dark energy from where he stood in the shadows of the hallway.
He had already stepped back far enough to give La’Nova space for whatever she had planned for Tracy.
“The twins always come back. They know where home at.” Tracy mustered up the courage to respond back to La’Nova.
Little did she know that it enraged her.
La’Nova felt heat crawl up her spine as images flashed through her mind without permission.
She knew all about kids being snatched off corners.
Vans with blacked out windows. Candy boxes were used as bait.
Trafficking was everywhere around the world right now.
Everybody knew it, yet, everybody pretended they didn’t.
“You a dumb ass bitch? Or… You just don’t give a fuck?” La’Nova pushed off the wall, flicking her cigarette, not caring where it landed.
Tracy turned around, squaring up like she had a leg to stand on.
“You don’t know—”
La’Nova didn’t wait for the rest. Her fist came fast, cracking Tracy clean across the mouth. The sound was loud inside of the small filthy room. Tracy stumbled back, hitting the dresser hard enough to rattle it. A roach skittered off the mirror as La’Nova gave Tracy enough time to right herself.
Luca and Roy both froze.
There was no hesitation, no sloppy rage. La’Nova’s movement and hit was precise and controlled like she’d done this before and learned how to work her hands properly.
Tracy lunged back, screaming and swinging wildly. La’Nova ducked and drove her shoulder into Tracy’s chest, slamming her against the wall. The impact knocked the air out of Tracy’s lungs. She gasped and tried to focus as La’Nova talked her shit.
“You don’t get to be careless with kids,” La’Nova hissed, fist connecting again. “You don’t get to be lazy with lives you laid down and made, bitch.”
La’Nova delivered hit after hit. Each blow carried something heavier than anger. Luca saw it immediately. Some of his answers to the permanent sadness in her eyes had been answered. This ass whooping wasn’t just about the twins. This was something old.
Every punch came from somewhere deep and buried.
From a place that remembered either being overlooked, forgotten, or even worse, taken.
Each strike landed like she was trying to beat time backwards.
La’Nova was in a trance, she ignored the sound of her own knuckles cracking.
Her hands were now swollen, decorated with Tracy’s blood.
Each time, Tracy tried to guard herself, La’Nova followed up with an uppercut. Her hands moved like they were registered weapons.
Roy watched with his mouth slightly open; shock etched across his face. He saw plenty of women fight before, but this wasn’t that.
This was grief with muscle. Tracy dropped to her knees, hands up, and sobbing hard. Blood squirted out her top and bottom lip. She tried her very best to guard her face.
“Please! Stop!” She cried out frantically.
La’Nova grabbed her by the shirt and yanked her up just long enough to look her dead in the face.
“I’ve never met the twins…judging off of the way you got them living, and the way you don’t give a fuck about them missing tells me that those innocent boys beg and cry out just like you doing now, and you don’t give a fuck.
” La’Nova looked her dead in the eyes, voice trembling as she fought to allow air into her lungs.
“You don’t fuckin’ deserve them, and you won’t have them until you’re willing to do what the fuck you’re supposed to do as a mother.”
La’Nova shoved Tracy back hard, making her collapse on the bed next to her dead friend before Luca slowly stepped forward.
He remained silent as he observed Tracy’s swollen eyes, crooked nose and busted mouth.
Luca’s dark eyes flicked over to La’Nova.
He watched her pace back and forth, wearing the already worn-out carpet down.
He didn’t interrupt her, but he could see it all now.
The pattern, the reason she lived in a camper.
The reason she didn’t trust walls or comfort or permanence.
Pain recognized pain.
“It doesn’t seem like she done yet.” Roy muttered under his breath.
La’Nova wiped her knuckles on her favorite purple sweatpants, blood smeared across her thighs. Her eyes stay locked on Tracy as she directed her words to Roy.
“Hand me your gun.” She held her right hand out, eyes still trained on the person that had her heated the most.
“Can’t kill… twin’s mom,” Luca finally spoke.
“I’m not going to kill her,” La’Nova stated calmly.
Luca and Roy’s eyes connected, and for the first time in a long time, Luca was undecided.
For the first time since claiming La’Nova as being his wife, he didn’t see her as something to protect.
He saw her as something dangerous. He wanted her to trust him, already knowing on the backend he would have to eventually trust her.
After seconds long of deliberating in his head, he nodded his head for Roy to hand over his nine-millimeter. Luca placed his hands at the small of his back just in case La’Nova had other plans for him and Roy.
Without looking at the men, La’Nova fearlessly stepped to the edge of Tracy’s bed and aimed at her foot. She shot once then twice, ignoring Tracy howling out in excruciating pain. La’Nova lifted the gun once more and shot each one of Tracy’s shoulders.
“I need her hands…Nova Baby,” Luca rasped.
La’Nova’s finger rested along the trigger, close enough to feel the truth of what could happen next. She knew this feeling. That quiet right before you crossed a line you couldn’t uncross. Her chest tightened. Vision tunneled. The walls felt too close again, too familiar.
“I should—” She gulped down at fist full of emotions.
She could end everybody right now and run out to Luca’s Maybach and get far away from everything.
She had enough money saved up to relocate and get back on her feet.
Yet, something inside of her refused to do that.
Tracy’s crying was too late to mean anything to La’Nova.
She was already in killer mode, craving to taste the end of fucked up individuals that brought harm to innocent lives.
“You a lucky ass bitch,” La’Nova said flatly. “Because if it was just me? You wouldn’t be able to get back up at all.”
La’Nova still kept her finger on the trigger. Luca saw her internal battle and decided to move in on her calmly. He stepped into her space like he belonged there. Slowly, he reach into the inside pocket of his suit jacket and pulled out folded yet crisp papers.
“Look,” he whispered.
La’Nova’s eyes flicked to the papers without really seeing them.
“Guardian rights,” Luca continued.
He unfolded them just enough for her to register. Roy exhaled slowly behind them.
“I’ll wrap up everything here and have her signature before I have the men take care of that nigga.” Roy gestured his head toward a dead Wiley.
Luca’s hand caressed La’Nova’s lower back to ground her. The adrenaline that pumped fiercely through La’Nova cracked, and everything she’d been holding back rushed in all at once. Her wrist trembled; the gun lowered an inch as a tear slipped free, trailing down the curve of her cheek.
“Remember.” Luca winced out in a little pain from his throat feeling back raw. “Calm isn’t something you wait for… it’s something you have to choose over and over.”
His palm rested right between her shoulder blades, right where most of her tension lived. Once La’Nova didn’t pull away from his physical touch, he leaned down and whispered in her ear.
“Whatever it is that’s haunting you… trust me with it one day, so I can carry it…Nova baby.”
La’Nova’s knees almost buckled. She sucked in a breath that felt like it reached her lungs for the first time in minutes. The gun slipped from her fingers, Luca caught it smoothly then held it out to Roy. La’Nova had to tilt her head back to look up into Luca’s dark eyes.
Something deep and unsettling took over her as she realized that Luca didn’t just pull her out of the dark place that she was in.
He stood in it with her until she found her way out.
Whatever bond had started between them wasn’t soft.
It was forged, and she found herself wanting to see it all the way through.
La’Nova let Luca guide her, something that she didn’t let anyone do. She didn’t fight it, nor question it. Just allowed herself to be moved through the house like the filth and roaches no longer mattered. Tracy’s wails rose and fell behind them loud and desperately. La’Nova tuned it all out.
All she felt was Luca’s hand. Warm, rough, and secured against the small of her back. His fingers were spread just enough to let her know he was there and wasn’t letting go.
Luca’s men poured into the house dressed in black with the same gloves as Luca and La’Nova’s. They moved past them without looking at her. Soon as they stepped out into the night, cool air kissed her skin, cutting through the heat still buzzing along her skin.
Luca opened the passenger door for her once they reached his Maybach.
La’Nova stopped, turning her body to Luca’s.
She rose up on her tiptoes, her hands glided up his chest. She fisted his vest, making Luca lower himself immediately, meeting her where she stood.
Their lips fused together, but Luca was more than ready for this moment.
He wasted no time, dominating her mouth.
He controlled the kiss, leading La’Nova to where he wanted her.
Luca set the pace and added the right amount of pressure.
She hadn’t expected him to be so gentle and patient while teaching her how to passionately kiss a man.
Their gazes remained locked as Luca broke the kiss to lick a slow path down her throat until he kissed the crook of her neck.
“You good?” He uttered out hoarsely, the echo of her lips was still heavy on his.
La’Nova nodded her head, licking her lips, feeling high off the sudden alignment that she felt between the both of them.
“I am now.” She blushed hard before looking away.
“Good, let’s go home.”