Chapter 25 #2
“Excellent. See you tomorrow.” I end the call, eager to see what Luna’s spent the day doing.
My armed guards nod to me as I approach.
“Good evening, boss.”
“Any trouble today?” I ask, but what I really mean to ask is if my wife caused any trouble today.
Bruno, who’s in charge, shakes his head. “It’s been quiet, boss.”
“That’s what I like to hear.”
I make my way into the penthouse, sliding the bolt home behind me.
Inside, it’s oddly silent. I missed it here after spending so much time in the safe house, but the penthouse has never really felt like home.
I have a sprawling mansion in the suburbs on ninety acres, and that’s where I prefer to spend my time.
When all this is over, I’ll take Luna there.
We can have an espresso on the covered porch and watch the horses in the pasture. Listen to tree frogs at night. Fuck. Maybe we can even get a dog. I’ve always wanted one, but the timing was never right.
“Luna,” I call as I toe off my shoes, wondering where she is.
So far, everything appears to be intact. No broken dishes, no dismantled furniture. No shivs fashioned out of high heels.
Also, no answer.
The lights are on in the main living area and the kitchen, but she’s not there. I shrug out of my suit jacket and drape it over the back of a chair.
“Luna?”
Still not a peep out of my wife. I head to the office.
The door is closed, but inside, her laptop is closed and her chair is empty.
I busted my ass building that desk and the matching bookshelves last night.
There aren’t any books on the shelves, and the laptop looks untouched, still closed where I left it after I disabled the Wi-Fi.
Maybe she didn’t even find the office.
Disappointment surges through me as I head to the guest room I kept her locked in when I first brought her home from that fraught meeting with Tomasso. No sign of her here either.
What the fuck?
My heart starts pounding harder and faster.
The guards said there was no trouble. So, where the hell is she? The guest bath is empty and quiet. My office is the same.
The last room to check is my bedroom. And that’s when I finally find Luna where I least expected her. The door to my en suite bathroom is closed, and the gentle sound of the shower trickles through.
She’s showering.
My first thought is to give her privacy. I know she’s furious with me. The fact that she’s chosen to shower in my bathroom rather than the spare one doesn’t necessarily mean she wants an interruption.
But then a sudden fear hits me.
What if something is wrong?
I stalk across the room and knock at the door. “Luna?”
The shower turns off. “Priest? Is that you?”
Her voice is hesitant. But she’s not in distress. Relief washes over me like a wave pummeling the shore in a hurricane.
“Yeah,” I manage. “It’s me. I just got back.”
“Don’t come in,” she says sharply, and then I hear the metallic click of the lock popping into place.
Definitely not an invitation, but at least nothing is wrong.
Clearly, my wife is still as furious with me this evening as she was when I left.
I wander back out to the bar that overlooks the skyline and pour myself a double. While I wait, I shoot off a few texts to my brothers, letting them know about the call from Amedeo.
I’m on my third drink by the time she deigns to join me, her skin flushed from the warmth of the shower and her dark hair damp.
She’s wearing a long green dress that clings to her tits and hips, and her nipples are hard.
My cock twitches to attention, even if my rational mind understands the chances of me persuading Luna to let me fuck her are about as good as my chances of winning the damn lottery.
“Hey,” I say.
“Hey.” Her tone is chilly. “You were gone all day.”
“Things came up.”
“You told me you’d be gone an hour or two,” she points out, crossing her arms over her chest and robbing me of one of my favorite views.
I shrug a shoulder. “Additional things came up.”
Her honey-brown gaze narrows on the glass as I tilt it to my lips. “You changed.”
I glance down at what remains of my suit, surprised she could tell the difference. “My other suit got dirty. Hazard of the job.”
She bites her lower lip, then looks away. “I thought maybe something happened to you.”
I wasn’t expecting an admission like that from her, especially not after last night and this morning.
A grin kicks up the corner of my mouth. “You worried about me, amore mio ?”
She tucks a strand of hair behind her ear. “No more topolina ?”
“You’ve never been a little mouse. I only called you that to get under your skin.”
Her gaze jerks back to me. “Why my love ? Is that to get under my skin too? I know you don’t love me.”
“I wasn’t born to love. I was born to make money and to kill any enemy who gets in my way.”
It’s stark truth. I’m a gangster. I was born into this life, and the only way I’ll leave it is when I die.
Unlike Luna, I don’t see our world as a prison sentence.
I don’t want to escape. Here, in the underworld, in the darkness and the shadows, in a penthouse high above the restless city, is where I thrive.
“Is that what you were doing while you were gone today?” she asks quietly. “Killing?”
I think of Carlo, no remorse in me. What happened needed to happen.
“Do you really want to know, baby? Remember, what you don’t know can’t be used against you.”
“Why’d you do it?”
I stare at her. “You sure you want to know?”
She nods. “Tell me.”
“Scorpion found out who was behind my cousin Antonio and his soldiers. We had a score to settle.”
“Oh God.” She presses a hand over her mouth, struggling for composure before removing it and continuing. “You found the man who killed your cousin and cut out his tongue?”
“And we discovered who ordered it.”
“Who?”
I hold her stare, letting her see the brutality within me, what I’ve witnessed today, what I’ve done. “Amedeo the Animal.”
Her eyes close for a moment, dark lashes fanning over her cheeks, as she processes the news. When they open, they’re glittering with unshed tears. “What about my father? Did you find out anything about who killed him?”
“It wasn’t the Bratva,” I tell her gently.
“Amedeo?”
I nod. There’s more to this story. I’m not sure she’s ready to hear it.
She seems to sense it, though. I can see as much in her expression.
“What else aren’t you telling me?” Luna asks quietly.
“Do you want a drink?” I ask instead of answering her question.
Her gaze flicks to the Johnnie Walker. “I don’t do whiskey.”
“Wine,” I say, recalling what she wanted in the observation room at the casino, what feels like a million fucking years ago.
I go to the wine rack and find a bottle of red, remembering it’s what she prefers. She’s quiet as I take out the corkscrew. I don’t want to have to be the one to tell her what I learned today, but I also can’t keep it from her. Luna deserves to know.
I pull out the cork then pour her a generous glass. I grasp the cool stem, offering it to her.
She takes it, our fingers brushing, that same old spark of electricity zipping down my spine at the fleeting touch. “Thank you.”
I’m about to peel back the scabs on wounds that still haven’t healed. Gratitude will be far from her mind in a few minutes. Fuck. How am I going to tell her?
“You should sit for this,” I say.
The flush from her shower has fled her face and she’s mostly pale, but she does as I suggest, sinking onto a barstool and hooking her bare feet over the rungs.
I pour myself another double and sit on the stool next to her so that we’re facing each other, eye to eye. She still hasn’t touched her wine.
I incline my head toward her glass. “Drink.”
“I have a feeling the wine isn’t going to help.”
“A few sips.”
She obliges me, drinking the wine and catching a drop that clings to her lips with her tongue.
Ordinarily, such a move would have made my cock stir, but this is a different kind of conversation, and the only thing I’m feeling at the moment is compassion.
It’s an unfamiliar feeling, along with the urge to take her in my arms and offer her comfort.
“Go,” she says quietly, her voice strained.
“It’s about your brother,” I begin. “Scorpion’s Bratva connection led him to a Revello soldier who’s been answering directly to Amedeo, a man by the name of Carlo Gallo.
Carlo’s been nosing around on Bratva territory, trying to disrupt their shipments and supply.
In the last few months, he roped my cousin Antonio into an underground casino deep inside Bratva territory.
Told Antonio that the rewards were well worth the risks.
Scorpion did some digging, and it looks like my cousin was in the red after he built his wife a big new house he couldn’t afford.
Antonio knew we wouldn’t go for setting up shop in Bratva territory, so he took the bait from Carlo. ”
I stop, letting Luna process all that.
Her brow is furrowed, but she’s still listening. “Continue, please.”
“Carlo went to the Bratva. He told them my cousin Antonio was running an underground casino in their territory, and that Antonio was acting on behalf of the Andriani family.”
The double-cross was as vicious as it was ingenious.
“That’s like signing a death warrant,” Luna breathes.
“Right. Except it gets even worse. Carlo clipped Antonio and some of his guys before going to the Bratva. Told them he’d taken care of the problem and that all he wanted in exchange was a favor for Amedeo, who is set to become the new don with Tomasso out of the picture.
Then Carlo staged the bodies to make it look like the Bratva were behind it. ”
Luna exhales. “Wow. So that’s how you know Amedeo was behind my father’s murder. Carlo was acting on Amedeo’s behalf.”
“There’s still more. Scorpion’s Bratva connection didn’t buy Carlo’s story. He told us where Carlo was going to be last night, and we picked him up.”
“That’s why you were gone all day,” she guesses, understanding dawning on her face.
I nod. “While we were working Carlo over, he made another confession. He told us that Amedeo ordered the hit on your brother. Carlo did it, and that’s how he got made. He was instructed to pin the blame on the Andrianis.”
She gasps, her glass slipping from her hand and falling to the floor, where it shatters at her feet. “No.”
“It’s the truth, Luna.”
She closes her eyes, swaying. “He killed my brother?”
I grind my jaw, hating seeing her like this.
“Yes. Apparently, it’s been Amedeo’s plan for years to take control from your father.
But your father was powerful, and he had a lot of allies in the other families.
Amedeo knew he had to move slowly and carefully.
First, he had to get rid of the heir apparent. ”
“Leo,” she murmurs, a hitch in her voice that tells me she’s trying to hold back her tears.
“Leo,” I repeat. “Amedeo felt that with your brother out of the picture, he would be the natural choice for don. But years stretched by, and then he found out your father was set to announce Squeaky as his successor. That was when Amedeo set everything into motion.”
Her dark lashes open, and they’re studded with tears. “The car bomb that would have taken out my father and Squeaky, you mean. And then when that plot was foiled, he had my father murdered in cold blood at my wedding.”
“He didn’t anticipate Tomasso would find out what he was up to, or that he’d bring you back here and unite the families with our marriage,” I finish quietly.
“So now what’s the plan? He’s going to kill the both of us?”
“No.” I shake my head slowly. “We’re going to kill him.”
A shudder goes through her.
Silence descends, heavy and poignant. So much remains unsaid between us, things I want to tell her.
But everything is a fucked-up jumble. Our first priority is neutralizing the threat. And that means clipping Amedeo and anyone loyal to him. After that, we’ll deal with the fallout. We’ll bring the families together the way they should have been, and Luna will assume her rightful place.
Whether she wants to or not.
The last thought makes my gut clench.
“I’m sorry,” she says, tearing me from my thoughts.
For a split second, I think she read my mind. But then she gestures to the shattered glass and spilled wine at her feet. I’d all but forgotten about it.
“Sorry for the mess I made,” she adds.
“Stay where you are,” I order, eyeing her bare feet. “I’ll get it cleaned up.”
“I can help,” she protests, stepping down before I can stop her.
“Damn it, Luna.”
“It’s fine.” She takes another step and hisses in pain.
Jesus, now she’s hurt and bleeding. Without thinking twice, I go to her and grip her waist, lifting her back onto the stool.
“Stubborn woman.” I press my forehead to hers. “Listen to me. I don’t want you getting hurt again. Keep your ass on this stool until I get back with a dustpan and brush.”
“Your feet are bare too,” she protests.
They are, and I’m standing in broken glass. But I’d walk a mile through it just to keep her from getting hurt again.
“I don’t give a shit about me,” I growl. “I care about you. Stay put.”
I head to the kitchen, wincing at a shard of glass digging into my heel. I pluck it out and toss it into the trash, then grab the dustpan and brush. When I get back to Luna, she’s still on the stool where I left her, but now she has streaks of tears on her cheeks.
Fuck me, she’s been crying.
“Where does it hurt?” I ask softly. “Show me, baby.”
“My right foot,” she manages, before biting her lower lip.
I tend to it, finding the glass shard and removing it before pressing gently with my thumbs to make sure no other fragments are embedded in her skin.
“Better?” I ask.
She sniffs. “The glass is gone. But my heart still hurts.”
Fucking fuck. That’s like a knife to my chest. A hardened criminal who spent the day helping to torture a man to death, brought low by the sorrow of one woman.
“I know, amore mio ,” I rasp.
“That bastard killed my family, Priest. Everyone except for my mother, and only likely because the cancer took her before he could be bothered. My father was wounded saving his father in an ambush. Papa would have died for Zio Edoardo. They were blood.”
She’s crying again by the time she finishes, and I can’t bear the sight. I knew that finding out the truth of what happened to her brother would wreck Luna, but I wasn’t prepared for how it would fucking ruin me.
The hell with cleaning up the broken glass and spilled wine. My woman needs me.
I scoop her into my arms, pulling her from the barstool. And then I carry her out of there, still not giving a damn about the broken glass or my own bare feet.
She’s all that matters.