30. Luca
LUCA
Dear Diary,
I’m the kind of man who cooks breakfast for a girl I can’t have…in a house that’s owned by the man who would kill me for wanting her.
Ididn’t sleep. The party kept playing over and over in my head.
Drinking too much. Staring at Nyah’s tits and ass in that fucking dress, then having to watch her paraded around like a show pony on my father’s arm.
The jealousy and the constant reminder the flashy ring on her finger meant that in a matter of weeks, she’d be my father’s woman for good.
His to do with what he pleased. His to touch and kiss and fuck, and I’d have to watch it every day that he forced me to stay here.
I couldn’t forget that Lynx by my side was the only thing that felt good.
That wanting him had spilled over into bad decisions.
My asshole uncle catching us and blackmailing me.
Owing Enzo Guerra a favor wasn’t a position anyone should want to be in. It was one I would have never in a million years entered into willingly.
But my father finding out that I was into guys was a lot worse.
I hadn’t missed his whole showdown with Dax. How he’d questioned his sexuality when he’d attempted to turn down a woman gifted to him by my father.
You didn’t say no to Carlos Guerra. As Dax had found out. As I had realized a long time ago.
I’d fucked more than my fair share of women because my father had told me to. I’d been barely sixteen when the first one had pulled out my cock, lifted her skirt, and taken my virginity.
It had been over in seconds, and my father and uncles had laughed as I’d flamed with embarrassment, knowing I’d done the whole thing wrong but not exactly knowing why.
The woman, much older than me, and one my father and his friends had all shared in front of me more than once, had simply patted my cheek like I was a lost cause and put her panties back in place.
There had been others after her, each experience no more pleasurable for me than the last, though I’d learned to control myself better, and eventually, when my father had pushed women at me, I’d learned to just close my eyes and fuck them, because it pleased him to see his son strong and virile.
But I’d only ever fucked men for pleasure.
Part of me knew it had started as a rebellion. That I’d sought out men because my father hated gays and had never been quiet about it. But then I’d found I liked it, and if things had been different, maybe I would have openly identified as a gay man.
At least until Nyah had walked into my life, with her sweet fucking curves, all naked in my bed.
For the first time in my life, I’d felt a real attraction to a woman.
“It’s because you can’t have her,” I muttered to the ceiling. “That’s the only reason.”
I didn’t let myself think too hard about whether that was actually true or not.
It was so much easier to think about Lynx and how turned on I’d been when his cock had been in my mouth.
Only now my family had ruined that for me too.
I was so sick of all of them.
As soon as the sun peeked through the window, I was up and down in the gym, running on the treadmill at a pace so punishing I stumbled off and dry retched at the end.
“Luca?” a small voice asked from the doorway.
I snapped my head up, gaze colliding with Nyah’s.
After last night, my uncle finding me in a vulnerable position with Lynx, the last thing I needed was another fucking person finding me as anything other than the Mafia prince my father had raised me to be.
“What are you doing down here?” I snapped, clutching at a sweat towel while my stomach turned in seasick circles, threatening to spill whatever was left undigested from last night’s dinner.
Nyah ignored my crabby tone and came into the gym, perching her peach-shaped ass on the weight bench and staring at me doubled over, hugging a wastepaper basket.
“It’s Virginia’s day off, and I came down to get some fresh towels.”
The laundry was on the same basement level as the gym, and so I pointed at the wall that joined the two rooms. “Over there.”
She didn’t move, but I couldn’t fight the nausea in my gut any longer either. I gagged again, holding my bin to my chest as my stomach again threatened to erupt.
Nyah shook her head, like I was being ridiculous, and crossed the room to the kitchenette in the corner of the gym.
It was little more than a refrigerator and a bowl of protein bars, but she took a bottle of water from the fridge and cracked some ice cubes from the freezer section into a clean gym towel neatly folded on the countertop, and then brought both to me. “Here.”
It was so built into me not to accept help from anyone. Accepting help meant you couldn’t do it alone, and that made you weak. I shook my head, pushing the offering away. “I’m fine. Just overdid it.”
Any other woman in my world would have scuttled away at my cranky reprimand. They had all been trained to be subservient and afraid of men.
Nyah acted like that with my father too.
And yet with me, maybe because she and I had made a sport out of verbal sparring, she acted like my crankiness wasn’t anything she hadn’t seen before and couldn’t handle. She pushed the water at me again. “Would you just take the water? Nobody likes vomit mouth. Let me help you.”
She wasn’t wrong. My mouth tasted like ass. I took the water, swallowing a tentative gulp of it because I really wasn’t sure whether my stomach could handle it. And when she stepped in closer and put the bundle of ice on the back of my neck, I let her.
I closed my eyes, wallowing in the gross feeling in my gut, but trying not to notice that Nyah’s sleep shirt brushed the tops of her thighs. She was close enough to smell the scent of her perfume, left over from last night.
I closed my eyes and breathed deep, hoping she’d think it was because I was trying to settle my stomach and not because I was getting hard with her standing so close.
God, it would have been so easy to run my hand up her thigh and under the elastic of her panties. To press my fingers between her legs and find that little nub that would make her moan.
I was so fucking attracted to her it was killing me not to. Why did she have to be here in my house, all curvy legs and warm brown skin, smelling delicious when I smelled like I’d just rolled out of the gutter after a three-day bender?
“How much did you have to drink last night?” she asked gently, taking back the ice when I indicated that it was enough.
I shrugged. “A lot.”
“Running on top of a hangover was maybe not your smartest move.”
She was probably right, though I wasn’t going to admit I was no longer twenty and could back it up after drinking.
“I’m fine.” At least I would be, after I ate something. Preferably something greasy as fuck to sop up all the alcohol still swirling in my stomach. “Do you want some breakfast?”
She glanced at me as she dumped the melting ice back into the kitchenette sink. “I’m starving. I didn’t eat anything last night.”
I squinted at her. “Why not? There was heaps of food.”
She pressed her teeth down into her lip for a moment, like she wasn’t sure she should say anything, and then she let it pop free.
“Your father slapped it out of my hand and told me his woman wouldn’t be seen eating in public.
That it was undignified.” She smiled ruefully.
“It was acceptable for me to drink though.”
I gaped at her. “Are you fucking serious? You didn’t eat anything at all last night?”
She shrugged. “It’s fine. I’m getting a belly on me anyway. My mother never used to let me eat at parties either. I should have known it would be no different here. None of the women eat at parties. Only the men.”
I had never even fucking noticed.
I felt like an asshole for not paying attention.
She needed to freaking eat. I didn’t know why that bothered me so much, except for maybe the fact that now she’d brought it up, I could never remember seeing Isabella eat at a party either. Nor any of my stepmothers.
Nor my mother, before she’d died.
And I found myself grabbing Nyah’s wrist and marching her out of the room.
“Luca!” She jogged along behind me.
I ignored her, my soul focus on getting her out of this gym and up the stairs.
On the next floor, I guided her into the kitchen and pulled out a chair for her.
It was one only the servants used, but I was no stranger to the small wooden table and chairs in the kitchen.
I’d sat here many times with Virginia bustling around, giving me cookies to eat after I came home starving from school.
She would have never in a million years told me not to eat them because I was getting a bit pudgy around my stomach.
And yet I remembered my father making me run for miles and miles when I’d hit the pre-puberty chubby stage.
I’d hated every minute of him standing in the middle of the yard, shouting at me to keep going because no son of his would be a fat slob.
I’d grown into the extra weight, until it fit me properly. It had nothing to do with my father, and yet he’d taken the credit for the way I’d developed.
I supposed it was his genes, so it was his right. But him screaming at me to keep running had been burned into my mind, and it hadn’t escaped me that when I wanted to punish myself, I came down to the gym and ran until I puked.
Just like he’d made me do as a teenager.
I pointed at the chair. “Sit.”
She did as I’d asked, and then I yanked open the fridge, peering into it, spotting a package of bacon. I grabbed it, along with eggs, tomatoes, mushrooms, and potatoes, and laid my finds out on the countertop.
Nyah watched me with curious eyes. “What are you doing?”
“Making you breakfast.”
I turned the oven on and wasn’t quiet about opening cupboards to search for something to cook it in.
“Bottom drawer,” she said. “I saw baking trays when I was making that cake with Virginia. Also, why?”
“Why what?” I opened the bottom drawer as she’d suggested, then blushing hot as I realized she was right. I hadn’t cooked in this kitchen for a long time, and it showed.
“Why are you making me breakfast?”