Chapter 2 Luca
CHAPTER 2: LUCA
Several days passed in a blur of lines of code and endless video feeds he ran through facial recognition in an attempt to narrow down their suspect list. He’d managed to clear another fifty or so of the main pack, but he still hadn’t conclusively cleared the three enforcers who’d supposedly been in the warehouse at the time of his attack. Their cell phone GPS data was consistent with their location, but no traitor worth their salt would’ve taken a traceable cell phone with them when they attacked. It didn’t help that his intrusive investigations had revealed Lou and Tino had been using the empty apartment where the sniper shot had been taken from to hook up. It was still early days in his hunt, though. He couldn’t afford to narrow his focus and risk missing something.
Angelo was staying in the spare room of Luca’s pack house apartment while he played bodyguard on top of his duties as head of the pack’s security. Luca was grateful the gruff shifter wasn’t much for conversation at the best of times, although he felt bad about how lost the man was with his mate’s absence .
He barely noticed when Marco stopped by and sent Angelo out for a run to let off some steam. That was what Alphas were for—making sure their pack was content. But even as distracted as he was, he noticed the tension Marco had been wearing like a cloak for days had lessened.
“What’s got you in such a good mood?” Luca finally asked.
“Vin’s back. And he has a surprise for Angelo,” Marco said, sounding smug.
“About fucking time,” Luca muttered, too busy scanning bank statements to put much more thought into it.
He didn’t see Angelo again for another two days, but he knew, thanks to pack gossip, that he’d finally completed the mating bond with Vin. The pack officially had its first ever vampire member. Luca did his best to endure the rotating presence of the few family members they could trust as guards while Angelo was away, but it did nothing to ease how suffocated he was feeling.
“You need some fresh air. Come outside for a bit,” Angelo said when he finally managed to drag himself away from Vin long enough to check in on Luca.
Luca glanced up, his eyes aching with fatigue. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d slept. Drawing in a deep breath, he wrinkled his nose.
“You smell like your mate,” he complained, even though the new notes to Angelo’s scent weren’t actually unpleasant.
“Yep. And that’s not going to change. Now, get your ass out here,” Angelo said.
Luca smiled even while his heart ached. He’d never heard Angelo sound so … happy. There was no other word to describe it. He couldn’t help but feel a little betrayed. He and Angelo had always been the loners of the pack after Emmy left to chase his dreams in Europe. Now Angelo had abandoned him, too .
“Please, Luca,” Angelo said, his voice soft.
Luca sighed and stood up, stretching his aching shoulders. “Fine.”
As he sat on the grass drinking mimosas next to the vampire Angelo had mated, he had to admit it wasn’t terrible. He might never want a mate himself, but even he could admit what a positive thing it was for Angelo. His bodyguard was playing nearby in wolf form with Luca’s sister Aria and his cousin Silas. He hadn’t seen Angelo let loose like that for years. Maybe ever.
“I know you’re there, Sugar. Are you trying to hunt me?” Vin called, his gaze focussed somewhere behind them.
Luca glanced up to see Marco lurking in the shadows. He tuned out their voices as the vampire and his Alpha said what needed to be said between them. It would take time for Marco and Vin to navigate through the change in their relationship now Vin was pack.
When Angelo playfully bounded up in wolf form to pounce on his mate, Luca pressed his eyes closed and turned away. Just because he was okay with a vampire as pack, didn’t mean he had to watch their mating bond in action. It brought back too many painful memories. Why would anyone willingly subject themselves to such an intrusive link? They could feel every emotion and use it against you. They could find you no matter how far or fast you ran. It was awful.
If he hadn’t been so distracted by the past, he might’ve noticed the threat before the rapid hail of bullets from a fully automatic machine gun broke the peaceful afternoon.
As it was, Angelo’s body careening into his again was just another frustration. He shouldn’t need protecting, dammit! The rounds smacking into the earth by his head said otherwise, and the world passed in a blur as Angelo carried him to safety .
He must’ve been more out of it than he’d realised because the next thing he knew, Angelo was depositing him gently in his bed and telling him to catch up on some sleep. All he could do was stare wide-eyed at the wall.
At some point, Marco took over guard duty so Angelo could disappear somewhere with his vampire mate. Again. His Alpha wasn’t fooled by his stillness, sensing the turmoil in him through the bond he had with every pack member.
“If you’re not going to rest, then I’m making martinis and we’re playing poker,” Marco growled.
“I need to work,” Luca said.
“You need to take a breath. You’ve barely slept in the last week,” Marco said.
“I’ll take a breath when we gut this traitor.”
Marco sighed. “Luca, there’s no quick fix to this. It will take time to run this asshole to ground. You need to look after yourself while we do or you’ll do their job for them. Get the fucking cards.”
Swallowing back a growl, Luca did as his cousin asked.
“Where did Angelo and Vin go?” he asked.
“They’re finding us a friendly witch to help get to the bottom of this.”
They’d lost two captives to earth magic before they could question them in the last few weeks, and the canny D-2S operatives had almost succeeded in framing the pack for an attack on the vampires. It was a major problem because it put the truce between the three crime families in the city at risk. Luca needed to figure out where the group was hiding so they could shut them down.
“There’s no such thing as a friendly witch. The Elemental Mayhem MC is just as dangerous as we are,” Luca pointed out.
“They’re not talking to the MC.”
“Whatever. If this witch is powerful enough to help, they must be associated with the MC. They wouldn’t be allowed in the city otherwise,” Luca said.
Marco raised an eyebrow, his dominance filling the room. “Are you questioning my judgement?”
Luca threw off the urge to submit, but it was a near thing. “Don’t go all alpha on me.”
The dominance faded and Marco actually looked guilty, which was worse. He was the pack Alpha. He shouldn’t feel guilty for demanding respect. The only reason he did was because he thought Luca needed coddling. Luca swore softly and focussed on his cards. He just couldn’t win.
They were still playing silently when Angelo and Vin returned later that night. The two barely paused to greet them before slipping off to Luca’s spare bedroom. Luca scowled as a rhythmic thumping sounded through the walls and low moans drifted across the living room.
“Fucking hell. There’s not enough soundproofing in the world for that shit. They need to go back to Angelo’s place,” Luca growled.
“They’re here to keep you safe,” Marco reminded him, voice calm.
Even Marco started to look a little awkward after two hours of sex noises, though.
“How the fuck can they still be going at it?” Luca asked, holding his cards tightly enough that he was sure Marco could see his knuckles turning white.
He could see the concern on his cousin’s face, and he hated it. Hated that they all saw him as vulnerable when he was just as strong as any of them. Hated that sometimes they were right.
“Young love and a new mating bond,” Marco said, turning up the music for the third time.
Fuck, he hated how even that small thing made the anger in him wild. Why did Marco always have to step in to try and make it better? He could turn his own fucking music up if he wanted to.
“They’re hardly young,” Luca growled.
He didn’t begrudge Angelo his happiness. If anyone deserved it, it was the strong, silently broken man who was basically family and who’d kept them all safe for so many years. He just wished he’d be happy somewhere other than Luca’s home. His sanctuary.
“It won’t be for long. Just until we find this traitor,” Marco said.
“And what if it doesn’t stop after that? You know the D-2S must be behind this. What if they keep coming for me?”
“Then I’ll deal with it. Not because you’re weak or because of who you are, but because of who I am. That’s my job as the head of this pack. That’s why I’m Alpha,” Marco said.
“I can’t stand having them here, Em,” Luca whispered, hating himself for the words because they sounded like a plea for the kind of protection he most loathed from his family. Protection not from any physical threat or assassin, but from his own messed-up psyche.
“Is what they have with each other really so bad?” Marco asked quietly. “What happened to you was as far from that kind of bond as it’s possible to be. They’re happy together.”
“And I’m happy for them. But I can imagine nothing worse.”
Angelo and Vin’s antics really didn’t help Luca catch up on the sleep he’d been avoiding. Instead, he put his headphones on and went back to his hacking. He had a couple of other projects he’d been neglecting in his search for the traitor. He needed to get back on top of things. There wasn’t time for him to rest.
He must’ve fallen asleep at some point because he woke to hot morning sunshine on his skin and the imprint of a keyboard on his face. Staggering through a perfunctory shower, he tried to figure out his next moves. Fatigue was making it hard to prioritise what he needed to do and he couldn’t help but feel like whichever task he focussed on meant he was failing three others.
The D-2S had been messing with their arms deals and he needed to keep on top of running interference so they couldn’t get a lock on where they’d be going down. He also had a side gig he’d taken on without telling anyone that was getting desperately urgent. But so was finding this traitor. If only he could fucking clone himself. There weren’t enough hours in the day even if he never slept, which he’d been making a good attempt at.
When he finally emerged into his open-plan living space to find some caffeine, five faces turned towards him in perfect synchronicity. It was creepy as fuck. Luca blinked as he realised almost all his seats were taken up with his closest family members. This wasn’t good. Vin was sitting on Angelo’s lap in an armchair, Marco was lounging on his olive green velvet couch next to his sister Aria, and Marco’s second-in-command Silas had taken the ottoman.
“What?” Luca growled, fighting the defensive urge to let his canines lengthen.
“Why don’t you get some coffee and then we’ll chat?” Marco suggested.
Luca’s scowl only deepened at the careful tone his alpha was taking.
“I got you, hon,” Vin said, bouncing up from Angelo’s lap and almost skipping to the kitchen.
The vampire assassin’s joyful movement was incongruous enough that it actually jolted Luca from his building temper for a moment before he remembered where he was. By the time he found his words again, Vin was pressing a hot cup of black coffee into his hands.
“You seemed like the ‘black like my soul’ type,” Vin teased. “But if you need some sweetening up, let me know.”
“This is fine. Thanks,” Luca muttered, welcoming the pain as he took his first scalding sip.
“Take a seat, Luca,” Marco said, waving to the last remaining chair.
“I’d rather stand.”
“I said take a seat ,” Marco repeated, letting his Alpha voice shine through.
It took every ounce of strength he had to take another sip of coffee before sinking down onto the chair.
“I’m going to talk and you’re going to listen. I need you to hear me out before you react. Can you do that?” Marco asked once he was settled.
Fuck. Whatever this was, it was going to suck balls. Luca swallowed hard. “Sure. Whatever.”
Marco bared his fangs at his tone and Luca was exposing his throat in submission before his heart rate even had time to skip. He’d been pushing it. He knew that. And Marco was clearly done with his bullshit.
“I’m listening,” he said, his voice soft. It wasn’t an apology, but it was close.
Silence fell in the room and Luca drew in a deep breath, letting himself sink into the scents of his family surrounding him.
“You are both the heart of our family and the heart of our operations, Luca. I might be the Alpha, but you look after all of us in your own quiet way every single day. Not one person here thinks you’re weak, but every single one of us knows you’re precious. Without you, everything falls apart. You hack my calendar to sneak family games night in. You have cannoli ingredients delivered to Silas so he can stress-bake. You cancel Aria’s alarm and delegate her work when she refuses to take a break, even though you’ve hardly slept for a week straight chasing down leads. And that’s saying nothing of your role in the business. I’ve lost count of the times you’ve warned us of the dagger at our back before it could strike. We’d be lost without you,” Marco began.
Luca didn’t like where this was going. Not one bit. And yeah, all that stuff might be true. But the reason his family let him get away with all that was because they were all too scared of hurting him. He took advantage of that to get his way, always wondering when he would finally hit the limit where they pushed back. Hoping for it. They never did because they thought he was so damn broken that he couldn’t cope with a little rejection.
“Just get to the point,” he snapped, his skin crawling at the sympathetic looks he hated from his family.
Marco sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. It was an uncharacteristic move. As Alpha, he never showed uncertainty like that.
“We can’t lose you … and I can’t keep you safe here when it’s someone in our own pack who’s trying to gun you down. You haven’t been sleeping because your wolf won’t let your guard down. The latest attack was the final straw. You can’t keep going this way,” Marco said, sounding like the words had been torn out of him.
“What are you saying?” Luca asked, panic starting to set in.
“I need you totally focussed on finding this traitor, and I need Angelo totally focussed on his work as head of security. I’m sending you somewhere safe until we figure this out. Somewhere you’ll be able to rest. It’s the only way. You can’t stay holed up in this suite forever and it’s not safe the second you step out the door.”
He was being packed off like a child. Banished.
“Where?” Luca croaked.
“Calder’s place. You’ll have the run of his penthouse and Hex-Rated. The wards there are better than anything we could pay for. No one can enter with a weapon. It’s in the neutral zone, so you won’t have to worry about any trouble from the other crime families. You’ll be safe there.”
What. The. Fuck?! A fucking witch? Not to mention the fact Hex-Rated was a gay hook-up bar. Marco knew Luca hated when people came onto him. Everyone assumed a shifter would be up for being pawed at. It made Luca murderous when they tried. But he couldn’t say any of that without giving himself away to the rest of his family, who had no idea he’d been basically celibate since the day his brother died. Marco knew because he couldn’t hide something like that from the pack link with his Alpha, but no one else did.
Luca glared at Marco as he realised exactly how well he’d been played. With Silas, Angelo, Vin, and Aria watching on, he couldn’t tell the truth about why he hated this idea so much without proving to them all that he was broken.
“No. Absolutely not,” Luca said.
“I wasn’t asking,” Marco shot back.
His sister Aria got to her feet and put an arm around his stiff body. “Come on, bro. It won’t be for long. And maybe you can let loose a bit while you’re there.”
Luca barely swallowed a howl of frustration.
“Cal has a decent tech setup and you might be able to get access to some of the witch networks while you’re there,” Vin added. The vampire might be the only other one in the room who’d guessed what was going through Luca’s head, and he was clearly hoping to sweet-talk him with what he knew would be the biggest temptation for Luca—access to new data.
“Why would he even take me in? And who’s to say he won’t sell me out to our traitor? He’s a fucking witch and you know what just went down there!” Luca said.
Calder had owned and run Hex-Rated for the last decade. Luca hadn’t paid much attention to him because he kept a super low profile and didn’t interfere with their shit, but he knew the man had tried to distance himself from the Elemental Mayhem MC with varying success. He’d also banned vampires from the club because most of them were peddlers of human flesh, although he seemed to have a soft spot for Vin. A few weeks ago, Luca would’ve said Hex-Rated’s back rooms were the safest place to undertake discreet business, but that was before Angelo and Vin ran into trouble there.
“He’s reinforced the wards since the attack. Nothing will get through now he knows there’s an earth witch working against us. I trust him, and I have enough leverage on him that he wouldn’t try anything,” Vin said.
“He already agreed. He’s expecting you,” Angelo added.
Luca turned to Silas with a pleading look. Surely, someone would stand by him. Pack stayed together. They didn’t run off with their tail between their legs.
“This is the smart move, Luca. It’ll throw them off their game and give you time to track them down,” Silas said.
Luca sighed. He should’ve known there was no way Marco’s brother and second-in-command would undermine their Alpha.
“Don’t make me order you, Luca,” Marco said, a silent plea hiding beneath the firm words.
Luca let his head flop back and squeezed his eyes shut tight. The rage in him wanted to ignore his Alpha and make him force Luca to his will, but he couldn’t do that to his family. Marco was already hurting enough by having to admit he couldn’t protect one of his pack without leaving them exposed.
“People will ask questions if I’m not here. Uncle Gio and the enforcers especially,” Luca said.
His hacking work meant he was involved in almost every major undertaking of the family. The enforcers relied on him to wipe security footage and keep them safe as they shifted weapons across the city. He didn’t have to be on site to do that, but that was what everyone was used to. As he straightened in his chair and turned his attention to Marco, he had to fight to keep the scowl from his face at the relief he saw there. The Alpha could sense he’d given in to the inevitable.
“We’ve already got a cover story for you,” Marco said.
“Of course you fucking do. Why do I get the feeling this is going to piss me off even more?” Luca asked.
“I’d tell you to chill out, but it’s that temper of yours that will sell the story. It wouldn’t be the first time you’ve stormed out of the mansion,” Marco replied.
Luca flushed with something between rage and embarrassment. Marco was right. He was known for wearing his heart on his sleeve—that meant dragging his family to enjoy life to the max when he was happy and giving in to his very un-shifterlike need for space when he was mad.
“They might buy me running off, but they’re not going to buy the destination,” Luca said.
It was Silas who answered. “Yes, they will. Because your sister is going to bitch about your new man stealing you away.”
Luca froze in place, his claws slipping free against his will and digging into his arm where he was gripping hard enough to draw blood. Marco frowned in concern as the scent of his blood filled the air, but he couldn’t make himself care.
“I can’t … I’m not…” Luca snapped his mouth shut before his stumbling words could give his weakness away even more than they already had.
“Oh, come on. It’ll be fun, bro. Undercover in the heart of witch territory and a fake relationship ? It’s totally badass,” Aria teased, but her worry for him bled through despite her flippant words.
Luca turned his pleading gaze back to Marco—the only one who could put an end to this farce—but there was no mercy there.
“It’s just until we find the traitor, and it’s not like you have to attend any public events with him or anything. You’ll be fine,” Marco said. His Alpha tone slipped into that last sentence and Luca’s body started forcing itself to calm.
Marco stood and pulled him up into his arms, taking a firm grip on his nape. Luca drew in a deep shuddering breath of his Alpha’s scent and let the familiarity of pack hold him steady when it felt like his carefully constructed coping mechanisms were crumbling to pieces around him.
“I’ll do anything to keep you safe,” Marco whispered into his hair. “Even send you away.”
But who was going to keep him safe from the terror crashing through his soul? The last time someone had pretended to have a relationship with him, they’d forced a mating bond on him, violating him in the worst way possible.
Some things were worse than death.