36. Ara
It’s strange to lay on top of Luca with his arm wrapped around me, listening to the steady rhythm of his heartbeat. A reminder he is after all just a man. I shouldn’t find contentment beside the monster who is the last person I should be sleeping with. And yet…here I am.
“So what I don’t get with this whole mafia thing is why you even pretend to have a day job?” I ask, curious now as I draw patterns on his chest. Although I’d been studying the Armani brothers actions for months now, I didn’t entirely understand it. You hear about this stuff in articles and on TV but I was never raised by the same laws that govern his.
Luca chuckles as he pushes back my hair from my face. The strawberry wig I’d removed hours ago is somewhere on his floor. “I like money, Arabella. I love that people fear me and know not to mess with me. And when they do I can execute discipline instead of asking someone else to do it.”
“You mean violence.” I perch myself on my elbow and look down on him. “Would you hurt your own family?”
Something dark crosses his features. “Be careful in the things you ask, Ara.”
Because although whatever unspoken semi-truce we’d come to, opening up Luca was evidently still off the table. However, I had caught a small glimpse of the boy he might’ve once been last night. It was strangely reassuring, that my vulnerability was matched with his to an extent but now that vault was shut tight once again.
I think back to how he treated his brother. As if Dario was poison to the family and yet when he was a teenager he would go as far to defend him for being called a name. From the research I’d done, Dario was also the only immediate family he had left. His father was reported to have a heart attack when Luca was twenty-two and their mother passed from cancer when he was only eight, which was three years after Dario was born and their father never remarried.
Knowing that and having Luca open up about it are two different things. I doubt he spoke to anyone about it. It always feels strange when those who have all the money in the world still are no exceptions to ailments and loss. At the end of the day, we were all very human.
I wonder if his father mourned their mother unlike mine. I wonder what type of woman she might’ve been. An uncomfortable weight forms in the pit of my stomach. It was a toxic, distasteful fate that the intertwining of our families led to my mother’s death. Would she hate me for sleeping with Luca? Would she understand my reasoning behind it?
Even I wasn’t sure if my actions were justified anymore.
My stomach rumbles and I feel red spread across my cheeks.
“When was the last time you ate? Besides the garbage twinkies you eat?” Luca asks, perching himself on an elbow.
“Hey! I’ll have you know they offer some kind of nutrition. However, I’m feeling generous and will make you a fair deal. I’ll give them up when you take up seafood again.”
His expression twists and I throw my head back and laugh. That’s when I notice Luca watching me, all seriousness and like he’s about to take on an army. “What is it?” I ask.
He seems unsure of himself. It’s the first time I’ve seen that expression on him. “I was just thinking I’d never heard you genuinely laugh before. You should try it more often.”
An unsettling tension runs between us. Too close. Too familiar. Too vulnerable. Parts of me are slipping through a crack when he was only ever meant to see that mask I’ve carefully built over the years.
“I could say the same to you.”
He kicks up a slow arrogant smile and I’m grateful for the way it shifts the unease sitting in my chest. “Or perhaps we were meant to be two miserable bastards together. Now come on.” He scoops me up close to his chest. I’m wearing nothing but one of his dress shirts that reaches to my knees.
“What are we doing?” I ask.
“Feeding you of course.” He says casually as he confidently strides towards the kitchen and places me on one of the island bar stools.
When I look at the clock it’s three in the morning. “At this hour?”
He shifts through the oversized kitchen and it looks like he’s discovering things in his own pantry. “Have you ever actually used this kitchen before or are all of your meals made for you?”
Luca casually shrugs as he finds flour. “I’ve cooked here once or twice. I’ll meet you halfway with your sweet tooth.”
I watch him incredulously as he pulls out certain ingredients. There’s something novel about watching a man of this size and power shuffling around the kitchen. My gaze roams down his wide shoulders and lands on his ass. This man.
“Stop staring at my ass, Ara, or we’re never going to get through cooking this.”
Biting my bottom lip is the only way I can keep the smile in. Once Luca’s placed the ingredients on the bench and starts throwing them in together, I take a guess. “Pancakes?”
“Correct,” he confirms as he starts mixing the batter.
I’m squinting at him so hard in disbelief and waiting for the real Luca to come out or the magician to appear. However, he’s deadly serious.
“How did you learn how to make pancakes?” I ask, incredulously.
He shrugs, nonchalant. “I remember making them with my mother the first time when I was six. Apparently, it was the same recipe her mother taught her. I never forgot.”
My heart falters. I want to ask him so many questions, but I know the moment I do he’ll shut it down. Because we’re still the very same people who have the potential to ruin one another. The one thing I can’t hate Luca for is the connection we share in both grieving our mothers.
I wonder had she not died if Luca would be any different. If my mother hadn’t died, I am certain I’d be different. Perhaps that was just an excuse for my sly and cunning personality. Maybe I would’ve always been this person with or without her influence.
“Tell me about your mother,” I say quietly because I’m not entirely sure he’ll reply.
His blue gaze crashes with mine. I think he’s about to shut me down, but I’m surprised by the brutal honesty that follows while he still goes about his domesticated task.
“There’s not much to say really. She was the opposite to my father. Kind and generous but could be just as ruthless especially when it came to her family. But I’d never seen her handle a weapon. She didn’t have need for that when our father acted as the shield. The only thing he couldn’t protect her from was terminal cancer.”
It hurts to see how matter of fact he is about it. As if he wasn’t personally affected by it as a child. “She got the diagnosis a year after Dario was born and no matter what we tried, her condition became worse and she passed away after two years.”
“The only ones who cried at her funeral were her sister and Dario. I stood by my father, trying to impress him by how cold I could be as well. Because although I feared my father at times when I was a child, I saw how others respected him.”
A lump lodges in my throat at the memory of my own mother’s funeral. My father hadn’t cried either and I remember him being furious when I clung to her coffin, fearful to truly let her go. Luca’s able to talk about the loss so clinically, with no emotional attachment. As if reading my mind he adds.
“The truth was the house was never the same without her. Our father shaped us however he pleased. And that was into a weapon.”
It’s so dysfunctional that I want to give him a hug but there’s no pain in his voice, no physical reaction to his loss. It almost felt inhumane how detached he was from the situation. I remind myself that we were raised in very different worlds.
Instead, I ask, “Is there any reason why you haven’t settled down yourself then? Started your own family?” Because isn’t that what was most important to mafia. Their family, heritage, and the continuation of their success?
“Why do you ask? Are you nominating yourself to carry my child, Ara?”
My stomach drops at the insinuation and momentary image of us playing happy family. “Of course not,” I snap.
He chuckles as he begins to pour batter into the heated pan. “Because the only company I can stand is my own. Maybe Lorenzo and Ivan’s as well. Everyone always wants something. A child would be no different. I’d be cruel to bring one into this world. I don’t exactly scream father figure, wouldn’t you agree?”
It’s strange to pin moments like these against the same man who sent me body parts as gifts.
“At least you’re self-aware.” He offers me a “don’t test me” expression and I can’t help but break out into a smile. “What about me? You know I want something from you and yet you seem to like my company plenty.” I’m playing with fire. It’s a dangerous question. Maybe it’s how domesticated the situation feels that offers me courage.
“You, I can handle.”
“What does that even mean?”
He steps around the counter and drags my seat closer to him as he looms over me. “It means I will fuck this filthy little mouth of yours when I want.” His thumb rubs against my bottom lip. “And smack that ass of yours whenever I please. I’m going to consume you during every waking moment of your day. Because that brings me great pleasure.”
“It sounds like an addiction,” I counter.
“You’re so much more than an addiction, Ara.” He leans in and bites my bottom lip. “I’m still trying to get my fill.”
My body shudders with goose bumps and I want to mount him all over again. Yes, I want to devour this man willingly and I try my hardest to swat away the unknown shift that rests between us. It’s a palpable tension that hasn’t always been present, or perhaps I was so good at denying its existence that it’s creeping realization is cutting off any rational thought.
Luca and I can never be more than this. Whatever this was? We were using each other and yet, I’d come to expect him. As much as I voiced hating having him around, I’d become used to it. Consumed by it even. It was either because I was entirely depraved as a woman up until this point or…
I shut down the thought. I could never fall for someone like Luca Armani.
With exceptional timing my stomach growls loudly again and we both look down.
“Perhaps pancakes first,” Luca says.