26. Luca
LUCA
“God, I’m nervous,” she mutters, as she paces back and forth along the dining table.
The lights are low, the candles flickering and casting long shadows across the polished wooden table, and in any other scenario, this would feel like a romantic night in.
Instead, Katie is wracked with tension, and I know nothing is going to ease her mind until he’s finally here.
Because tonight is the night she’s going to meet my father.
It’s been nearly a month since she arrived in the city, and my dad has been chomping at the bit to meet her in person that entire time.
It’s taken pretty much every excuse in the book to give her long enough to settle in and start feeling like herself around here, but this evening they’re going to meet, and the two sides of my life are going to come together for good.
“It’s going to be fine,” I assure her, pulling her down onto my lap. Outside, the sound of the fountain in the garden serves as a soothing backdrop to our conversation, and she wraps her arms around my shoulders and gazes down at me for a moment.
“You sure there’s no way I can still get out of this?” she asks. I can tell she’s joking. Well, mostly.
I shake my head. “He needs to meet you,” I remind her. “To give his blessing for the marriage. I know it’s not…” I trail off. I’m not even sure how to put it into words, not really. Not what?
She knows that she’s becoming a part of this family, and that he’s the head of it; now that we’re going to be married, she needs to know who she’s dealing with, who she’s going to be working with from this point forward.
But, not unreasonably, the thought of being in a room with a mafia boss seems to have her spooked to the core, the last vestiges of her old life still clinging to her and throwing her off-balance.
“I can’t believe I’m doing this,” she mutters, managing a small smile. “I mean, a year ago, I was working for a city councilor, and now I’m sitting down with a mafia boss…”
“Trust me, they’re probably not as different as you think.”
She cocks an eyebrow at me. “Oh, trust me ,” she replies. “They probably are…”
“This is the last thing,” I remind her gently. “The last thing you have to do before you’re part of the family for real. After this, you can start with your plans, put them into action, make some tracks toward helping the women who came out of the brothels…”
She closes her eyes for a moment, and nods.
I know that’s the most important thing to her, part of the reason she’s even willing to go through with this in the first place.
She knows that my father has access to the kind of power most people can only dream of, and after what she saw when she was kidnapped at the hands of the Magliones, she will do whatever it takes to help those women who survived him.
“You’re right,” she agrees. “And besides, I don’t want to have spent all day slaving over a hot stove for?—”
All at once, I hear the sleek buzz that announces a new visitor—the doorman lets people come and go at his discretion, and I can already guess that my father will have some smart comments about being kept out of the house that he helped me purchase.
This place, of course, came through one of his connections, though I paid for it with my own money—no way am I going to rely on anyone else to provide my family home for me, no matter how willing my father might have been to cover it for me.
He's still making sense of the fact that he’s a grandfather.
Emil, by some miracle, managed to keep his mouth shut when he got back to the city, allowing me to tell my father what really happened.
Though he was shocked, and more than a little horrified to discover that I’d had a child out of wedlock, when he found out that I was engaged and intending to bring Katie and our daughter to live with me in Harrotsville, he swiftly changed his tune.
As long as he got to meet her, and scope her out for himself—which was what the intention of tonight has always been.
I make my way to the door, where the doorman has already allowed my father onto the property. He lifts his gaze to take it in, nodding approvingly.
“An old friend of my uncle’s designed this place,” he remarks, extending his hand to mine and giving it a businesslike shake. “Looks like the places I used to summer near Bologna…”
And then he glances past me—and I turn to see that Katie has followed me out from the dining room and is currently twisting her hands into knots in front of her, waiting for me to make the introduction.
“Dad,” I stop him in his tracks. “There’s someone I’d like you to meet.”
I take Katie’s hand and pull her to my side—showing a united front, making it clear that nothing and nobody will come between us. She squeezes her hand against the small of my back, silently thanking me for taking the initiative.
“This is Katie. My fiancée.”
For a moment, the two of them just stand there, staring at each other—I realize that I’m holding my breath as I look between them, not sure how this is going to go. My old life and my new life, coming together, the final test of whether or not they will fit with one another…
“Great to meet you, Mr. Mariana,” Katie offers finally, holding her hand out to my father.
After a pause, he takes it.
“Please, call me Marco,” he replies, and there’s a note of warmth to his voice that draws a sigh of relief from between my lips at once. He might have had a few choice words for me when he found out about all of this, but as long as he’s kind to her, I don’t give a damn about it.
“Marco,” she repeats, smiling. “It’s so good to meet you. Would you like something to eat? I made us some dinner…”
“A good cook, Luca?” my father remarks as he slaps me on the shoulder. “It sounds as though you’ve done well…”
“Perhaps if you say that again after you’ve eaten my food,” Katie jokes, as we make our way along the corridor toward the dining room, “I’ll be more inclined to believe you…”
We sit for dinner, with Polly being taken care of by one of the nannies I hired to help out around here—of course, Katie has barely made use of them, insisting that she’s perfectly capable of taking care of her daughter on her own terms. I know better than to argue with her, especially in these early days as she starts to relax into this new life, but I hope she’ll start exploring a little more of the city and make some use of her newfound freedom when she’s ready.
“So, a marriage, eh?” My father remarks, when the final dishes are being cleared away by the kitchen staff—another addition to the house that I made before Katie arrived, mainly because I want as much time with her as I can get.
The less time she spends distracted by silly little things like cooking and cleaning, the more time I have to catch up with her and Polly, and that’s everything I need right now.
“Yes, and your son has given me a ring big enough that I’ll never be able to forget it,” she jokes, flashing him the engagement ring on her finger.
“I’d have rather he not waited till after you had a baby,” my father remarks, cocking an eyebrow, “but I suppose better late than never. When have you set the date for?”
Katie and I exchange a look—truth be told, we’ve been so caught up in everything that’s been going on, we haven’t had time to talk about when we’re actually going to get married.
The details don’t seem all that important, not when her presence here is so fresh and she still has so much to get used to.
“Honestly, we have no idea,” Katie replies, taking the lead with her honesty, and my father sighs heavily.
“Well, I suppose you’ve had bigger things to be thinking about,” he adds, conceding the point.
It’s as close as I’m going to get to an apology for the way he lost his shit at me when he found out I had a baby with a woman I wasn’t married to, but I’ll take it.
A dark shadow flits across his face as he looks at Katie, and I know he’s thinking about what he heard of the kidnapping that took place just a few months ago.
“I’m sorry you were caught up in all of it, Katie,” he continues, his voice lowering gruffly. “I’ve known that the Magliones would stoop low before, but I never imagined they would target someone like you…”
She shakes her head. “I’m safe now, and so is my daughter,” she replies. “And I wouldn’t be able to say that if it weren’t for your son.”
She reaches across the table and takes my hand, giving it a squeeze that I return.
“I know that…I know Luca will be returning to work with you, now that he’s back in the city,” she continues, her voice slightly halting—I can tell she’s having a hard time with this, speaking it all out loud to this man who she barely knows but who wields such immense power, and I’m proud of her for not backing down.
And she’s right, of course. Now that I’ve finished my tenure at the hospital, I’ve taken up my usual position at my father’s side, managing the medical needs of the men who come and go through our business.
With the death of Maglione, there have been less pressing matters to attend to, but in our line of work, I know it’s only a matter of time before the demands begin anew.
“And now that I’m going to be part of the family…
I’d like to do my part too,” she continues.
Her voice is a little shaky, but she’s holding it together.
I’ve heard her rehearsing this conversation in the ensuite bathroom attached to our sprawling double bedroom, though of course I haven’t told her.
I want her to go into this with the utmost confidence—that’s the only thing my father responds to, and I don’t want him to have any reason to second-guess her.
“Do your part?” he says, lifting his chin and eyeing her for a moment. “And what does that entail, exactly?”