Chapter 13
Luca
I KNEW EVERYTHING about the Cabellos and too much about Vivienne. She’d been under my skin for five long years, and I had yet to learn how to erase the memory of her soft hands. Or how her frosty eyes flared when she was angry, or that she smelled like vanilla, the scent stronger behind her ears.
I ran a thumb over my lip, as if I could still feel her pulse there. The very essence of her life—a life someone wanted to end. A sardonic breath scratched my throat. The only thing I didn’t know about Vivienne was why she was at the top of someone’s hit list, and who wanted her dead.
I shouldn’t have admitted to her that I cared to find out, nor should I have felt anything while she was pinned beneath me.
But I did that too. I always felt too much for Vivienne.
My scar still burned from her touch hours after we were face-to-face, and I shook off the sensation, stalking through the halls with a scowl.
Vigo Cabello insisted that his men keep his figlia chaste, and I complied. Yet, most days, all I thought about were the ways I wanted to defile her innocence. If I ever gave in to that urge, my ass would sink into the Hudson River alongside Bruno. Poor bastard.
Then again, he didn’t have to worry about Vigo’s wrath. That burden fell to the fools allowing an interruption to his dead wife’s funeral. It was best to keep my attention on the problem at hand rather than having my hands all over a naked, squirming Vivienne.
Her father’s voice echoed off the walls. He’d held his fury through dinner, then let it loose with the family gone. I was summoned to answer questions about the breach in security, and when turning the final corner in a maze of underground tunnels, I ran straight into temptation.
Vivienne yelped.
I grabbed her arms as she bounced back. “Are you hurt?”
Her eyes flashed. Frost and fire. Then her chin notched up in the kind of defiance that boiled my blood.
“I saved your life, and you’re going to glare at me?”
Her full lips smoothed into a thin line. I hated her silence. I hated that it was my fault she wouldn’t talk to me or even look at me half the time, so I shook her for an answer.
She winced, slapping away my hand. “Why do you care?”
“I don’t,” I lied, pushing the sleeve of her dress past her bicep.
She tugged and hissed like a wildcat when she was nothing but a little bird. For such a tiny thing, she had a good amount of strength hidden behind a petite frame and long hair that wasn’t quite gray or white. Then again, her cute disposition wasn’t what ground my teeth together.
“Who did this?” I asked while studying the wound splitting her ivory skin.
She jerked from my hold, pulling her clothes in place. “Angelini’s men. I thought you knew everything.”
“They didn’t make the goddamn thing bleed today, Vivienne.”
“Vivi.”
Our eyes collided, and after a moment of hard contact, my vision slid to her neck. Her pulse thumped against her smooth skin—a violent beat I had the urge to tame. Or incense. One or the other, I couldn’t decide.
“Vivi.” I stepped forward. She backed into the wall, tilting her head up to hold my gaze. “Tell me who hurt you.”
“And if I won’t?”
“I’ll bend you over my knee.”
Her little nose wiggled, as if the anger I induced needed an outlet, and she was about to cast a spell on me. I was fairly certain she already had.
“You wouldn’t dare,” she taunted.
“Test me.” My forearm landed next to her cheek as I leaned in and ignored the shiver ghosting through her body. “Do it so I can see what shade of pink stains your skin under my palm, or would it turn red?”
She fumbled for a place to put her hands, rubbing them along her black dress and the soft thighs I felt earlier.
“Give me a name,” I insisted.
She shook her head. “Why are you doing this?”
I inched forward. The air between her body and mine vibrated with an intensity that brought me even closer. Closer than we’d been since I’d first joined the mob and made a vow to the king of all kings.
I should’ve hated Vivienne Cabello and the easy life she led when mine was so hard.
I should’ve kept walking. I should’ve done anything but taunt her, waiting for the swell of her tits to rise with each breath.
But I didn’t. The only time I’d ever given in to temptation seared through my veins—a memory I couldn’t escape.
She’d been in the same position, looking up with flushed cheeks.
A plump mouth. An innocent eighteen-year-old glowing with the first trapping of lust. The heady combination curled my lip to camouflage the riot of feelings beating against my rib cage.
Guilt. Shame. Things I couldn’t name, and others I could.
Like how she made my dick constantly hard.
Fuck. I pounded the wall next to her head, grinding the question through my teeth. “What am I doing?”
“Looking at me like that,” she whispered.
“Like what?”
“Like you hate me, but you don’t. I know you don’t.”
She fisted my shirt, and my gaze dropped to the hold she had on me. I couldn’t trust myself to look at her or the torment I knew I’d find in her eyes. But her shaking breath returned my attention to her lips, the bottom glistening from her tongue that ran along its length.
“Mio salvatore,” she said softly.
It tore me up inside when she called me that because I was the farthest thing from a savior. The words made my chest ache, with the same kind of pain quivering through her voice.
“You’ve ignored me for so long. You turn away so you won’t have to see me. But I’m begging you, please. See me now, Luca.”
I wrenched myself from the grip she had on my soul. She captured what was left of it five years ago with just a look, and I’d made myself hate her ever since. We both needed a reminder of my revulsion.
“I have, Vivienne. I’ve seen you grow from a caged bird into this delicate woman hiding in that church and behind smiles at the shelter. Acts of absolution for the mob princess to feel better about Daddy’s work.”
“Go to hell,” she snapped, raising her hand.
I caught her wrist a second before her palm connected with my face. Twisting her arm around her lower back, I tugged her into my chest and sneered my contempt.
“Grow up, Vivi. Learn how to use the Glock before strapping it to your thigh and staring dumbstruck at the men gunning you down. Look around and open your eyes. Simone’s dead, and that means there are new rules. No one is protecting you now.”
Our heaving breaths came together as she eased against my grip, molding along the hard lines of my body. We were at war with each other. One minute furious, the next desperate to connect, and it was mind-boggling.
“Now you’re wrong,” she stated, the words fanning over my throat. “You gave me your protection at the funeral.”
I sighed, releasing her. “This again.”
She stepped closer. Always closer. “Why did you save me? You should’ve stayed with my father, or at the very least secured Stefano or Dante’s safety. But you didn’t. Why?”
She took my silence as an invitation to trace my scar from beginning to end with the softest touch.
I’d never met a woman who made my skin burn hot beneath her fingers.
Or threatened a future I’d planned in meticulous detail.
I resented the hell out of her for doing both, but I hated myself more for wanting everything she offered.
I closed my eyes for a heartbeat, then retreated two steps. “You don’t know what you ask for, Vivienne. I’m not who you think I am. I’m not—”
“Honorable?”
Among other things.
I nodded. “And you would do well to remember the warning.”
I turned and walked away with a scowl, realizing I never got an answer to my initial question. The next time the little vixen distracted my attention, I’d bend her over my knee. The image of her bare skin flushing red under my palm played in my mind. Heat rushed to my groin.
With clenched fists, I pushed the fantasy aside.
Vivienne Cabello wasn’t mine.
And goddamn if that wasn’t, and always would be, my only regret.
?
THE BOSS ORDERED Vivi to his office as I stepped inside. I waited in front of a replica of the bold wood in the Oval Office. This place was just as secure. Nothing could penetrate these walls—except, apparently, a spy. Secrets bled from the family, and I was about to pay for the sin.
The capo stood behind his desk. His preferred Sig Sauer gleamed under the lamplight, aiming directly at my heart. The beat remained steady until his daughter walked in. Her breath caught somewhere behind me, and my fists clenched by my side.
“The leak is from within the household,” Vigo insisted.
“Kill him,” Jimmy DeMarco said about me while he glanced at Stefano and Dante, two statues of indifference. His gaze shifted to Vigo, whose hand remained steady. “He’s the obvious snitch.”
“Sei pieno di merda (You’re full of shit),” I interjected just as calmly.
“Whose plan was it to leave the south shore unattended today? Wasn’t mine, DeMarco.
I follow orders. Your orders. We all do.
And the security structure this afternoon was lazy at best. Sir,” I added with enough sarcasm that it was bitter on my tongue.
Seconds ticked off the clock. Vigo’s finger strained against the trigger, then released. So did air from my lungs. “He’s right.”
Jimmy shuffled an inch ahead. “Now, boss. Who could’ve guessed they’d come by air? A helicopter? I mean, none of the families would—”
“I pay you to think of all possibilities, piccolo merde,” Vigo snapped.
Jimmy bowed his head, holding his hands up in surrender. “Sì, you’re right. You’re right. I’ll reconsider my strategy.”
“Besides, Mancini has been tailed for months,” Vigo continued, “He’s clean, or he’d be next to Bruno in the morgue. As for the rest of you….” He swung his gun at Jimmy, then the ten soldiers lined up behind us.
“The informant leaked details to the Angelinis, not the law. It’s how Simone was taken from me.
” A tremor moved through Vigo’s hand, and he dropped it to his side.
“It’s how they took my most precious possession and came after her figlia today while we grieved.
A sacrilege. This is someone who knows our every step and precisely where our weapons are aimed.
Someone who knows our comings and goings. ”
Vigo moved fast, his trigger faster. The discharge rebounded, yet all I heard was Vivienne’s gasp.
In my periphery, Jimmy fell in a heap. Red oozed into a starburst on his once pristine white shirt and to the left of his tie.
Lifeless eyes stared ahead, and then he was gone, carried out by two goons ushered in to remove the garbage.
“He was the first.” Vigo tucked the gun into the holster strapped to his chest. “But he won’t be the last. Until I find the root cause of the infestation, each of you will have a personal guard.” He spoke to his children but looked only at his daughter. “You will go nowhere alone.”
Two decent guys stepped forward. One of them was assigned to Stefano, the other to Dante. Damian was summoned to stand where Jimmy fell. The rest were dismissed. The capo sat, pouring three fingers of Macallan into a crystal tumbler while contemplating the two of us.
Years of sacrifice were about to pay off.
Decisions in this line of work were dark and morally compromising.
So was being the go-to guy in a very corrupt cartel—a profession I accepted without question.
A truth that ate away my soul. I wanted Jimmy’s position, and this was the beginning of that end.
“Vivi is a handful.” Vigo’s tone was dry as he blinked from the whisky to me. “But I trust that you will keep her secure.”
“What?” Stefano hissed. “We cannot allocate our greatest asset to babysit a shrew—”
“A shrew?” Vivi spat while glaring first at her brother, then at the boss. “Constant surveillance is not what I want, per favore.”
“Stai zitto (shut up), both of you. My mind is clear, and the decision made. Luca.” With his drink in hand, he waved me in her direction.
“I don’t need him, or anyone else for that matter,” she hissed.
Everyone shifted their attention to Vivi except for Vigo, who twisted the gold signet ring on his pinky finger once—a symbol of power.
Twice—the ruthless edge in which he led the Cosa Nostra.
At the third rotation, his eyes dragged to his daughter.
“Argue with me again, and your arm won’t be the only injury you bear. ”
I clenched my fists and forced a calming breath into my lungs.
“I don’t mean any disrespect,” Vivi said, moving between her brothers, one towering on either side.
“But it’s useless to devote such a weapon to me.
I’m no threat. I’m not involved in the business, nor do I know anything.
What good am I alive or dead to anyone inside these walls or out? I’m… worthless.”
Thick tension permeated the room as he stared.
Then he finished the Macallan and poured a second shot.
“Not worthless, figlia. Not if someone else finds you of value. If they want you, so do I. At least until I learn the reasons for their interest.” His gaze slid to mine, and I grasped the meaning of the assignment.
The capo wanted information. The more I gave, the closer I’d get to my goal.
“She is tied to you now, Luca. I won’t be disappointed.”
I bowed with understanding. As my head bent, words escaped my mouth, and I tasted their truth with bitter conviction. “If my heart beats, it beats for Vivienne.”
The sincerity behind the sentiment didn’t concern me so much as how I would keep her alive. How I’d keep us both alive.