Chapter 35 #3
I shook my head. “I don’t blame you for anything, mio salvatore. She did what she did knowing this would happen if she was caught. To a point, I don’t blame her either. She loved her husband as much as I love you. For that, her actions are just, but I cannot forgive the fifteen years of lies.”
Fifteen years of betrayal.
She exploited my mother.
She used me.
And my husband could suffer for her deceit.
My lungs grew tight, and I shook my head to escape the feeling.
“It may not seem like it, but she loved you, uccello.”
“She didn’t,” I hissed, my heart going cold. “She wouldn’t have done this if she did. Her lies are unforgivable.”
Luca studied me, three lines digging in between his brows. “But you hate your father. How can you not forgive what you also desire?”
“I only have a handful of people in my life who I love. Mama’s already gone.
You…” I swallowed down my quivering voice, and he pulled me onto his lap.
I tucked my forehead into the curve of his neck and breathed through my panic.
“You’re the most important, mio salvatore, and I have to protect you. ”
His mouth pressed into my hair, but he stayed silent.
“That’s hard to do when we don’t know what she’s done or who she’s talked to. My God. It seems like everyone wants into my father’s inner circle, and they’ll lie, cheat, and take advantage of whoever necessary to get there. Me included.”
“She couldn’t tell you, uccello.”
“Why? I told her everything!” I smacked the table, my palm stinging right along with my eyes. “I thought she was my confidant, but she was someone else’s, and now you could suffer for it.”
“Couldn’t she be both?”
Could she? My pulse stumbled over the possibility.
My entire life, she led this household. She was everywhere, listening and asking questions.
The sudden relationship with Gio made sense now too.
Another mind to pick, more answers to find.
But could she protect me and Luca, even while destroying Vigo Cabello?
“You need a break from all this,” Luca said, smoothing down my hair.
“I need to swim.” I perked up. “Will you take me into the city for a new bathing suit? There’s a store on seventeenth. I normally get them there.”
We met the silence with heavy eye contact, along with the memory of the last time I’d worn the shredded remains of my one-piece. But Luca guided us away from that chilling rabbit hole when a chuckle rumbled through his chest.
“The same style, Vivienne? The same high-cut sides that show off leg and skin, and just enough fabric to hold your tits together. That bathing suit, Vivi? The suit I dreamed of after a little bird begged at my feet dripping wet and needy.”
I blushed from the memory of that night five years ago. Innocent, virginal Vivi, who knew nothing about seducing a man. I must have done a decent job, though, because that same man tipped my chin and kissed me into a new kind of warmth.
“The same one,” I whispered against his mouth. “I want to get in the water.”
Desperation quivered in my voice, and he nodded.
Minutes later, I had my purse, and we were in a car with Damian following behind.
I didn’t want to push my luck by asking, so Luca drove.
The ride was quiet but for the Range Rover’s fan.
Of course he looked good, relaxed in a white shirt and jeans, his wrist hanging over the wheel while his thumb rolled against his wedding band.
As I smiled, a vehicle roared past ours on the southbound lane, swinging to a sharp stop in front of us. Luca slammed the breaks. I shot forward, but his arm slung across me, holding me in place better than the seat belt could.
With a final jerk, the Range Rover came to a standstill just as a lanky Asian man unfolded from the other car.
“Jesus fuck, Tanaka,” Luca hissed, pulling his cell and calling Dami. “I’ve got this handled,” he snapped. “It’s the cop who interrogated me after the incident at the Cantina.”
Cop.
My lungs went tight.
The walls closed in.
Too much from that day had bubbled up in the last forty-eight hours for this to be a coincidence. That didn’t seem to bother Luca, who unrolled his window instead of racing away.
“Missed my good looks and witty banter, ufficiale?”
The guy wore jeans cut close to the lean line of his legs and a black T-shirt. The holster and weapon strapped to his chest were the only indication he was in the P.D.
“Glad I ran into you out here,” he said to Luca, but kept his dark eyes on mine. “Saved me the hassle of going to the house.”
Luca scoffed. Tanaka glanced at his ripped knuckles gripping the wheel, then the butterfly bandages on his forehead and the gash on his cheekbone. His gaze shifted back to the bruise at my hairline, which I hadn’t bothered to hide with foundation.
“Ms. Cabello.” He dipped his chin.
“Mancini,” I corrected. “Vivienne Mancini.”
He blinked to my husband. “I’m not sure what to say.”
“How about congratulations,” Luca growled. “And give it with the kind of respect my wife deserves.”
His brow arched. “Not your girlfriend, huh?”
“Not your business. What do you want, officer?”
Luca glared while the cop shifted his attention to my eyes.
He pulled a document from his back pocket, shook open the bifold, and held up an eight-by-ten picture of a man with curls bursting from a tie he’d used to hold them all together.
A man I knew from the Cantina. The man who shoved a gun in my mouth and demanded answers that I didn’t have.
My gut churned.
Because now that man had a black hole in the middle of his forehead. Welts that matched Luca’s. Sightless eyes and a once straight nose that was busted and crusted over with dried blood.
“Jesus Christ.” Luca ripped away the photo and balled it in his fist. “She doesn’t need to see that.”
“Someone in your life needs a reminder of the pileup in the morgue. Someone who has enough sense to reach you. There’s a long line of bodies with your bullet wedged into their frontal lobe, Mancini, and someone’s got to stop it from happening again.”
I gripped my thighs and stared straight ahead, my blood boiling over.
The proof of Luca’s involvement was in his injuries.
He saved me, he loved me, and they would take him away.
Mama.
Now Luca.
I’d lose him too.
“I don’t think you want to be this kind of man,” Tanaka argued.
Luca laughed. “What makes you think about me at all? Leave this alone. It’s too big for a small-time cop.”
“I can’t do that. I have a duty to justice.” The heavy weight of his gaze burned into the side of my face, but I stayed still and silent, clenching my jaw against the bile in my throat.
“I’m not your concern. Neither is my wife,” Luca said in that dark and deadly tone he took when his patience ran thin. “Don’t talk to her. Don’t so much as fucking blink her way, or I’ll know, and you’ll regret that I do. You got something to say, you say it to me. Understand?”
He didn’t respond. He reached into his back pocket again and pulled out a card that he tossed into my lap. “Give me a call if you ever have something to say.”
I stared at the card, my heartbeat racing behind my rib cage.
Luca and Tanaka held a pissing contest, a seething and quiet battle of wills, waiting for who would blink first. Luca won, and Tanaka sauntered back to his car like he hadn’t blown apart another piece of my foundation.
I picked up his business card, flipping it over and over in my fingers, the font blurring before my eyes.
An engine revved, and Tanaka’s vehicle shot down the road, disappearing in the distance.
Luca called Dami. After a few words, he shifted the Range Rover into gear, and then his hand landed on my thigh and squeezed.
“Uccello?”
“He knows,” I whispered.
“He has nothing but a corpse. The gun Dante used is untraceable, dismantled, and at the bottom of the Atlantic by now. Everything is fine. I’ll take care of Tanaka,” he insisted, twining his fingers through mine.
Luca took care of everything, and it killed him in the process.
Mio salvatore. I held on tighter, looking out the window.
The same landscape had been in place since I began working at the mission.
The same scenery I saw on that day. The last day with Mama.
The world was the same, while everything around me had changed. Including myself.
I swore right then. I asked God for forgiveness because one day I’d need it. No one would ever take my husband from me like they had taken my mother.
I would make sure of it.