Chapter 8 Lucia #2
The New York skyline rises out of the horizon like a jagged crown, sharp and glittering and merciless.
I stare at it through the window as my heart pounds too fast and my throat tightens with everything I refuse to feel all at once.
Somewhere down there, beyond the towers and the rivers and the glass and steel, is Queens.
Home.
Not the Antigua version of home I built from sand and lies and borrowed names, but the real one, cracked sidewalks, bodegas on every corner, the smell of frying onions drifting out of basement kitchens, the brutal comfort of a place that never pretended to be gentle.
I didn’t realise how much I missed it until it rises up to meet me like this, until something low and traitorous inside me loosens at the sight of it.
A part of me is glad to be back. And the admission shocks me.
I shift in my seat and don’t need to glance sideways at him to know Giovanni is studying me. I simply know him too well now not to feel it.
I look away quickly, heat rushing to my face, furious with myself for that tiny betrayal.
And that’s when the memory hits me. It slams into me whole, vivid and merciless.
Queens.
Late afternoon almost two years ago. A crosswalk on Steinway Street.
I’d been yelling into my phone, already late, already irritated, already halfway to a full meltdown about a pencil-pusher who thought my time was decorative.
And then the black town car rolled through the crosswalk.
Too fast and too close.
I’d leapt back instinctively, heart exploding into my throat, my phone flying out of my hand and skidding across the pavement.
“What the hell is wrong with you?” I’d screamed, pure Queens fury ripping out of me before fear could catch up.
The driver had slammed the brakes.
The door had opened.
And Giovanni Dragoni had stepped out into my life.
Six foot three of tailored Italian menace, dark hair perfectly cut, suit that probably cost more than my rent, eyes hidden behind sunglasses like a cliché I instantly despised.
He took one look at me and said, calmly, “Are you injured?”
And something in my world had tilted off its axis.
“No, I’m not injured,” I’d snapped. “I’m furious. You don’t get to mow people down in crosswalks just because your car is expensive. I should sue your arse bankrupt for emotional distress.”
His driver had started apologising. Giovanni hadn’t looked at him once.
He’d taken off his sunglasses instead. And when his eyes met mine, something hot and violent and electric had ripped straight through my body.
Dark eyes turned sharp. Laser focused. Like he’d just found something he hadn’t known he was looking for.
“I was in the wrong,” he said simply. “I apologise.”
It shouldn’t have undone me. But oh boy did it. Because powerful men didn’t apologise like that.
Not to women like me.
“You could’ve killed me,” I’d shot back, shaking now that the adrenaline was wearing off.
“Yes,” he’d agreed. “That would have been unacceptable.”
I’d stared at him, thrown off completely. “You’re… weird,” I’d blurted.
A corner of his mouth had curved. Not quite a smile yet. “Usually I’m told that I’m terrifying.”
“Well,” I’d said, bending to grab my phone, “congratulations. You’re terrifying and weird.”
His driver had cleared his throat and I’d caught a look of shock on his paling face.
Giovanni had ignored him again. “What is your name?” he’d asked me.
“Why?”
“Because I would like to know the name of the woman who just threatened to sue me into bankruptcy on a public sidewalk.”
I’d frozen. “You’re a little psycho too, aren’t you?”
“Occasionally.”
I most definitely should’ve walked away then, when every instinct I possessed told me to run.
Instead, I’d said, in an alarmingly breathless voice. “I’m Lucia.”
And he’d repeated it like it mattered.
“Lucia,” he’d said quietly. “I am Giovanni.”
We stood there too long.
Traffic honking.
People staring.
Neither of us moving.
It’d felt like something ancient and irreversible had just been set in motion.
“You nearly ran me over,” I’d finally said. “The least you can do is buy me a coffee.”
His mouth had curved fully then.
“Then the least I will do,” he’d replied, “is buy you the best coffee in Queens.”
And I’d gone.
God help me, I’d gone.
I hadn’t known his name meant dragon, hadn’t known his world was soaked in blood or that the man who held the café door open for me with old-fashioned courtesy would one day bind my wrists with silk and tell me my life was not my own anymore.
But I’d known one thing.
From the very first second his eyes locked onto mine.
I’d known Giovanni Dragoni was going to ruin me in the worst and possibly the best way. And I was going to let him.
The skyline blurs and my chest aches.
I close my eyes briefly, breathing through the memory, through the grief of everything we were before truth poisoned us both.
When I open them again, Giovanni is still watching me.
His gaze unreadable.
Unflinching.
Unbreakable.
And I know with sick, aching certainty that he remembers that day exactly as clearly as I do.
My time on the run is over.
And I don’t know what comes next. Whether I’ll be dead this time next year. And if by some stroke of luck I’m not…
What my life will look like at all.
Giovanni
I know exactly what she’s thinking.
Lucia has that look on her face, distant, tight, almost reverent with grief and longing, the same one she gets whenever Queens rises up to meet her through a window or a windscreen.
Her gaze is locked on the skyline as though she’s trying to stitch herself back into a version of her life that no longer exists.
She doesn’t realise her breathing has changed, that her fingers are clenched tight in her lap. And after all this time, she doesn’t realise that I can read her body better than I can read a balance sheet or a threat assessment.
She’s remembering the day we met.
Of course she is.
The timing is too perfect. The silence too loaded. The ache in her eyes too naked.
And God help me, I want to go there too.
If only to drag her back onto my side with the memory. If only to remind her of who she was to me before she tried to destroy what was always inevitable between us.
Before she ran and made me hunt her like something feral and broken. Before she taught me what punishment feels like when it’s not inflicted, but endured.
My jaw tightens as I watch her reflection in the window.
She thinks that memory belongs to both of us equally.
It doesn’t.
Queens. Steinway Street. Late afternoon sun cutting between buildings like blades.
I’d been furious that day with my father’s accountants. With a port authority delay. With a shipment that had vanished into bureaucratic purgatory.
I wasn’t even supposed to be in that car. Had meant to send a subordinate in my place, until I realised some lessons are best taught in person.
And then she stepped into the crosswalk.
Small. Furious. Yelling into her phone like she owned the pavement and every idiot on it.
My driver braked too late and the world slowed down.
Because I saw her.
Really saw her.
Not just her mouthwatering, hourglass body, though Christ, that too was beyond spectacular, but her defiance. Her absolute refusal to fold herself smaller for anyone.
When she screamed at me, something ancient and predatory locked into place in my chest.
Desire and feral possessiveness, yes.
But most bewildering and alarming at once was…recognition.
Mine.
I remember stepping out of the car and thinking, with terrifying calm certainty, this woman is going to ruin me.
And that I would let her.
Despite her calling me weird. When she demanded coffee as compensation.
I let her walk away with me because I already knew I was not walking away from her ever again.
I didn’t know her name yet. But I already knew she was my wife.
She doesn’t know this.
She doesn’t know that I went home that night and had my men run her name.
That I sat awake until dawn reading everything there was to know about Lucia Dragoni-to-be.
That I cancelled a meeting with a Balkan arms broker the next morning just to “accidentally” walk past that café again.
She thinks I seduced her. She has no idea how carefully I claimed her.
And she certainly doesn’t know how badly she will pay for trying to leave me now that she’s reminded my body what it still knows about hers.
My mouth curves darkly as the jet begins its descent.
That kiss this morning.
The way she came apart for me in mere seconds, like it was primed and ready, like mine, to soar after being kept hungry and desperate for eighteen long months.
The way her body arched like it was built to break for my hands.
How she tried to hate me through it and failed. And, fuck, the taste of her silky pussy. Utter reassurance as if I needed it. Which I absolutely do not.
She’s still mine; she always was and she always will be.
And yes, she will be punished. With unvarnished ownership and with searing calculation. With the slow, relentless erasure of the fantasy that she can exist outside of me.
I will brand myself onto her so thoroughly she wouldn’t even dream of believing she’s not completely, unwaveringly mine.
The car is already waiting when we land. I guide Lucia into it with a hand at the small of her back.
She stiffens but to her credit, she doesn’t pull away. And no, I don’t make the mistake of believing she’s in any way about to yield.
There will be many more skirmishes, perhaps even battles with my wife before this challenging period of our new life is over.
But this…this is progress.
Westchester air is cool, clean, deceptively quiet.
The Dragoni Estate rises through the trees like something medieval disguised as modern architecture, stone, glass, iron gates, surveillance so discreet it borders on invisible.
Exactly the way I wanted it.
Home.
My phone vibrates once just as the gates slide open.
I don’t bother to stifle a curse for the poor timing, nor do I need to look to know what it is. But I look anyway.
Unknown Number: Bellandi just met with a Russian intermediary in Brooklyn. Money moved. Names exchanged. You’re out of time.
My jaw tightens as the car rolls up the long private drive.
Luckily, Lucia is distracted, watching the house now, tension visible in every line of her body. She’s not sure whether it’ll be her prison or her sanctuary, and I don’t move to reassure her.
Because fear is good. Fear of what’s coming will keep her on her toes while I keep her safe.
I close my phone and slide it into my pocket, allowing myself a satisfied exhale.
I’ve completed a crucial phase of this dubious destiny.
I’ve brought my wife home.
Now I go to war.