Chapter 21 #2
Luca took a drag on his cigarette and inhaled deeply. He didn’t respond at first, then nodded. “She probably thought making us smoke the rest of the pack would be a hardship.”
“It was… for me,” I reminded him.
“She probably should have checked the pack first,” Luca murmured. “Two cigarettes besides the one we’d started was nothing.”
“You were ten,” I said. “She probably figured you’d get so sick you’d never do it again.”
He finally chuckled. “The look on her face when I finished mine, yours, and then asked for another…”
“I don’t think I ever saw her get that angry before.”
I was about to add the words “and after” when I realized there hadn’t been much of an after.
She’d died less than two months later. Luca hadn’t smoked again until he’d been well into his twenties, because he’d been too afraid of pissing off our father.
No cigarette was worth a smack to the face… or worse.
As hard as I’d had it with the old man, Luca had had it worse because he’d had the added pressure of needing to succeed at so many things.
As basically just hired muscle, all I’d had to do was throw a good punch or instill just the right amount of fear into someone and not get caught.
Luca had had to wear multiple hats when he’d started learning the business and ultimately taken it over.
My brother had always been the more sensitive of us, but he’d been forced to snuff that out after our mother had died.
Because sensitivity was a weakness.
Softness was a weakness.
He’d been well on his way to being the ruthless tyrant our father had been grooming him to be when he’d gotten the surprise of his life during his first year of college.
His best friend, a girl named Genevieve, who he’d had one drunken sexual encounter with to prove to himself he wasn’t a fag, had stunned him with the news that they were going to be parents.
The night Genevieve, or V as we’d come to call her, had told Luca, he’d come to me and in a rare show of self-doubt had cried in my arms as he’d tried to deal with a myriad of things all at once.
That he was, indeed, only interested in men.
That our father was going to disown him if he didn’t kill him outright.
And that he was going to be a father.
That last part had been the hardest thing for him to accept because he’d been convinced he’d turn out to be just like Vidone Covello.
When he’d gone back to V, he’d intended to tell her that he just couldn’t do it… that he couldn’t be a father to any child.
Then he’d seen the tiny outline of his baby on a sonogram and everything had changed.
Well, not quite everything.
Luca had waited until little Gio was almost five to tell our father about his grandson. I’d suspected it had been some kind of final hope on Luca’s part that we could go back to being the family our mother had always wanted us to be.
Vidone had been in a rage at first, because he hadn’t wanted another bastard in the family.
He’d barely even looked at me when he’d said those words to Luca and I’d hardly even flinched because I’d gotten used to that title.
But when the old man had actually met the little boy who’d come running into the room in the middle of the argument, Vidone had paused and considered the child.
He’d grumbled about it quite a bit as he’d eyed his son holding his grandson in his arms and whispering words of comfort to him.
He’d called Gio over to him and looked him up and down and then, just like that, he’d suddenly declared that the boy was a Covello and that Luca and V would make it official that weekend.
My poor brother hadn’t even had a chance to respond to the declaration because our father had started talking about how little Giovanni Covello was the future of the business and he’d one day rule an empire that would make Covello a household name.
That was what had changed things for my brother.
While Gio’s birth was what had woken Luca up, it was that moment with our father that had set him free.
Because Luca had calmly walked up to our father and taken his son from him and carefully led the little boy back to V and had asked her to go wait outside.
He’d asked me to go with her and though I had technically answered to our father at the time, I hadn’t even hesitated to turn on my heel and follow V and little Gio.
Luca had emerged from the house less than five minutes later, our raging father on his heels.
I still had no idea what exactly had been said between the pair, but I’d gotten the gist.
Luca had chosen his son over his father.
And he’d chosen me too.
Because when Luca had gotten V and Gio settled in the car, he’d turned to me and softly told me to get in the car as well.
It hadn’t been an order.
Our father had been shouting orders.
At me.
First to tell me to stop Luca from leaving, then to get my ass up the stairs so I could take my place at his side, which really meant behind him.
I still hated the fact that I’d hesitated even for a second. When Luca had quietly whispered in my ear to trust him, it was like he’d given me what I’d needed to break the collar I’d been wearing around my neck for most of my life.
My collar may not have been a physical one like Aleks’s had been, but I’d been owned just the same.
And I’d been released from my prison by someone who’d always vowed to watch out for me.
Which he had.
I’d learned only after we’d left our father’s overpriced, oversized mansion that just about everything was already in Luca’s name.
Our father had been so confident in being able to keep the noose around Luca’s neck for his entire life that he’d started transferring assets to either Luca’s name or the business in order to stay under the IRS’s radar.
But Luca had slipped the noose and it had cost our father everything.
By the time he’d died six months later, Luca had been giving him just enough money to survive on… and he’d only done that out of respect for our mother. For whatever reason, she’d loved Vidone Covello and Luca hadn’t been willing to shit on that.
But despite Luca being able to break free of our father’s control, he’d known from the day Gio had been born that in addition to inheriting Vidone’s business and assets, Luca had also inherited the man’s enemies.
The solution had taken its toll on Luca, but he’d been adamant that he wouldn’t lose his son the way we’d both lost our mother, and I’d wholeheartedly agreed with him.
To protect Gio, Luca had never publicly acknowledged the boy was his child, even after he’d told our father about him.
He’d still showered his son with all the love he could and he’d given him everything money could buy and had made sure V had never wanted for anything, but the lengths we’d had to go to while Luca had spent time with his son had been extreme.
There hadn’t been days where he could just go pick his kid up from school and walk him home.
There’d been no career days or going to school carnivals or any of the little plays that Gio’s class would put on.
Any activity where Luca’s real name could come out had had to be nixed, but that hadn’t meant there hadn’t been lots of family dinners both at V’s house and at the house in the Hamptons.
Our entire little extended family had bonded with Gio and had made sure he never felt like he just had a mother and nothing else.
But we’d had to work harder than most families to make it happen.
But it had worked because Gio had been safe from Luca’s enemies.
Until an enemy we hadn’t seen coming had snuck under our radar and stolen both Gio and V from us.
And changed Luca’s – and all our lives – forever.
“You took him flying, huh?” Luca asked after a few minutes of silence.
Some of my anger at Luca for his role in trying to abduct Aleks was still there, but I’d had time to accept that desperation and a sense of betrayal had driven my brother to do what he’d done.
He’d treated Aleks with kid gloves since then, so I did believe that if he’d been successful in taking him in Seattle, he wouldn’t have allowed any harm to come to him.
“Yeah,” I said as I glanced at my brother.
The fact that I’d taken Aleks up in the little Piper single-engine plane was pretty telling.
Even back before Gio had gone missing and I’d bought the plane, or rather, Luca had bought it for me and surprised me with it one day, I hadn’t taken anyone up in it with me.
I’d paid a guy at the private airport nearby a small fortune to store the plane for me and to keep up the maintenance on it, but I wasn’t sure if Luca had known that.
Clearly, he knew pretty much everything.
He probably also knew I’d kept my pilot’s license up to date, despite the fact that I hadn’t flown much in the past several years. Only on the rarest of occasions had I left the dark world I lived in to escape to the skies for an hour or two.
But being in the air with Aleks by my side had brought a host of emotions to the surface that I hadn’t been expecting.
Like how much flying really was in my blood. It was a high that was second only to being with Aleks.
So Aleks and flying at the same time… utter heaven.
And as soon as we’d landed I’d felt so fucking guilty for having those few hours of pleasure.
Hours where I hadn’t allowed myself to remember that Gio was out there waiting for us to come and get him. Hours where I didn’t fucking drive myself crazy wondering what was happening to him while I was letting myself feel the freedom he might never know again.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
Luca looked at me. “Why are you sorry?”
I opened my mouth to answer, then found I couldn’t give voice to my shame. He sighed and looked away.
“I never should have done it,” he said quietly as he flicked his cigarette away and then started looking for another.
“Done what?” I asked.
“Take Aleks. It was a mistake. Just like asking you to…”
“To what?”