Chapter 10
Ten
Luca
I roll over in bed, my eyes flicker open for a second, getting my bearings. The room smells different, the air cooler.
I’m not at home.
Well, not at my home. I’m at my parents' home—the compound.
And the heated memories of last night come flooding back to me.
I just had sex with Harper McKenna.
I reach my arm out for her, but the bed is empty, the spot beside me still warm.
What the hell? Where did she go? Did she decide to sleep in her own room after all?
I’ve never had a girl leave in the middle of the night, or after sex, for that matter. I’m usually the one kicking them out if I don’t want it to be anything serious. And Harper doesn’t strike me as the kind of girl to sneak out.
Heavy footfalls patter outside the hallway. It’s Harper, I can feel it.
I sit up in bed, swing my legs over the mattress and retrieve my clothes in the darkness. It takes a few seconds to put them back on and make sure they’re not inside out or backward before I step out into the hallway.
I don’t want her wandering alone in this place.
There’s trouble brewing under this roof. I’ve lived here long enough growing up to know when they’re keeping someone hostage or torturing a suspect.
My guess—torture.
Why else would they have kicked us out earlier?
And the entire reason I came home was to protect Harper. I’m not about to stop now.
It would have been nice if the reason we were locked out of the house earlier had been a surprise, like Harper had suggested. After all, they’d bought Nova a brand-new car, and sure, they could have been signing the papers for it, but I know better.
It’s so much worse than that; I feel the heaviness like an anvil on my chest.
If it were up to me, I wouldn’t have spent the night here. I wanted to go home, but Nova insisted we stay, and Harper didn’t have the slightest idea what was going on.
I wasn’t going to leave Harper alone, and while I considered camping outside her bedroom all night, her sleeping in my bed was definitely the better of the two options.
Not to mention we didn’t just sleep.
We had the most amazing sex ever. At least, I thought it was fucking amazing.
If Harper claims otherwise, she is most definitely lying.
I know she came twice last night, and well, I’m a little disappointed there wasn’t a third time, but we were both tired and fell asleep shortly after our festivities.
There will always be a next time.
I open the bedroom door and step into the hallway. There’s no sign of Harper. I quietly tiptoe to the guestroom and quietly nudge open the door.
There’s no sign of her.
Her bed is empty.
Just as I suspected.
Fuck.
My stomach roils, and I hurry down the hall looking for her.
Okay, where would she be?
Bathroom or kitchen would be the most logical options. Seeing as the bathroom door is shut, but the light is off, I’m going to guess the kitchen.
Shit.
Or maybe the downstairs bathroom.
Grimacing, I realize I didn’t give her a proper tour upstairs, and well, logically, she probably wandered back downstairs to use the facilities. It’s the only bathroom she saw, and the doors upstairs were all closed.
I try to quietly hurry down the stairs to the bathroom near the back wing of the house. The door is open, the toilet is still running, which tells me it hasn’t been long since she was in there.
Where is she now?
The kitchen is just ahead, but there are no lights spilling from its vicinity.
The basement door is right beside the bathroom, and I momentarily hold my breath. No, she’d have no reason to wander down there.
I haven’t stepped foot down the basement in years, since I watched a man be tortured and executed under my father’s orders. He didn’t so much as flinch as it happened. No, he beamed with pride, like he was made for this job.
The worst part.
I threw up in front of him, violently. I couldn’t even hide the disgust from him, and he grabbed me by the lapels and told me I ought to grow a stomach for it because I would follow in his footsteps.
The hell I would.
I did everything in my power to not become him. I stayed away from my father, his men, the evil that he brought into the home, until today.
The basement door flings open, and Harper comes running out, nearly knocking into me with a child following behind. The boy is small, dirty, and wearing pajamas. He can’t be much older than eight. He looks like he was snatched from his bed in the middle of the night.
Fuck.
“We have to go, now!” I tell her, grabbing her arm and dragging her down the hallway and to the back door.
It’s the closest exit to the house. I punch in the alarm code to disable it before pulling the door open and gesturing for Harper and the child to head outside before closing it.
I grab my jacket hanging on the hook by the door and my tennis shoes. I toss my tennis shoes at her.
“Put these on.” I know they’re too big, but they’re better than her bare feet or the heels she wore that will slow us down.
She slips the shoes on while I pull my coat around the little boy, zipping it up to keep him warm. I dig my hand into the jacket pocket, retrieving my keys.
“It’s okay,” I tell him, although nothing is okay at the moment. “She’s going to keep you safe.”
Men will be on us in seconds if we’re not quick. “There are cameras everywhere. Someone is always watching. We have only a few seconds, maybe minutes, if we’re lucky.”
I point to the forest where I procured wood earlier for the bonfire. “You have to run to the edge of the forest, get over the fence. Then run to the road and get help.”
“What about you?” Harper asks. “You’re not coming with us?”
“I’m going to grab the car. I’ll be the diversion you both need to get to safety. Once you’re over the fence, find a house, someone who will help. Call the police. Whatever you do, don’t come looking for me.”
It takes everything in me not to chase after her, protect her, keep her safe. But her best odds are with me here and her and the boy as far away as possible.
I can give her time to get to safety.
It’s the best choice when the odds are stacked against us.
She grabs me and kisses me in a blaze of heated passion. The world around me melts, and while my feet are freezing, as are my extremities from the biting cold, all I feel is warmth from the taste of her lips surrounding all of my senses.
“If we survive this—” Harper says, and I cut her off.
“When we survive this—” I correct her. I can’t let any other thoughts exist.
“I don’t want it to be fake between us,” she says. She steals one more kiss before I have time to answer.
After what happened between us earlier, it could never be fake.
She grabs the little boy’s hand and runs into the forest in the direction I told her to go.
I exhale a nervous breath and dart in front of the camera, making sure I’m the one who is being seen, my motions obvious and obnoxious as I head for the front of the building and toward my car.
Moreno opens the front door with Ashton right at his heel. He must have woken him up. Harper was reasonably quiet, and I made sure to silence the alarm. Ashton couldn’t have woken and known what was happening on his own. Someone had to involve him, but why?
“Stop, before you get yourself killed,” Moreno bellows out, and I pause at the front door of my vehicle, the keys in my hand.
I contemplate jumping in and hightailing it out of there, but the wrought-iron fence isn’t going to magically open.
There’s zero chance Moreno is going to order the guard at the gate to let me go free, not if they’ve realized their prisoner is missing.
And they must know, or else they wouldn’t care about me sneaking off into the night.
“Hear him out,” Ashton says. “He’s trying to save your life.”
“Save my life?” I scoff and step away from the vehicle. “Why does my life need saving?”
I’m trying to buy time for Harper so she can slip away unnoticed. Although I’m sure they’ve noticed her, but I don’t hear them running through the forest.
Shit.
I do, however, hear the metal gates groaning as they open. Three vehicles with my father’s soldiers are driving out of the compound, most certainly planning on stopping her when she gets over the fence.
Fuck.
I can’t stop all of them. I’m not sure I can even stop Moreno and Ashton on my own. Not when Moreno has a weapon on his hip. I can see the glistening gun in his holster under the outside lights. At least he hasn’t drawn it and pointed it at me. I should feel grateful.
“You’re going to get yourself killed,” Moreno warns me. “I’m trying to help you.”
But I don’t care about myself. I only care about Harper.
“Listen to him,” Ashton says and slowly comes around to approach me.
I exhale a heavy breath. I already don’t like where this is going. The front door opens, and Dante storms outside, fuming.
“Kill the girl,” Dante shouts orders at Moreno. I imagine he already gave the orders to his men who drove out the front gate. “But bring me the child, alive.”
“No!” I lunge for Dante, ready to kill my father with my bare hands. He’s truly a monster, the worst kind imaginable, murdering an innocent girl.
Ashton holds me back.
“Think twice, son,” Dante warns, snarling, unpleased with my lack of obedience. “I can have you buried right beside her.”
Dante lifts his gun, un-cocking the trigger as he holds it up to my face.
“Would you honestly kill your only son, your heir to the throne?” I ask, knowing how to get inside his head. “Mom, Nikki, would hate you for the rest of your life.”
He stares at me, taken aback by the mention of her name. He seems slightly puzzled, almost befuddled by the realization that I may be right. He shakes the cobwebs from his thoughts away as quickly as they come. “You’ve never wanted this,” he says and gestures to the compound, his paradise.
“I never wanted to become you,” I say. Although, in truth, I don’t want any of his life or to be a part of the horrible things he’s involved with. That’s not who I am.
“Consider your options, Luca,” Dante says. “Kill the girl, or if you refuse to obey, which I know you love to do, then your buddy Ashton has orders to kill you both.” Dante hands over his gun to Ashton, giving him the opportunity to execute me if need be.
I glance back at Ashton.
He wouldn’t?
“Sorry,” Ashton says and shakes his head. He doesn’t lift the gun or threaten me with it, but it’s in his hand, pointed down toward the ground, and that’s enough for me to know that he’s on their side. He’s taken the weapon, he’s accepting the power they’re granting him.
I scoff and push Ashton as I step backward. “We’re brothers,” I say, grinding my teeth. We may not be biological or blood, but I thought our friendship and being teammates meant something.
“You know mafia family always comes first,” Ashton says.
I’ve always known Ashton was close to his father. I’ve heard the phone calls. I’m well aware that he intends to run the Chicago Bratva after college. I just didn’t see him betraying me and siding with my father.
“Don’t do this,” I say, hoping to talk some sense into my friend.
“Don’t make me pull the trigger,” Ashton says as he grabs me by the shirt and shoves me toward my car. “Now, help us find Harper before she gets the child killed.”
I climb into the driver’s seat rather quickly. Stalling isn’t going to help Harper. There are too many of them chasing her down. Her best option is my help.
Ashton, however, is going to be a thorn in my side when I finally get to her.
The iron gates remain open, and I drive onto the main road and turn left, the direction that I know she ran with the little boy.
I turn off the radio, open the windows, and feel a blast of cool air. I’m listening for any indication of a struggle, in case I don’t see her but I hear her.
“You can’t save her,” Ashton says, the gun still in his grasp as it rests on his lap.
“Well, I’m not about to shoot her.” I glare at him before returning my attention to the road. I’m following along the fence line. The property extends quite a bit, but there’s no sign of her. There are several of my father’s men in suits scouring the perimeter.
It’s still dark outside, which is the one advantage that she’ll have, the cover of night.
“She’s just a girl, one who is easily replaceable,” he says.
I scoff at his suggestion. “Everyone is replaceable, according to the mafia.”
Ashton shrugs as his gaze peers out the window, taking everything in, looking for her.
“You’re not wrong,” he says. “But don’t get yourself worked up over her.
She’s cute and all, but she’s not worth your life, and you heard Dante.
He’d have me end both of you if it comes down to it.
Don’t be stupid, Luca. As your friend, I’m telling you to not be stupid. ”
My stomach sours. “Glad you’re not the one who ended up with her,” I mutter.
“Are you serious?” Ashton shifts in his seat.
Shit, he heard me. Not that it matters. His head is so far up the mafia’s ass, apparently, he’d do anything to appease them, including killing me when the time comes.
“You are fake dating her. Don’t forget that, Luca. It’s fake.”
Except what happened last night between us wasn’t fake, nothing about it was pretend.
I can still feel her body nestled under me, and I wish that we were both back upstairs in my bedroom. Unfortunately, I can’t wind time backward or change the course of the night’s events after our romp in the bedroom.
All I can do is vow to protect her.
“You wish it were fake,” I grumble and slam on the brakes when I witness two men throwing the little boy into the back of their SUV parked across the street.
I hightail it out of the car, and Ashton is right on my heel.
“Harper!” I shout, glancing in the vehicle, but the windows are dark. It’s nighttime and too hard to see through the glass.
But I don’t hear her voice, her screams, her pleas for help.
“Where is she?” I lunge at Nico, one of my father’s men, and land a blow to his face. My hands are on his shirt, demanding answers, as a trail of blood drips from his nose.
Ashton yanks me backward, off the soldier.
She wouldn’t have left the boy alone. “If you killed her, I swear to—”
Matteo steps around the opposite side of the vehicle.
He’s calm. A little too calm, which has my heart racing erratically.
I’ve never liked Matteo. He tortures men for a living.
His only goal is to extract information before their death.
“Bruno and Vito caught her trying to get over the fence. She’s on her way back inside the complex,” Matteo says.
“Fuck!”