Chapter 19
LUNA
It’s after two by the time I try the bedroom door and find it unlocked.
I woke up around noon, completely groggy and out of it after the epic sex sessions with Priest last night. He was long gone, his side of the bed empty, and I’m not going to lie, I felt a moment of acute disappointment arcing through me when I saw he wasn’t there.
Common sense quickly returned, along with lucidity.
I gave myself a pep talk as I showered.
So you had amazing sex with a gangster who happens to have a magical dick and is apparently a pussy whisperer. It doesn’t mean anything. Get over yourself.
Also, all that possessive, alpha maleness and the spanking?
Heat prickles over my skin as I tentatively step across the threshold. I shouldn’t like it, but I do. I did. It turned me on in ways I never imagined it could. And I want more, even if I know that’s a colossal mistake.
Anyway—my stomach growls—I need some food. I wander down the hall toward the eat-in kitchen, aware of the eerie quiet in this place. You’d never know that just above us, a huge casino is a hive of activity. I can’t smell the cigarettes or hear the whirring roulette tables or the slots.
It’s almost like being in a grave.
The thought sends a chill down my spine, and for the first time since Priest brought me to this safe house, I wonder what happened to my father.
Was he cremated? Are they just holding him in a funeral home somewhere until next of kin appears?
For some reason, the logistics of what comes after death escaped me.
Saint is on a laptop, sitting at the kitchen table, typing away and muttering to himself when I walk in.
He doesn’t bother to look up. “She lives.”
Tears prick my eyes.
I’m alive. Or something like it. But my father is dead.
I stop where I am, all the walls feeling like they’re closing in on me, my chest constricting. Oh God, I think I may be having a panic attack. It’s getting harder to breathe. I haven’t had one of these—not a full-scale assault anyway—since the ugly weeks after Leo’s death.
Saint glances up at me, and his expression shifts. “Luna? You okay?”
I open my mouth to answer him, but nothing comes out. I’m frozen. My mind, my tongue, my lungs. Perspiration drips between my breasts, rolling down my chest.
“Fuck.” He’s on his feet, rushing toward me, taking my arm in a surprisingly gentle hold. “Come here and sit down.”
He guides me to a chair that he kicks away from the kitchen table, and I plop into it, scarcely aware of my surroundings.
My hands tremble as I struggle to calm myself.
“Put your head between your legs,” he instructs me.
I should know this. I was a mess after Leo died. But I listen, folding myself in half and letting my head rest there. He sweeps a hand up my spine in a comforting way.
“Now, breathe in and out,” he says. “Slowly, Luna. Just try to calm yourself. Everything is going to be okay. You’re just having a panic attack.”
He continues talking me through it, his voice calm and patient. Caring, even.
Gradually, I come back to myself. My heartbeat begins to return to normal, and the tightness in my chest eases.
I’m grateful for Saint’s reassuring presence at my side.
This is a far cry from the day I showed up at Club Venere and was greeted by a crew of menacing Andriani muscle, all of them packing heat and threatening me.
I straighten myself in the chair, unbending my spine.
“Better?” he asks, hovering over me like a worried mama bear.
“I think so.”
Still frowning, he goes to the sleek fridge on the opposite wall. “Sparkling or still?”
He’s asking me about water, I realize.
“Still. Please.”
He grabs a water and returns, plunking it down on the table in front of me.
“Thank you.” Gratitude pulses up inside me as I reach for the cold water and bring it to my lips. “For the water and for helping me to snap out of it.”
He folds his tall frame back into the chair he vacated when my panic attack hit me. “You have these often?”
“No.” I think back to the day I showed up here, covered in my father’s blood. “It seems to be a side effect of being kidnapped by gangsters.”
His frown deepens. “No one kidnapped you. Priest brought you here because it’s the only place he knows nothing will happen to you.”
I roll my lips inward, keeping myself from retorting that something has happened to me here. A six-foot-three wall of Italian muscle. He’s been breaking down my defenses from the moment he said I do . Maybe even before that.
“I know it doesn’t seem that way,” Saint adds. “But trust me, this is the best place for you to be until we know who was behind the attacks on your father and our cousin.”
I shiver, thinking about what Priest told me about his cousin and his crew, how they were found with signs of torture. They’d had their tongues and eyes cut out, he’d said. And how there had been a note on their bodies saying I was next.
The thought of staying in this underground bunker for much longer, deprived of sunlight and fresh air and my phone and the outside world, is enough to induce another panic attack.
“I can’t stay here like this,” I say. “I want to go home.”
“This is your home now. With Priest.”
I huff out a sigh. “But he’s not here, is he? He’s always somewhere else, while I’m stuck in purgatory, not knowing what’s going on or if he’ll even come back.”
It’s enough to make any sane woman lose her mind.
No wonder I keep checking out whenever Priest touches me.
My body is desperately craving a release from here, and the only way I can achieve that right now is through pleasure.
That has to be why I keep falling back into bed with him, regardless of how determined I am to keep my distance and treat this marriage like the sham it is.
“He’s the don,” Saint says as if this fact excuses Priest in every way. “He’s a busy man, and right now, he’s burning the candle at both ends trying to do everything he can to get you out of here.”
He makes Priest sound almost noble. Ever since last night, Saint has been waging a campaign to persuade me that his brother isn’t as much of a monster as I think he is. It’s not going to work, regardless of how much I happen to melt whenever I’m in his brother’s arms.
“He could let me out of here right now,” I argue, annoyed with myself and my weakness for the man I’ve been forced to marry. “I could head to the airport and fly back to my life, and no one would ever know.”
Saint shakes his head, looking at me like I’m a child and he’s about to tell me that Santa isn’t real. “You’d be a dead woman walking. Whoever did this is sending a message, and it’s a serious one. You can’t just go back to writing smut books in Cabot Cove and bury your head in the sand.”
I narrow my eyes at him, wondering if he’s being serious. There’s not a hint of humor in his face.
“Your obscure eighties show reference is wrong.”
He doesn’t even crack a smile. “It was also on in the nineties.”
“Did you watch it when you were a baby?”
“I’ve never watched it. Jesus, what do you think I am, someone who sits around binge-watching old chick shows?”
I bite my lip, because I’m sure he’s fucking with me now. And because the idea of Saint secretly bingeing episodes of Angela Lansbury on Murder, She Wrote is all kinds of fucked up and hilarious.
“Also, Jessica Fletcher wrote mysteries, not romance novels,” I point out.
He grins. “Oh yeah? Guess I got that part wrong.”
It’s then that I realize he is messing with me. I’m not sure how much of what he’s said is true and what’s not. But Saint has also brought my heart rate and breathing back down to normal, all by distracting me in his own weird way.
A companionable silence descends, and then my stomach growls.
I flatten my palm over it. “Is there any food in this place?”
“Fuck,” he rumbles, standing back up. “Priest’s going to be pissed if I let you starve. Zia Maria’s lasagna is in the fridge. I can warm some up for you.”
“Sounds good. Your aunt’s cooking is fire.”
“ Zia ’s the best,” he agrees, ambling to the fridge and taking out a silver tray of lasagna.
I can get it myself, but he seems fully capable. Besides, I’m the one being held here against my will.
“ Zia Maria is your father’s sister?” I guess, trying to make small talk.
“She is.” He cuts a square of lasagna that looks big enough to feed three people.
“A smaller piece would be fine,” I say politely.
“Eh, you need some meat on your bones.” He plops it onto a plate and carries it over to the microwave.
I glance down at myself. I’m not skinny by any means. I try to stay in shape, but I could also lose a few pounds. And when I say a few, I mean a good twenty. I’m a curvy girl. Always have been. Always will be.
“I can eat the other half for dinner,” I decide, compromising.
“You’ll finish it because no one makes better lasagna than Zia Maria,” he says confidently as he closes the door. “Hey Basil, turn the microwave on for two minutes.”
“Turning the microwave on for two minutes,” says the disembodied voice of the mobster dungeon’s robot butler.
If I hadn’t been here myself and witnessed all this firsthand, I’d never have believed it.
“Where is Priest now?” I ask, changing the subject.
Saint shoots me an apologetic look. “I don’t know.”
“You can’t tell me,” I infer, irritated. “Who the hell am I going to tell? I’m trapped in a gangster lair, and I’m not even allowed to have my phone.”
Saint doesn’t answer, leaving me to further fume.
“So let me get this straight. I’m supposed to be his wife, but I’m not allowed to know where he is on any given day or what he’s doing. And I’m expected to be okay with this?”
Saint leans a hip against the counter and faces me, arms crossed. “You know the life, Luna. You grew up in it.”
“I grew up insulated from it. Leo was the heir. I was a girl, meant to be a pretty prop, no real use to the cause.”
Like my father always said, a woman’s worth is between her legs.
And he sold me for it the first chance he got.
But as cruel as he was, and for all his faults, I still can’t get past everything that’s happened. Him dying in my arms.
“What about your mother?” Saint asks. “She must have prepared you, knowing one day you’d marry into one of the families. It’s the way of our world.”
I swallow against a lump of sadness rising in my throat. “My mom died when I was eleven. Not exactly the age for planning future mafioso weddings.”
“Damn,” he mutters. “I’m sorry, Luna.”
I take another sip of water, steadying myself. “Fuck cancer, right?”
“What kind?”
“Breast cancer.” I sniff, trying to keep the tears at bay.
My mother was different. She wasn’t like my father.
Their marriage was an arranged one, and she always paid him the utmost respect.
But my memories are those of a kid. Foggy and indistinct.
I thought she loved him, but I’m not sure my father was capable of loving anyone.
And I don’t know why someone as kind and good as my mother would have had tender feelings for a self-absorbed, heartless monster like my father.
The microwave beeps.
“Dinner is served, milord,” says the disembodied robot voice.
I snort at that, the heaviness of the moment effectively broken. “Basil is on point.”
Saint winks at me. “I taught him everything he knows.”
“Did you name him too?”
“Nope.” He turns back to the microwave, opening it and pulling out a steaming plate of lasagna. “Basil’s actually a prototype from a start-up that Scorpion convinced us we should invest in. He came with the name.”
“You called, sir?” asks the same voice.
“Hey Basil, go fuck yourself,” Saint says, bringing my lasagna toward me.
“Harsh.”
“Regretfully, I cannot complete your request at this time, milord,” Basil says.
And I can’t quite restrain my snicker, followed by a groan of delight as the mouthwatering aroma of Zia Maria’s cooking reaches me. Saint sets it on the table in front of me, and I waste no time digging in.
“You see?” Saint sounds amused. “I knew you’d need the whole piece.”
He’s not wrong. I’m totally going to eat this whole damn plate of delectable homemade sauce and pasta with gooey, rich cheeses.
“Do you know when he’ll be back?” I ask when I’m halfway through and a food coma is starting to set in.
“Priest, I presume?”
Saint is once more clicking away at his laptop, frowning at something on his screen. I wonder what he’s doing, but I also know that if I ask, the probability of a truthful response is less than one percent.
“The man who kidnapped me and is holding me here against my will,” I say pointedly. “Yup. That’s the one.”
“Soon. For now, you’ll have to settle for me, Jessica Fletcher.”
I roll my eyes at his antics and finish the last few bites of lasagna. Like his older brother, Saint Andriani is starting to grow on me. But I’m not going to allow that to change my mind.
The sooner I can get the hell out of this place and far, far away to the other side of the country, the better.