LUCA
I only breathe easy once the taxi is heading up the winding driveway to the Trapanis’ gated estate two days later, and I spot Steph. He is waiting for us at the villa’s entrance, seeming to have paced a path into the gravel covering the driveway.
My twin. My heart pounds with relief. We’ve made it.
We’ve actually fucking made it. And then my body floods with intense love.
We’ve always been the ballast in the Scalera ship, keeping each other steady in rocky waters, going through storm after storm.
We’ve braved another, with me in the leading role for the first time, and have come out on the other side.
The taxi pulls up and I clamber out of the car, leg angry, my whole body a bruise, but alive. To think being battered like this was Steph’s way of dealing with shit—I finally get it. I also suspect he’s stopped fighting like he used to, now he has Gigi in his life.
“Jesus,” Stephano croaks as he scans me with one glance, taking in my wounds as if they echo in his body. “You’ll never be me again.”
“Nope.” I limp forward, and we’re clutching each other in a bear hug.
“Fuck, Luca,” he grunts, his chest heaving with pent-up emotion against mine.
It’s more than a brotherly hug—it’s an embrace between twins who carried each other through many years of manipulation, having survived our father and the shit he put us through. I might have been Stephano’s doppelg?nger, but he suffered in his own way.
Despite all my reassurances, I get why he couldn’t rest easy until he’d seen me.
I’m alive, by the skin of my teeth and thanks to piles of luck, but alive.
It was a close call. He hasn’t even seen the worst of it, but he’s right: I’ll never be able to pose as him again.
Never mind all the other scars I have on my body now, I’ve one knuckle less on my pinkie than before.
I let go of him to raise my hand and show off my bandaged digit in a little wave. Not sure why I’m so proud of this little fucker, but from now on, it will always give me away.
He shakes his head, jaw grinding. “Fuck. The doctor is here to patch you up.”
“Yeah. I need some patching.” I squeeze his shoulder and turn toward the car to help Milana.
She already has Zoe out of her car seat and on her lap, waiting for me to greet Stephano alone, giving us a private moment, even if there are no secrets between us now.
“Let me take her.”
I lift Zoe out, press a soft kiss to her head along the way, and settle her in the crook of my arm, her back resting against my biceps, her little legs hooked over my forearm.
She loves sitting like this, with a view of the world as I see it.
I hold my free hand out to Milana and help her out of the car.
She looks better, rested, and at peace despite everything we went through.
We made it safely to Saint Petersburg and managed to clean up our tracks along the way, finding the rental car parked behind the warehouse and emptying it of all our personal, if fake, belongings.
Our Russian aide took our guns for safekeeping and assured us he would drop the car off at the airport the next day, leaving no loose ends.
As for the scrambler I parked in an alleyway close to our hotel in that forgettable village, he’s on that too.
Getting out of Saint Petersburg was stressful, because Zoe was screaming blue murder most of the time, tired and out of her routine.
It was the perfect distraction through passport control and getting on the plane.
Our baby girl does not like to travel, unless it’s on a motorbike strapped to her Papa’s chest.
Once we made it to Istanbul, we checked in at a five-star hotel in a touristy neighborhood but hunkered down, living off room service. Everything else we needed was delivered to the hotel. We bought fresh clothes and caught up with just enough sleep to make our way back to Italy.
Now, Milana looks up at Stephano, taking him in. “My goodness,” she says. “You are identical.”
“Not anymore,” Stephano says as they hug briefly, and then he has her at arm’s length. “Thank you for—” He breaks off, smiles that crooked smile we share, and with a shrug, says, “For setting him free in a way I didn’t realize he needed.”
She shoots him a small smile. “I could say the same thing to you. Thank you for letting your brother come to Russia and…you know…”
There is no quick way to describe everything we’ve gone through, except maybe to say we’ve been to hell and back.
“And this is Zoe.” Stephano caresses her cheek, and she gazes up at him, blue eyes wide. When he looks up at me, he grins, and there’s a new sparkle in his eyes. “Oh, boy…you’re in for it now.”
“I know.” I’m a lucky man.
Then Stephano lets go of Zoe, strokes his jaw, and shifts on his feet.
“Fuck—”
“No swearing, bro!” I reprimand him. “She hears everything.”
“Je-eeez.” He gives an incredulous chuckle. “Okay. No swearing. But I’ve just been bulldozed by…hell, I don’t even know what the feeling was.”
“Oh, yeah?” I chuckle, smug.
Stephano rolls his eyes at me, but I know exactly what that was—longing. The emotion I battled for so long and fought against: an inexplicable broodiness.
Men don’t talk about this shit, but I can read my brother’s emotions as if I’m staring into a mirror.
He wants this too, even though we never dared talk about becoming fathers.
Hell, Stephano vowed to never marry and look where he ended up, married to Gigi.
She might need some convincing about having a baby, but Carla, her younger sister, is seriously pregnant and that baby is either going to cure Stephano’s broodiness or make it worse.
“Gigi and Don Trapani aren’t here,” Steph says as he gets our bags out of the car. “But Carla is. I tried my best, but she didn’t want to go anywhere. In fact, she point-blank refused. So, there went my plans to have an empty house.”
I shoot Milana a glance. Zoe’s arrival here is supposed to be a secret. This fucks with our plans.
“Can she be trusted?” I’d rather leave right now than have Carla know something I’ve been keeping from my older brothers.
“I’d hope so. She’s a Trapani. For what it’s worth, she doesn’t leave her suite. Hasn’t done so in weeks.” Steph closes the trunk, and we head up to the front door as the taxi drives off. “Things are a bit tense around here.”
For a minute, I’d forgotten Carla is pregnant by her bodyguard. Oof. Awkward.
“What are the chances we won’t bump into each other at all?”
“Ninety-nine percent? We’ll have to manage if she does come out, so…” He trails off.
“First the doctor.” I need to reassess this situation, but medical care is my priority now. “We might need to leave,” I say, not keen on this new risk I didn’t anticipate.
“Yes, I get that.” He holds the front door open, and caresses Zoe’s little foot in passing as I walk in. “It’s a constant battle of wills between Carla and Gigi, but in the end, Gigi always gives in because of the baby and the stress. I promised to look after Carla until they’re back.”
He doesn’t say it, but we all know Carla has sunk into depression, what with her pregnancy and her bodyguard, Vito Rossi, still missing. It’s been months now. There have been no leads, and the man is probably dead, but there’s no way of knowing what happened to him.
Stephano drops our suitcases and waves at the house beyond the foyer. “Feel free to explore,” he says to Milana. “Nobody is here except Carla. I’m taking Luca upstairs.”
Ugh. Not stairs.
“Oh my…” Milana is looking around at the imposing entry way. “Sure I won’t get lost?”
The house’s classical architecture, all the art, and the rich colors of the wallpaper and warm wood are imposing, but then come the views. The place is to die for.
Steph chuckles. “No, it’s big, but there’s a lot to discover. I suspect you won’t go far. I’ll get you settled later. The doctor is in one of the bedrooms upstairs.”
“Here, I’ll take Zoe.” Milana steps in, and I hand Zoe over to her.
“I won’t be long,” I say, circling her shoulders in a side hug as I kiss her temple.
My heart is in my throat as I strain against this separation.
It’s ridiculous, but over the past weeks, we got woven together in a way I didn’t anticipate.
Now I don’t want to leave Milana’s side, or Zoe’s, ridiculously overprotective.
I’m never going to shake it, am I? Not after everything we survived.
“We can come with you,” she suggests. “I—” She breaks off, but it’s in her voice, this same fear we’re going to live with forever.
“It’s okay. You’re safe here. There are guards outside, and the property’s perimeter has electric fences, beams, the whole fucking nine yards. This house is safe,” Stephano reassures us. “Ever since that night with Franco Fiore, Don Trapani upgraded everything. Brought out the big guns.”
But are they big enough? We aren’t going to rest easy until we’re back in Boston, but after what happened with Gabi in Matteo’s apartment, I’m not even sure that’s safe enough for my princesses, either.
“It’s fine, Milana,” I force myself to say. “Go explore.”
“Okay.”
As I limp my way to the stairs in Steph’s wake, I feel how her gaze follows me, her worry over me eating at her.
By the time we’ve reached the second floor, Milana has stopped in front of a painting, showing it to Zoe in an enthusiastic voice, pointing out little details.
I exhale the tension I’ve been holding in check.
Normal. Everything will return to normal.
With a suppressed grunt, I put being normal on my top-ten list of things to achieve after we’ve fully processed these past weeks.
“It’s quite the place, isn’t it,” I say to Stephano as he guides me down a corridor.
“Yeah. It’s a bit of a mind shift to live on a lake in Italy, but Gigi grew up here and it’s home.”
He comes to a halt, and I stop too. He glances down the empty corridor, to the spacious sitting room with windows overlooking the lake.
“You’re going to have to tell them, Luca.” Our gazes connect, and I read in his eyes everything his words aren’t saying.
I have to tell Matteo and Dominic. Ivan Petrov is going to want to sit in on that meeting too.
“I know. And I will.” Here’s the thing I haven’t told anybody yet.
The Russians are looking for Franco Fiore, and we’ve skidded into a war zone without knowing what the fuck we’re getting ourselves into, or who our enemies are.
“You’ve had your ear to the ground here?
What’s going on in the aftermath of Randazzo’s death? ”
“We need to sit and talk this through. Now isn’t the time.”
Fuck me. Things aren’t settling here, either. With Steph no longer in the States, he is close to the action here through Don Trapani, even if he’s been lying low, incognito.
“Okay.” There is no turning back time. There is only one way to get all this shit dealt with, and it’s by going forward. We have no choice.
At the end of the corridor, he holds open the door to a bedroom. An older man is waiting for us, impeccably dressed, but with a white doctor’s coat draped over the dressing table chair.
“This is Doctor Umberto Morandi. He’s Don Trapani’s personal physician and also a trained surgeon. He’ll look after you, Luca.”
“Good, thanks.”
I nod to the doctor, and as Steph leaves, sink onto the bed with a grunt of relief, admitting to the pain I’ve been hiding from Milana as best I could. My darling wife went through enough; she didn’t need to worry about this too.