Chapter 5
Chapter Five
Siobhán
“L uca,” I whispered and placed my palms flat against his chest, needing the resistance to prove he was there. I nudged him back enough to see his face, doubting reality. Dark eyes under long lashes looked down a straight nose. Plump lips pressed into a tight line. Unfamiliar facial hair covered the sharp angles of a familiar face, but it was him. It was Luca.
I hiccupped a sob, and my hand flew to my mouth before any more of my relief and confusion escaped. With shaking fingers, I brushed aside the hair falling across his cheek, afraid that if I touched him in earnest, reality would dissolve into imagination.
“I can’t believe you’re here. I thought you were?—”
“You can’t get rid of me that easily.” His words held a bitter edge.
I blinked rapidly and frowned. “What? What are you talking about?”
His lips twisted into an angry sneer.
“Luca.” I fisted my fingers in his shirt. “What happened? Where have you been?”
“It doesn’t matter. I’m here now. And don’t pretend like you don’t know what happened. It’s time for a reckoning, Shamrock.” His low, gravelly voice was thick with menace. It made me dizzy with questions. You didn’t do what Luca had done and live to tell the tale. Not in this world.
And that nickname…
All at once, the rose-colored glasses came off, and harsh reality replaced the dream I’d conjured of our star-crossed love story. Luca Moretti hated me, and there were no secret warm feelings behind his hatred.
His arms tightened around my waist, and I pushed at his chest. “What’s wrong with you?” I looked past his shoulder into my living room. “And how the hell did you get in here?”
“Not important.” He glanced at my fingers still gripping his shirt. He released me and peeled them apart, tossed my hands aside, and stepped back. I didn’t know if I wanted to push him farther away or crawl back into his arms. “Put some shoes on,” he ordered. “We’re going for a ride.” Luca’s abrupt demand was as surreal as his unexpected arrival.
I followed him into the living room and crossed my arms. “Luca Moretti, back from the dead. You know, I haven’t even had the time to process the fact you’re alive much less standing in my living room, and you’re ordering me around?” I scoffed. “I’m not going anywhere until you tell me what the hell happened and why you’re here.”
The vintage lamps cast shadows across his face. They highlighted the salt in his beard and gave his mahogany eyes an almost reddish glow. Trepidation added itself to the storm of my emotions, but then he donned one of his signature flashy smiles, and damn if my heart didn’t beat faster even knowing it was fake. Luca was alive and so was our second chance.
“Fine.” I grabbed my sneakers from the entryway and sat at the dining room table to put them on. “Where are we going?”
He looked at his watch. “I want to show you something.”
I glanced over my shoulder at the microwave in the kitchen. “At one in the morning?”
“You sure have a lot of questions,” he snapped.
“Can’t imagine why.”
“Come on,” he barked, voice devoid of teasing or taunting and filled with impatience. He opened the door and stared at me from the landing. “Let’s go.”
I grabbed my purse. “There better be coffee wherever we’re going.”
I closed and locked the door behind me and dropped the keys in my purse. Luca’s hand clamped around my biceps.
“Ow!” I winced and pulled away. At least, I tried to pull away. His grip tightened, and he dragged me down the stairs. “What the hell, Luca? You don’t have to squeeze so hard. Jesus.”
He spared me a fleeting glance but kept his punishing hold and pace all the way to the sidewalk.
“In fact…” I yanked my arm back. “What’s with the manhandling? I can walk on my own.”
He stopped and glared at me, examining my face as if looking for a lie, then resumed marching up the street.
I hurried after him, my curiosity getting the best of me. This behavior was odd even for him. He’d been an asshole ever since The Incident, but this was next level. I wanted a chance to talk to him, find out how on earth he was still alive. And if the opportunity presented itself, chew him out for what he’d done to Marco and Anna.
We turned into a cul-de-sac. A bright red Ferrari was parked in the shadows.
“Holy shit.” I snorted. “You drive a 308 GTS Quattrovalvole?” His head snapped up, disbelief evident in his frown, but you don’t spend as much time as I did in a chop shop as a kid without knowing a thing or two about Ferraris. “Why am I not surprised?”
He opened the passenger-side door. “Get in.”
I glared at him as he climbed in on the driver’s side. He ignored me and started the engine. It rumbled to life, loud and fierce, and he finally spared me a glance.
“What’s wrong with you?” I snapped. “Here I am, all happy you’re alive, and you’re being an even bigger asshole than usual.”
“What’s wrong with me ?”
He peeled out of the cul-de-sac onto the empty residential street, and the disgust in his voice reverberated over the scream of the tires. The force threw me back against my seat. I felt around for the seat belt, my trepidation growing with each rev of the engine.
“Happy I’m okay…” He scoffed and slapped me with another angry glare. His eyes flashed, wild and erratic beneath each passing streetlight. “Like you give a shit about me or the DeVitas.”
“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
“You lied to me.” He slammed on the accelerator and took the next turn like we were on an F1 course, flinging me into the door. “Not once, but twice.”
“We’ve been over this—taking speech lessons to get rid of my Southie accent is not lying.”
“You told me you’re Irish.”
“I am Irish!”
“No… You’re South Boston Irish.” He said South Boston like it sickened him to have the words touch his tongue.
“Are we really doing this again?”
He ignored me.
I huffed at his dismissal. “I would love to hear how I lied to you a second time. I can only imagine the story you’ve concocted.”
He sped onto US-1 heading north out of Boston, and I watched the empty stretch of highway emerge through the windshield.
“You didn’t just lie to me. You lied to Marco. And I’ll never forgive you for that. I’ll never forgive you for being a Shaughnessy.”
My stomach dropped through the seat and onto the concrete where the back tires of the Ferrari sped over it like roadkill. Luca knew? How? The only person I’d told was Marco, and he knew better than to tell anyone. Right?
My mind raced.
Being a Shaughnessy was the only thing worse to Luca than being South Boston Irish. He probably thought I’d kept it from Marco. Why would I keep something that huge from Marco unless…
Trepidation morphed into dread. I shifted in my seat to face him. “Luca,” I said as calmly as I could even though adrenaline was tangling my insides into a knotted mess. “Listen to me. I never broke Marco’s trust. Not once. I could never do that to him. He’s family.”
Luca shot me a hard look even as he eased off the accelerator, stomped on the clutch, and downshifted. The orange lights beneath the top deck of the Tobin Bridge reflected off his eyes and made them look like they burned inside his angry face.
Red eyes . Da’s unhinged rambling shot into my mind. The old superstitions latched onto my stomach and squeezed.
“Don’t talk to me about family. A Shaughnessy stole my father from me.” His jaw shifted under the strain of his emotion. “And a Shaughnessy is going to pay the price.”
The acid burning my stomach surged. An eye for an eye. The Cosa Nostra way.
Oh my God. Luca is going to kill me.
I pitched forward and threw up on the plastic floor mat.
“Cazzo!” he shouted over the growl of the engine. “Are you fucking kidding me?”
He downshifted again and pulled over onto the shoulder of the bridge. The car jerked to a stop, and I heaved again, splattering watery puke atop its vintage interior.
I wiped my mouth with the back of my sleeve. “What did you expect?” Tears poured down my face as reality sank in. “That I’d be okay with this? That I wouldn’t freak out that you’re going to kill me?”
“You should have thought about that before becoming a rat.” He unbuckled his seat belt and sneered. “Your people may be trash and have no code, but they don’t tolerate rats any more than Cosa Nostra.”
“I’m not a rat,” I shrieked through wild sobs.
“Right, and I’m not Italian.” He opened his door, climbed out, and slammed it behind him.
My vision blurred behind an ocean of tears, but my mind became sharp as a knife, cutting through the shock and fear to save my life. I couldn’t run from him. No way. He’d catch me. There was nowhere to hide on the bridge. I couldn’t hurt him. Luca was huge, and I had no weapon. But I did have my cell phone. I rifled through my purse.
Luca flung the passenger door open, tore my purse from my hands, and tossed it onto the driver’s seat.
Only one option left—beg.
“Luca.” His name came out soft and wavered under the intensity of my terror. “You need to listen to me.”
He unfastened my seat belt, clamped his hand around my arm, and hauled me out of the car, nearly pulling my shoulder out of its socket.
The bottom deck of the bridge was dark, and he’d stopped us between overhead lamps. The only other light came from the docks on the far side of the river. The cold night wind off the mouth of the Charles whipped through his hair, making it dance around the harsh lines of his shadowed face.
I grabbed the front of his shirt. “Listen to me, Luca. I’m not a rat. I never lied to you. Marco knows everything. I told him myself.”
His jaw twitched, and his eyes flashed. But a glimmer of uncertainty broke through the rage there, and hope sparked in my chest.
“I moved to Ireland when I was eighteen. I want nothing to do with my family. The only reason I came back was to take care of my parents.” My shoulders and voice shook with emotion. “I didn’t know who Marco was when I started at Terme. I swear, I didn’t know!”
Luca’s chest heaved; his hot, fast breath flared his nostrils.
I clung to his shirt and tugged him closer. “You have to believe me!”
“Nice story, Shamrock,” he ground out. “And I’m supposed to believe you now? When all this time you conveniently left out certain details?” He grabbed me by my throat and lowered his face to mine. “Like the fact you’re a Shaughnessy?” He squeezed. I released his shirt and clawed at his fingers, desperate for air. “ That your fucking uncle killed my father? ”
Luca’s heated words mingled with the tears searing my cold cheeks. I didn’t want to die, but the only weapon I had was the truth, a dull blade against the steel armor of Luca’s hatred.
“I am so sorry, Luca,” I wheezed from beneath his unrelenting grip, my vision darkening. “I have nothing to do with them. I promise.”
He released my throat. I gasped for air, coughing and sputtering, dizzy from the influx of oxygen. He hauled me up onto the ledge behind the chain-link fence, the only barrier between us and the open night. “You know the punishment for being a rat,” he shouted over the rushing wind.
We hadn’t stopped because of the floor mat.
My knees buckled. He held me up with one hand wrapped around my biceps.
“Please! You have to believe me!” My voice and shoulders shook. “I would never betray Marco. He’s more family to me than mine ever was!”
“Lies!” He screamed the word in my face. “All! Lies! You live a life of lies and expect me to believe this horseshit?”
He reached past me and yanked on the metal fence, sliding the section on its track. The locks holding the gate had been cut, and the severed and twisted metal clanked against the chain links. “You’re just trying to save your ass,” he growled.
My heart pounded against my ribs. All sound was drowned out by the blood rushing in my ears. I looked over my shoulder and searched the highway for a passing savior, but the bridge was empty except for a semi. It sped past us and out of view. No other headlights dotted the northbound deck of the Tobin Bridge.
Panic launched me from the ledge back onto the shoulder. I jerked and twisted my arm, trying to break free, but Luca’s grip held fast. He pulled me into him, spun me around, and pressed my back against his front. He wrapped his arms around me, pinning them to my sides, and lifted me off the ground without so much as a grunt despite my squirming and kicking.
He stepped back up onto the ledge, and I stilled. The wind buffeted us from every direction. The dock lights glinted off the choppy water near the shore, but beneath us, there was nothing but a black abyss.
The wind gusted, an icy breath against my wet cheeks. I dug my fingers into Luca’s thighs, desperate for purchase. If he opened his arms and pushed, I’d tumble into oblivion.
Fear consumed the last moments of my life. Fear and grief over the loss of my future to the great unknown. My head fell back and rested against Luca’s shoulder. My eyes fluttered closed. I waited for my end, for the moment he threw me over the edge, and I fell into my watery grave.