Chapter 17
SOPHIA
I glare at the closed door like staring at it might make it melt off its hinges. I shouldn’t be irritated that Luca pulled away, that he didn’t take advantage of the situation. What kind of man would he be if he did?
And as much as he’s harmed me, I don’t believe Luca is the type of man who would do that.
His dossier mentioned that men who have worked for him have told cops he has a code: no women or children.
But I suppose I shouldn’t believe that so easily.
After all, I certainly didn’t know he would kidnap me.
I’d never even imagined the possibility.
I’m surprised he remembered me at all. It had to just be because I was a novelty, the only cop he ever slept with. It couldn’t be for any other reason.
My stomach growls. I haven’t eaten since that sandwich that Luca made me, and I’m starving. I think about the lamb chops that Agnes makes, the ones she sends home with me, and just the idea of them makes my mouth water.
“Hey!” I call, hoping that Luca will hear me. “I’m hungry.”
A grunt sounds from the door, but I can’t quite make out any words. I get closer, putting my head against the door.
“What was that?”
The door opens and I stumble forward, placing my hands on a hard chest…one that isn’t Luca’s.
I look up at Diego.
“I said, what do you want?”
I squeak and stand up straight. “Uh…anything. Where’s Luca?”
He doesn’t answer, just taking my hand and leading me to the kitchen in an iron grip.
I follow easily enough. I’m not going to make any trouble, not for Diego.
I’m afraid of him in a way I’m not afraid of Luca.
And I know I should be afraid of both of them, but there’s just something about Diego, how quiet he is…
He plants me at the kitchen island and opens the fridge, gesturing to everything in it.
“I can make anything we have. So I ask again: what do you want?”
“Lamb chops?” I ask hopefully, and he ducks down and takes a package of meat out of the fridge.
“Mashed potatoes on the side okay?” he asks, and I dart my eyes to the front door before I can think better of it. He clocks me immediately and shakes his head. “None of that. I’ll have to shoot you, and I don’t think either of us want that.”
I swallow hard. Just from the way he says it lets me know he means it.
“Yeah, alright. Mashed potatoes are good.”
Diego cooks efficiently, like it’s a science experiment instead of a meal, but by the time he has the lamb chops on top of the stove, it smells like heaven.
“Where did you learn to cook?”
“My mother,” he answers, but doesn’t elaborate.
He places two plates on the table, one in front of me. He stands as he eats a bite of homemade mashed potatoes.
“Try it,” he urges when I just watch him.
He hasn’t given me a knife for obvious reasons, so I pick up the lamb chop by the bone and take a bite, my eyes widening. “Oh, it’s delicious.”
Maybe ever better than Agnes’s, but I won’t tell her that.
I eat voraciously, not knowing when I’ll have another meal this big, this good.
He chuckles. “I guess you do like it.”
“Told you, it’s delicious.” I pause, knowing that I should at least try to get some information out of him. “Where did you say Luca was?”
“I didn’t.”
“You could tell me.”
“I could. I’m not going to.”
“Better yet, you could let me go,” I suggest, figuring it’s worth a shot.
Diego cracks a smile and it makes him look twenty years younger.
“That one’s not going to happen, I’m afraid. Caputo—”
“Luca,” I say, and he hums in the back of his throat.
“He wants you here. So here you stay. Until further notice.”
“Further notice?” I stretch, arching my back and groaning. “Do you mind if we walk around? I’ve been stuck in that room a long time.”
Diego stares at me with a shrewd gaze, so long that I start to feel uneasy. But then he shrugs.
“Wouldn’t hurt. We can go out on the balcony for some fresh air.”
He walks close to me but doesn’t touch me, leading me out of the back of the house onto the balcony. It looks down over a small garden of daisies and various other flowers. It’s cute.
“Not exactly what I expected,” I say.
Diego tilts his head, confused.
“This place. It isn’t exactly a common mafia safehouse.”
“How would you know?”
“Didn’t he tell you? I used to be a cop.”
Diego looks straight ahead, out over the garden. “I guess I was hoping he was lying.”
I clear my throat. “Don’t like cops?”
He looks at me, his eyes blank, nearly dead. “What do you think?”
A shudder washes over me. I wouldn’t want Diego on my bad side, because even when he’s being polite, he’s a little scary.
“I grew up taught to revere cops,” I admit. “My father is first generation Italian, but he worshipped cops. Especially Irish ones.”
“Plenty of those to go around,” Diego drawls, but I get lost in my thoughts, barely hearing him.
“We had this one cop that patrolled around our place. My mom got sick. Really sick. And one day, a man posing as a salesman tried to get in.”
I shiver at the memory of it, of the man’s cold, beady eyes. I’d only been ten years old, just watching my mother for a few moments while my dad ran to the corner store for milk.
He’d rushed me and I’d screamed, and Officer O’Hara had heard me.
“Let me guess. The cop saved you.”
“He did,” I admit. “Came swooping in and arrested the man. Sat with me until my father got home. After that, all I wanted to be was a cop.”
“And your mother?”
I frown, glancing at him. “What about my mother?”
“You said she was sick. Did she get better?”
I tighten my mouth, lips thinning. “No.”
“I’m sorry.”
“It was a long time ago.”
Three days before my eleventh birthday, I’d gotten home from school and walked in my mother’s bedroom to find her cold. My father sat at the kitchen counter until the ambulance arrived. No sirens. They knew they wouldn’t need them.
“Lost my mom when I was young, too. Not that young, but still. It never gets easier.”
“I imagine it doesn’t."
“Guess that’s something you, Luca, and I have in common.”
“Dead mothers?”
Diego snorts out a laugh. “I guess you could put it that way.”
I had read in the dossier that Luca’s mother died when he was a teenager, but I didn’t know how. I could ask more of Diego, but it almost seems wrong to ask something so personal without Luca here.
Why? What the hell? Too personal? I’m trying to take down an empire here.
“So you went into the police academy to make your father proud?” he asks.
“Yeah. Yeah, I guess so.”
“Did it work?”
“For a while,” I muse. It comes out sounding like the truth because it is. My father was proud…at first. But there were cracks in the armor of the Chicago Police Department. My father knew it, saw the news, read the articles. Corruption is just as present now than it ever was.
But I’m only one woman. I can’t singlehandedly save the police department from corruption, can I? I feel like my father thinks I can. Like it’s what he expects of me. He once told me he was proud of me but not my colleagues when more reports of police brutality in Chicago came out.
And honestly? He had a good point. I’ve noticed myself how most cops act like authority figures with no boundaries rather than the saviors they’re supposed to conduct themselves as.
Scott isn’t like that. I’m not like that.
Most of the cops I know aren’t, but there’s also so many of them in the mob’s pocket.
There’s so many of them who will rough up an inmate based on the mob’s orders.
“You’re not a cop anymore?” Diego asks.
“No,” I lie, the first lie I’ve told Diego. He seems like the type of person to be a human lie detector, so I’ve tried to avoid it. But I have to keep my story straight. I can’t let Luca see any cracks. He already barely believes me.
If he does at all.
Diego raises an eyebrow. “Didn’t know you could just stop being a cop.”
“Yeah, well. You can quit anything,” I mutter. “After my partner got popped I wasn’t into it anymore.”
“Did you see it?” Diego asks.
I don’t look at him, not wanting him to see the lie on my face.
“No. Happened when I wasn’t working.”
He hums. “Good. That kind of shit changes you. Seeing a friend killed.”
Given his military background, he would know that better than most.
“I can imagine.”
We’re quiet for a moment, and I’m almost startled when he speaks again.
“And how do you know the boss?”
God, that’s a loaded question. I can’t very well say, “well he was a one night stand and then I got pregnant and now I still want him so bad I can’t stand myself,” can I?
I hum in the back of my throat. “We spent one night together.”
“Must have been one hell of a night.”
I start to nod, but then I realize the voice is deeper, with more of a rasp. I turn to see Luca standing behind me, his face freshly washed but a cut on his right eyebrow. He’s clearly been in some kind of scuffle.
“Luca.”
Diego looks between us for a long moment and then Luca jerks his head. Diego follows like he’s a loyal dog, doing exactly what Luca wants and leaving to go back into the house. Luca has power, even over his truest friends, and I know from the dossier that they have been friends all their lives.
Luca looks down at me and I can’t help but lift my hand to touch his face, worried about his wound. He jerks away from me.
I frown. “You’re hurt.”
“It’s nothing.”
“Someone dared to hurt you? The boss?” I ask incredulously, fear making my heart race. There were whispers around the precinct that Luca was losing his power, that his brother was making his own play, but I didn’t believe them. Now, I’m starting to.
I reach up again and Luca strikes out to grab my wrist, wrapping my arms around his neck. I don’t pull away even though I should.
“It was family stuff. Nothing for you to worry your pretty little head about,” he teases, but there’s an edge to it. He’s in a mood.
“Who says I’m worried?”
He smirks. “I can tell. It’s written all over your face. You know, for a cop, you have a shitty poker face.”
“I’m not a cop anymore.”
“So you say.”
“How much did you hear? When I was talking to Diego?”
“Heard that you talk a lot more to him than you do to me,” he mutters, his brow furrowed in a frown. He sounds almost jealous.
“Maybe he’s easier to talk to.”
“Is that so? And why’s that?”
Because I don’t want to jump his bones.
I shrug. “I dunno.”
His hands go to my hips, not quite touching but hovering over them as I keep my arms around his neck.
“Pixie. Sophia.”
“Hm?” I’m lost in his green eyes, melting against him.
“Are you ever going to talk to me?”
I sigh. “I’ve told you everything already.”
“I’ve asked you not to lie to me.”
“Yeah, well, I’ve asked you to believe what I say!” My voice cracks with frustration, not sadness. I try to pull away from him, but he won’t let me, drawing me closer. “What can I do to make you believe me?”
“I don’t know,” he says in an almost-whisper, then he leans down and kisses me hungrily, his tongue sliding between my lips.
I moan into his mouth, my fingers locking behind the nape of his neck as I kiss him back hard, nipping at his lower lip as he tries to pull away.
“Fuck, Sophia,” he curses, growling as he picks me up by my hips, slamming me back against the balcony door, which has drifted shut in the breeze. This ridiculous dress I’m wearing gets bunched around my hips again. I’d shed my thong earlier today, not wanting to wear dirty underwear.
He rolls his hips against me, his eyes widening and snapping to mine when he realizes I’m not wearing panties. His mouth opens as if he’s going to scold me, but I kiss him again, sticking my tongue into his mouth. He grabs it and sucks on it, making my knees go weak.
“Luca, please,” I plead, finally asking for what I want, finally letting him know he’s not taking advantage, that I want it too. Probably more than he does.
His green eyes bore into mine, his chest heaving.
“You’re serious? You want—”
“I want you,” I breathe. “I want you to fuck me, Luca, please.”
How much clearer can I be?