Chapter 37
ALEX
I awoke with a muscular arm draped over me. A mixture of the sea and fresh linen floated through the air. With my head on his chest, my body relaxed as I listened to his heartbeat, and the world faded for a moment. But when I looked up, it wasn’t my handsome devil.
It was Marcello.
My Lonely Boy .
His dark blue eyes bore into mine, stripping me bare with one look. I attempted to sit up, and Marcello crushed me against his chest, holding me as if he were afraid to let go. Most mornings, I opened my eyes to find him in the armchair by the window or in bed with me.
“Marcello,” I said as I cleared the sleep from my eyes. “Did I have a nightmare?”
He brushed my curls off my forehead. “It’s okay. You’re safe, Alex.”
With Marcello, I always felt safe. I didn’t get the same sense of calm from Luca, which was strange. Marcello rocked me back to sleep in the middle of the night. He cared for me in ways Luca never had.
“I have to leave soon for a meeting,” he told me.
“Okay.” I rubbed my growling stomach. “Can you get my breakfast? I’m starving.”
He removed his cell phone from his pocket and typed a one-handed text message to the kitchen staff.
I tapped on his arm, and he let me go so that I could prop myself up on a stack of pillows.
My eyes swept over the room, glazed over the clean bedsheets.
Heart pounding, I rechecked the white sheets.
Not a drop of blood. No knife with a snake wrapped around the silver handle.
What the hell happened last night?
I had a nightmare about The Serpents and The Salvatores. Or was that real? I pinched the bridge of my nose between my fingers and sighed. I hated losing chunks of time and the memories I struggled to recall.
The bloody knife flashed into my mind. Then, the gash on Luca’s right side as he crumbled to the ground in front of me. How could that have been real? It looked so raw as his blood dripped onto the cement.
Had I imagined everything?
The hot sex with Luca.
The Serpents.
The blood.
The knife.
Biting my nails, I stared into the expanse of the room. “I stabbed Luca,” I mumbled, still in disbelief at my actions. “That was real, right?”
He nodded. “My brother almost died. He lost a lot of blood.”
I covered my face with my hands as tears fell from my eyes. Marcello slid his arm behind my back and hugged me. His fingers tapped my hip in a soothing motion. I liked it when he touched me.
“I could have killed Luca,” I choked out. “What the fuck was I thinking?”
Marcello dragged me closer to him and rested his hand on my thigh. “You weren’t.”
“Luca always says you can’t kill the devil.” I laughed. “Guess he’s right.”
As much as I wanted to hate Luca, I cared about him. He’d made my life miserable for years. But when he lowered his defenses, I saw another side to him. My scarred boy. The devil in all of my dirty fantasies.
I glanced at Marcello. “Did I have sex with Luca last night?”
Another nod.
Of course, he knew. He was probably watching us from the creepy spy shed in the backyard.
“You guys chased me through Beacon Bay,” I said. “That was real, right?”
“Yeah.”
“But the blood…” I shook my head. “How did Luca make it look like I stabbed him? It seemed so real.”
“We had help from a Hollywood makeup artist,” he admitted.
“How about the blood?”
He rolled his broad shoulders. “Easy to make. It’s just corn syrup, water, and food coloring.”
“Like in the movies.” My eyes widened. “But why would you do all of that?”
“To help you remember.”
Someone knocked on the door, interrupting our conversation.
Marcello grabbed a tray from Roman and set my breakfast on the bed. “Eat up, princess.”
He sat beside me, his dress shoe dangling off the side of the mattress. Mornings like this one were becoming normal for us. And I feared the day when I would lose him. It was inevitable. His job forced him to travel worldwide, often keeping him away from home for months.
Sometimes, I wondered if my life would have been different if he were the oldest Salvatore.
Marcello cared about rules and structure.
It would have happened if his father had commanded him to marry me.
But Luca was a rebel. Even as a boy, his father couldn’t force his hand.
He’d rather bleed at his father’s cruel hands than submit to his demands.
I buttered a slice of toast and added a spoonful of raspberry jam. “Why are you so nice to me? You should hate me after what I did to Luca.”
Marcello sighed as our eyes met. “I could never hate my queen.”
Parts of my memory were still fuzzy with The Devil’s Knights. They were the bankers for the criminal underworld, which gave them a tremendous amount of power. Because no one fucked with bankers. But why did I have to join them? Why would dangerous men like the Salvatores care about having a queen?
After I chewed the first slice of toast, I grabbed Marcello’s wrist, forcing him to look at me. “Why am I your queen?”
“Not my queen,” he corrected. “ Our queen.”
I hated losing years worth of memories and stolen moments. And knowing I forgot shit made it worse. It made me feel like I was losing my mind. Maybe I should have let the doctors commit me until I sorted this shit out.
“Why me?” I bit into another piece of toast. “I’m nobody special.”
He shook his head, a smirk forming. “You’re important to us, Alex.”
“Tell me, Marcello.” I wiped my mouth with a napkin. “If I knew all this before Aiden’s disappearance, I can’t remember.”
“I shouldn’t be telling you this.” He bit his lip, a hint of hesitation in his eyes. “You need to remember on your own. The doctor said…”
I gave him my best pouty face. “Please. I’m sick of people treating me like a patient. Just tell me the truth.”
He studied my face, then groaned. “You’re the only legitimate female heir from a Founding Family.”
“Oh,” I stammered. “But that’s not possible.”
He didn’t mean the founders of Devil’s Creek. No, he was referring to the ones with absolute power. My ancestors. But was I the only one?
“Sonny has a younger sister,” I pointed out.
“Rhiannon is his half-sister. Sonny’s dad had an affair with one of his business partners’ wives.”
“But…” My words trailed off as I considered what this meant.
“It’s just you, Alex. Without you, my family’s legacy dies. We will lose a lot of our power. So will the Knights.”
I wanted to say that wasn’t my problem, but I held my tongue. Marcello was growing on me, finally lowering his guard and telling me his secrets.
I dropped the half-eaten toast on the plate. “What does your family’s legacy have to do with mine?”
“After your mom backed out of the engagement to my father, The Founders Society approved my parents’ marriage.”
The Founders Society was the secret society that governed The Devil’s Knights and similar organizations in the United States. My grandfather was a top-ranking member, though I knew little about his role in the group.
“It wasn’t my dad’s fault your mom reneged on the deal,” Marcello continued.
“She fucked with all of his plans. To maintain our standing, my parents promised they would have a son who would produce an heir from a Founding Family. They thought they could keep that promise until my dad discovered there were no female heirs who would be of marrying age by the time Luca was an adult.”
“That has nothing to do with me,” I shot back.
“It has everything to do with you. As punishment for marrying your dad, your grandfather cut your mom off. Took away her trust fund and banished her from Devil’s Creek.”
“I already know this.”
“Just listen.” He put a gentle hand on my knee. “When your mom came crawling back to my father, he offered her a way to maintain her lifestyle. But she had to promise her firstborn daughter would marry a Salvatore. If she had a son, he would become a Knight. And she had both.”
My eyes widened at his confession. “Aiden hated Luca because he didn’t want to be a Knight. So why didn’t he tell me?”
“We don’t allow women into our inner circle. Just the queen. Until you take the oath, I can’t tell you much more.”
“It could have easily been you,” I commented. “Instead of Luca.”
“Yeah.” His eyes were downcast as he picked at the loose string hanging from the top sheet. “But it wasn’t. So Luca gets you.”
“What would have happened if my mom didn’t have kids?”
“She didn’t have a choice.”
“What if she couldn’t get pregnant?”
He shrugged. “Thankfully, that didn’t happen. If a Salvatore doesn’t have children with someone from a Founding Family…”
“Luca needs to have a son with me,” I muttered.
He nodded. “If Luca had died last year, our families would have forced you to marry me.”
“I don’t want this… I never wanted this life.” I shook my head, fighting the tears ready to spill from my eyes. “I’m not ready to be the Queen of The Devil’s Knights.”
“Alex,” he groaned, his grip tightening on my knee. “You don’t have a choice. We need you. Forget about your issues with Luca. The Knights need a queen.”
We sat in silence for a few minutes. Water crashed from a distance, carrying through the open French doors. My heart never raced when Marcello was at my side. He didn’t judge me or make me feel like the crazy girl. Just let me work out my shit.
This felt like the tip of the iceberg. What would I learn after I swore the oath? Would I even want to become one of them? I was lucky if I made it through the day without something triggering a flashback. In my condition, I could not be a queen.
“You were a dick when I first got here. What’s changed?”
His fingers slipped through my untamed curls. “When I saw you were crying in your sleep, I realized we were to blame. Luca pushed you to that point. We couldn’t put it all on you.”
I opened my mouth to ask another question, but a noise penetrated the air. It sounded like an engine backfiring. Marcello shot off the bed, grabbed both of his guns from the nightstand, and shoved them into the holster strapped to his chest.
I crawled to the edge of the bed. “What’s going on, Marcello?”
His cell phone rang as another noise boomed from a distance.
“Was that a gunshot?”
He raised the phone to his ear, muttering a few words in Italian. Then he hung up, his focus shifting to me. “Stay here.”
I slid off the bed as he crossed the room.
“What’s going on?”
Marcello grabbed my shoulder, and shadows danced across his dark blue irises. “Stay in this room, Alex. You’re not to answer the door or leave for any reason.”
“What the hell was that noise?”
“We’re under attack,” he said in a calm tone. “Listen to me, Alex. This is for your safety. Stay here until I get back.”
Nerves shook through me, and I wanted to beg him to stay.
“Roman is outside,” he said to calm me down. “He’ll keep you safe until I return.”
A sudden rush of emotions washed over me, twisting my stomach into knots. I stood on the balls of my feet and threaded my arms around his neck. Marcello seemed confused or even surprised, but he hugged me back.
I kissed his cheek. “Take care of yourself, Marcello. You better come back to me.”
His teeth glided across his bottom lip as he nodded.
He left the room in a hurry, and I rested my hip against the doorframe, looking over at Roman, who wore a severe expression like a mask.
I watched as Marcello ran down the hallway.
My chest ached when he reached the stairwell and disappeared.
After what I had done to Luca, I couldn’t handle anything happening to either of them.