11. Luca
LUCA
Dear Diary,
I’m no stranger to being the bad guy.
From the other side of the clubhouse, I watched Nyah and Lynx argue. He shook his head, towering over her, and she shoved her hands on her hips, glaring up at him, not willing to back down an inch, even though she had to be at least a foot shorter.
Dax came and perched himself beside me, watching them as well.
“You can’t be happy about this arrangement,” I said to him.
He glanced at me. “About the mother of my child being the only thing that snaps a serial killer out of his bloodlust? Yeah, I’m fucking thrilled.”
“So say something.”
He shook his head slowly. “No. She wants this. Look at her.”
I couldn’t deny that what Nyah wanted was clear in her body language. She wasn’t scared of Lynx, even though she fucking should be. But if I applied logic to that situation, she should probably be scared of every man here.
Except perfect, boring Dax. Who probably scooped up spiders and set them free in his garden rather than squishing them beneath his shoe. The man could fight, but anyone could tell he didn’t actually get off on the violence like some of us around here did.
I suspected now that Nyah was back in his bed, he’d have no reason to fight at all and would go back to his perfect, dull life, and they would raise perfect, dull children.
I hated the idea with every cell of my body. I’d be left here in the darkness, fighting a war with my father for a kingdom I wanted nothing to do with, and yet couldn’t walk away from.
It was why I’d picked a fight with Dax in the Murder Squad meeting. Because all I could see was a future where the two of them rode off into the sunset together.
I was so fucking jealous.
Especially because Nyah was all I could think about. What I’d done with her in the bathroom that morning had repeated over in my head, a constant loop of her submitting to me, and me promising to make her watch me over and over again, reminding her of what she couldn’t have.
And her agreeing to it.
She’d literally agreed to watch me fuck other women, and I’d called her a good girl like it was a punishment.
One she’d willingly taken. My dick got hard just thinking about it.
I didn’t want other women.
Just her.
Fuck my stupid feelings.
My phone buzzed in my hand, and I looked down at it. A text from French, one of the new guys on my hockey team, asking if training was still on this morning because they were all there, but Lynx and I hadn’t shown up.
I started to reply that Lynx and I no longer had anything to do with the team, so they could do what they wanted. It was my father’s team, not mine.
But then Lynx’s annoying voice rang in my head, reminding me these guys had done nothing wrong, and they were all just hoping for a shot at making something more for themselves and their families.
Annoying as that sentiment was, maybe it was worth fighting for.
I sighed and stood. “All right, stop fucking bickering. Lynx, we have training. The guys are all waiting for us.”
Lynx did a double take. “We’re keeping the team? Your father…”
“Fuck my father. He gave me that team; if he wants it back, he can come claim it from me.”
Dax eyed me. “Does this mean you aren’t leaving town with Isabella?”
I’d already made that decision during the night. I couldn’t run again. There was nowhere to run to that my father couldn’t trace us back to. He’d already proven that once.
All that was left was to stay and fight. Not for his turf. Or even his business, apart from maybe the stupid Saint View Vipers hockey team because, apparently, somewhere along the way I’d grown to care about what happened to them. But even them, I would give up if he wanted me to.
All I wanted to fight for was freedom. For me and my sister.
It should have been as simple as walking away.
And yet it wasn’t because of who my father was.
I’d embarrassed him. He’d lost face with MacGregor, and that news would spread.
When he didn’t marry Nyah, whispers would start.
And then the news she was pregnant with my baby would be whispered from mouth to ear until every Mafia connection my father had knew I’d betrayed him.
Knew that Carlos Guerra couldn’t even handle his own children.
I’d made him appear weak, and weakness brought out the sharks. I could practically feel them circling. They’d be wanting to pick my father off, to take what he’d built.
And to put him in the ground in the process.
My part in all of that wouldn’t go unpunished or unnoticed. They’d come for me too.
But the biggest shark of all would be my father. He’d have my head for this. There was no doubt in my mind.
And yet I also knew I couldn’t run. If something happened to me while we were out there, just me and Isabella, then she’d be alone.
I needed to stay. For her if for no one else.
War had changed over the years. I could see that. He had family at the heart of everything he did, and he and his men had protected my sister when they had no loyalty to me, or to her, or any reason to do so. They’d done it only because they were good people.
That was the sort of family I wanted for Isabella.
Once I was buried six feet under, these were the sort of people who could keep her safe and give her what she needed.
She could have a life here. Friends. She could be like Little Jax, who lived here with Hawk.
Unlike the small town we’d been hiding in for the last year, lying about who we really were and always looking over our shoulders, here she could be her true self.
She could be Isabella Guerra, and these people would accept her, knowing every deep, dark, dirty secret we kept.
I’d been here a mere matter of hours and yet I could feel that.
See it just from watching Isabella with Jax and the careful way the club members all watched out for them without any of the leering my father’s friends were so fond of.
Nobody here wanted to take a sixteen-year-old child to bed.
Which was more than I could say for the company my father kept.
“We’re not leaving,” I said to Dax. “We aren’t going anywhere. Except to the rink.”
“I’m coming too,” Nyah said.
Me, Lynx, and Dax all looked at her.
I cracked my fingers one by one, trying to keep my words calm. “No, you’re absolutely not.”
“Agreed,” Dax said, a deep frown settling between his eyebrows.
Lynx shook his head. “I don’t need a babysitter. I’m fine.”
Nyah glared back at him. “One, you do need a babysitter. We can all see you’re walking around on eggshells.” She turned to Dax. “Two, I’m going to pretend you didn’t just try to make a decision on where I go and what I do—”
“The baby—”
“Is just fine. And is in my body.”
Dax still didn’t seem happy, but he pressed his lips together.
She turned my way. “And three, you—”
I stepped toward her, just like I had that morning in the bathroom. “You what, princess? What do you want from me?”
Her mouth opened and closed, and a red blush covered her cheeks. The words clearly died on her tongue with me standing this close, and I smugly tucked that realization away for future reference.
Being able to get under Nyah’s skin, to get her flustered and hot felt like a superpower.
She shoved both hands against my chest. “I want you to get out of my personal space.”
I chuckled as I took a few steps back, knowing full well I could get out of her space or Lynx and Dax would make me.
But I winked at her anyway. “Those of us going to the rink, we leave in five. If the princess wants to come, whatever.”
Nyah scowled at me, but she could scowl all she wanted. I’d remind her of it next time I had her naked.
Because there would be a next time. She could pretend she was playing happy family with Dax.
But we both felt the attraction between us. And as long as we lived beneath the same roof, which it seemed like we would be for the foreseeable future, since neither of us had anywhere else to go where our fathers couldn’t reach us, it was eventually going to bubble over.
I leaned in and whispered in her ear as I passed, “Quit scowling at me, princess. Or I’ll give your mouth something better to do.”
Lynx borrowed the club’s van, and I had the unfortunate pleasure of sitting beside him in the front seats while Dax and Nyah made out in the back.
I was fully aware the little show of affection Nyah started with him was for my benefit. Even Dax looked surprised but was easily won over by Nyah’s lips on his neck, her hand creeping up his thigh, only to stop an inch before things got indecent.
There was no denying the two of them were hot together.
I’d never been turned on by heterosexual porn, but I was definitely turned on by anything that involved Nyah.
I tried distracting myself by attempting to log in to my father’s security cameras so I could see what was going on at his house.
Like he might have a whiteboard with “Plan to Take Down My Only Son” written across the top in red marker, and a play-by-play of his revenge path beneath it.
But alas, the old man was smarter than I gave him credit for, and I was denied access, leaving me nothing to do but listen to Nyah and Dax making out on the back seat. By the time we got to the rink, I was struggling, gripping the door handle so tightly my knuckles were white.
Lynx opened the door so fast I wasn’t even sure the van had fully stopped. It slammed behind him, and he stormed off toward the entrance. I followed, leaving Nyah and Dax to go at it in the back seat if they so desired. I didn’t need to see it anymore.
The team was already out on the ice, skating around, black pucks flying and sticks scattered about.
French’s relief filled his face. “Coach!”
But Lynx didn’t acknowledge him, other than with a single hand held up in a stop motion. He beelined for the changing rooms, and I followed.
French turned to me helplessly. “Boss?”
I didn’t know what the fuck I was supposed to say to them, Lynx was the one who knew stuff about hockey, not me. But he was having a moment, and somebody needed to get the team organized, clearly.
“Do the warm-up drills.”
“Already done them.”
I stared at him, racking my brain for what they did next, but I was drawing a complete blank because I really hadn’t fucking cared.
Every other training session I’d been to, I’d been more interested in watching Lynx than paying attention to whatever they were actually doing on the ice.
And this guy pissed me off. He was my father’s recruit, and just being around him was a reminder my father thought I was fucking useless.
“Then do them again!”
French looked baffled, and I couldn’t blame him, but he shrugged and turned to the other guys.
“Come on then. You heard him. Let’s go.”
Maybe I could learn to like the new guy my father had dropped on us.
I hurried after Lynx, only to find Nyah running after me.
I stopped at the door to the men’s locker room and tapped it. “Men only.”
She flipped me the bird. “Wherever Lynx goes, I go. He needs me.”
I rolled my eyes. “He’s a fully grown man. He needs an expensive bottle of scotch and a blow job. Little else.”
“Not all men are as basic as you, Luca.” She went to push past me.
I caught her wrist. “Don’t pretend like you don’t have the same base needs. If I’d wanted that blow job this morning you would have delivered it. Eagerly.”
She yanked her wrist out of my grasp and glared at me. “Lucky it’s not this morning then, isn’t it?”
I blocked her again and sighed. “Give him some space, okay? I know you’re taking your newfound role super seriously because you’re all hopped up on dopamine over thinking you’re the chosen one—”
Her mouth dropped open. “I’m not claiming to be something special.”
I raised an eyebrow. “No? You aren’t secretly a bit thrilled you were the one person who could cut through Lynx’s psycho spree the other night? You aren’t quietly feeling like you’re truly wanted and needed for maybe the first time in your life?”
Her mouth flapped like a fish for a second while she grappled with which insult to sling at me next. “I didn’t ask to be that person. I just was.”
“Did you ever stop to ask yourself why? Why it was you and not me or Dax or anyone else in that room?” I leaned down. “Spoiler. It’s not just because you have a sweet pussy that gets wet every time you’re near me.”
She went pink, but there was still plenty of sass and fire in her eyes and her tone when she asked, “Enlighten me then, oh great and wise one. Why was it me?”
“Because he’s in love with you.”
She froze. “No, he’s not. He’s my bodyguard.”
“Was your bodyguard,” I corrected.
“He’s my friend.”
I leaned back against the wall and crossed my arms over my chest. “When has being in the friend zone ever stopped anyone from developing a case of feelings?”
She shook her head. “He knows I’m pregnant with someone else’s baby. He’s been helping me.”
“Yeah, because he wants to sleep with you.”
Anger filled her expression. “Just because you want to sleep with anything that moves…”
I rolled my eyes. “Just let the man breathe. I don’t give a fuck about you making out with Dax in the back of the car.
Hell, I wouldn’t care if you bounced up and down on his dick in front of me.
But you and I already tortured Lynx by fucking in front of him.
If I’d known he was so twisted up over you, I never would have done that.
But I didn’t know ’til he went all murder spree and only came down off it once he could touch you.
” I let out a long breath. “He’s a good guy.
He doesn’t deserve to be fucked around. By either of us. ”
Nyah swallowed. “I didn’t know.”
“Well, now you do.” The surprised expression on her pretty face softened me a little.
“Listen, I’m not saying he doesn’t need you around.
I’m just saying it’s hard for him to watch you with me, and with Dax, and to know you only see him as a big brother when he has never seen you as his sister. Just give him some space.”
She eventually nodded. “I’ll go and sit with Dax to watch practice.”
A bit of guilt seeped into her expression, but then I remembered the look on Lynx’s face before he’d gotten out of the car, and it had been pure torture.
Someone had to say it. And I was no stranger to being the bad guy.