SWNOVELS Sold to the Italian Mafia Boss: Chapter 5
The maids, a pair of apparently silent women even younger than me, are in and out throughout the afternoon and evening. They bring food and tea and clothes, shooting me conspicuous, concerned looks. I keep my gaze directed away, sitting sullenly in my reading chair, arms wrapped around my knees as I consider my exit strategy.
But all I can come up with is anger. I love my father; I’d do anything for him. But there’s something in the way that Luca talks to me that reminds me of my father. Of being treated like a child, like a little girl who needs to be chastised or protected. A girl who isn’t welcome at tables or in rooms where the big men are talking.
And it pisses me the fuck off.
Dinner comes around earlier than I’d like it to. I throw on one of the nicer sweaters that the maids deliver, a tight black cashmere number that brings out the gold of my hair and the brightness of my eyes. I tie back my hair and let a few strands loose around my face, the way I know men like. Then I wait until the knock at the door comes. Dome waits, looming in the hall. When I step out, he takes me by the arm, digging in his meaty thumb right where he did earlier, undoubtedly darkening the bruise there.
I could be angry—but the way his face has swollen makes me smile, and I look him dead in the eye when I do it. His gaze darkens, and he jerks me down the hall more roughly than he should. Good. Let him. I’m not afraid of him, no matter how many bruises he’s left mapped on my body.
Maids open the doors to the dining room, and I swallow my gasp, schooling my face to hide how impressive I find it. It’s beautiful and resplendent: huge and sprawling with a vaulted fresco ceiling. The walls are paneled with mahogany, dark, with crimson velvet drapes that hang heavily on the marble floor. They have a medieval aspect to them, and I wonder again how old the villa is, how many great people have walked here, and how much history has blazed and burned within and without these walls.
Luca stands at the head of a table laid with a feast for a dozen. A maid guides me to the seat beside his, pulling out the chair and ducking her chin. As she steps away, Luca takes her place. My heart lurches into my throat, and I press my lips together, hating myself for having to divert my gaze. I let him tug out my chair, then I sit, and he hovers there for a moment, like a boyfriend, like a gentleman.
Then he sits. Maids appear to serve us, and as they do, we sit in coarse silence. I feel Luca’s eyes on me. My pulse is going off, going haywire. I can’t seem to think straight. I can’t make myself look at him.
Finally, when the first course is served, the maids leave. The doors close, and we’re left in a dense, pressured solitude. Soft music plays from somewhere, something almost classical but a little modern. Something haunted. And I’m struck by the horrible but genuinely tempting urge to place my hand over Luca’s on the table.
“You clean up well,” he says, and the moment of rapture fractures hard. I shoot him a cold look and find his frigid face softened with amusement. “How was your day?”
I stare at him. Gauging. Wondering. What kind of game is this? Does he want me to play? Do I want to? “Have you read The Crucible?”
He smiles. But it’s not really a smile. It’s something subtler, more venomous. He picks up his fork and knife and begins cutting into his food. “Of course.” His voice is velvet. Have I noticed that before? I reach for my wine glass and feel a strange sensation: that romance again like we’re on a date. Enemies on a date. Perfect. “Why? Do you see some correlation between your situations?”
“No. I just wanted to know if you’ve read it.”
His dark eyes flick to mine, and I hate myself for the plunge of heat that awakens between my legs. “I won’t apologize for how I spoke with you earlier. I admire your courage, but you must see that to me, it appears as stupidity.”
I grit my teeth. My neck is aching from last night. The bruises were going dark when I changed for dinner, and as much as I love the way I left my mark on Dome, he clearly left one just as bad on me. “You’re not wrong.”
“And yet. I admire it. You have courage.” Is that the second time he’s said that to me? The third? “That doesn’t change the fact that you’re under my control now.”
His accent appears in certain words and in certain letters. His English is precise and excellent. Something he’s clearly spent a lifetime learning in the way I’ve learned to cloak the Irish in me. I sound American to most ears, but Luca doesn’t bother hiding his Italian sound or look. I admire that, as he seems—maybe against his better judgment—to admire me.
“Ariana thinks I should marry you off.”
I nod, cutting into my food. “Of course she does.”
“Why do you say that?”
“It’s prudent.”
“Why else?”
“She has a vested interest.” I take another sip of wine. Stop. Considering. “Let me guess—she offered some candidates. Russian, I’m sure. I know you’ve vetted her; you’re too intelligent not to. I’m sure you’ve got a whole cache of checks and balances on her. But the fact remains that she’s from a competing empire. She’ll never be yours.”
“You almost sound,” says Luca, lifting his wine glass and studying me over its rim, his dark eyes sparking, “like you’re talking about yourself.”
“Maybe I am.” I lock eyes with him again. “Level with me, Luca. What do you really want?”
“You’ve been badly behaving,” he says, with an air of seriousness, cutting back into his food and continuing to eat. Slowly. Deliberately. “Continue with behavior like that, stubbornness and entitlement, and I will marry you off or send your father a message.”
“By killing me.”
“Yes.”
“Or? If I’m…” I narrow my eyes, cock a brow to show just how seriously I’m taking him. “‘Good and obedient’? What then?”
“Then…we may have options to explore.” He sits back, wine in hand. Studying me again with those dark eyes. Storms in them both. I try to put steel back in my spine, sitting up straight, thrusting my chin out. “I’m not opposed to acquiring you as a contact.”
My stomach drops. I’m not opposed. I don’t like the sound of that. He’s been thinking, hasn’t he? Or was it Ari who put the idea in his head? Fuck. Fuck, he wants to marry me. Has he realized, as I did last night, waking groggy in this Italian villa how much more advantageous it would be if we were married? He’d acquire all of the contacts I’ve offered, all of the information, all of the collateral…and he’d still have his prisoner. An indisputable, lifelong bond to my father.
And even better yet, in a few months, in a year—he could have blood on Liam McNamara. He could have a child by me and bind our empires forever. It may be the offer I made him, but not in the context I meant. I pictured myself as a business partner to him, a partner in crime.
Not a fucking wife!
“Ah,” says Luca softly. “You’ve done the math.”
My mouth is dry. My heart in my throat. Pulse going frenetic. “I won’t do it,” I say, almost without thinking. My breath is coming ragged. I feel something like panic coursing up on me, a tide nipping at my heels. I try to bite it back, play it cool. Put into practice all I’ve learned over the years as my father’s daughter, as Liam McNamara’s daughter. “I won’t marry you.”
He smiles that cool, aloof, non-smile again. Relaxes deeper into his chair. “What is it you find so disagreeable, Kate? Is it my home? My reputation?” He drinks his wine, dark eyes glittering. “Is it my looks? Tell me. Where am I most deficient?”
“You’re my enemy,” I say sharply.
“I thought my father was your father’s enemy,” he says, again with that cool amusement. It makes me want to slap him. “We’d fight, certainly. But you would learn quickly, I think. You are a quick study.”
“Learn what quickly?”
He leans forward, and I’m too stubborn to lean back. We’re at the edge of the table, and he rests his elbow beside my arm, his chin in his hand as he locks eyes with me. A chill ripples down my spine, but I don’t move. I stay there, our faces, our mouths, inches apart.
“In the end,” says Luca. “I always win.”
I narrow my eyes. Does Luca really think I haven’t known men like him my whole life? Does he really think I don’t know how to play this game just as well as he does? “Maybe,” I reply coolly. “You just haven’t met your match.”
Something sparks in his eyes—and I know I don’t mistake the way they drop to my mouth. It lasts only a millisecond, that look. But I feel it like he’s kissing me, like his mouth is on mine, and angry, sweet fire blooms in my belly. I don’t have much time to consider what that means—that feeling, that sudden, horrible, traitorous want—because at that moment, the door to the dining room flies open.
A pair of guards stands there in the doorway, hulking, decked out all in black, packing heavily. One of the guards looks sharply from Luca—to me. And I understand without being told that the villa is under attack. Luca stands, saying something to the guards in quick, languid Italian. Then he grabs me by the arm and drags me to my feet, down through the dining room, past the guards, and into the hall.
“My father?” I ask.
Luca throws me a suspicious look. I don’t blame him. There was more transparent hope in my voice than I meant for there to be. He doesn’t stop until we reach my room—I’m careful to memorize the turns, the numbers of steps and windows and doors, just like I did when Dome led me out earlier. My room is locked from the outside. But given a chance, I’d like to know my escape route.
“And where are you going?” I demand when Luca shoves me—more roughly than he needs to—into the room and turns back toward the hall. “If my father sent men, it’s a warning, not a war. He’s not going to get you like this.”
A smile crosses his face: cold, sudden, lethal. He steps back into the room, closing in on me easily, as is his habit. I step back, but his hand falls swiftly to my hip. He grips hard, yanking me toward him, pressing his front to mine. Half in defense, half in surprise, my hands fly to his chest. Jesus. He’s all muscle. Iron hard, his heart beating against my palm. If I were an idiot, I could fall into him so, so easily.
His dark eyes pierce mine. “You may be forgetting, Ms. McNamara, that we’re enemies. But I’m not. You’re under my roof, but you’re not my ally, not yet. That is a position that must be earned.” I know I don’t imagine the way his eyes drop to my mouth, the way his grip on my hip tightens when he says that word: position. Heat spreads between my legs, and I hate myself for it. “Do you really think that I’d take your word for anything?”
I open my mouth to reply, but it’s then that he releases me—and it’s good timing that he does.
Because at that same moment, a gunshot rings out.
I freeze, my mind turning to ice. Three things happen very quickly then: first, Luca’s body gives a hard, sudden jerk, and hot blood sprays across my face. Second, I hear not Italian in the hallway, not English—but Russian: as a massive man all in black, rifle in hand, rounds the corner and crosses the threshold of my room.
Third: my body takes over. It’s like I’ve done it a thousand times, and in some ways, I guess I have. I kneel, my veins ice, and my mind suddenly and perfectly clear. My hand glides over Luca’s hip, and then his pistol is in my hand, solid, secure, my grip sure. Safety off, hammer cocked. I close one eye—the way Dad always taught me not to—and as the Russian rounds the corner, I pull the trigger.
His head snaps back. An arc of blood—so vibrant, so startling—whips across the hall wall behind him as he falls like a tree. A second comes around the corner, rifle raised, and he sprays bullets that shatter the chandelier and pock the wall above my bed. But his aim is wild and frenetic, and both Luca and I are low. I release an exhale and pop! Nail him between the eyes.
He falls with a spasm, landing hard over the body of his comrade, finger catching the trigger of his rifle and sending another wild, frenzied round into the wall. Spent shells clamor across the tile until the magazine runs dry, and once it has, I realize where I am and what I’m doing.
Without thinking, I’ve shifted myself—to protect Luca. Why? What the fuck? I should be running. I should grab a rifle and shoot myself the fuck out of this place. I should kill Luca, if he’s not dead already.
But that’s not why I’m here, is it? I didn’t volunteer to be a prisoner, but I did submit myself to work with Luca. And running away, killing him—not of that saves my ailing father or absolves him of his crippling debts. That’s why you protected Luca, I tell myself sternly. That’s why you threw your body down over his. No other reason. No attraction. No Stockholm’s syndrome. Nothing.
There’s no further noise in the hall. The Russians are either dead or not in this part of the house. I sit back, keeping my pistol armed, and look Luca over. He was shot in the shoulder, and his face is white, strained, and spattered with blood that’s flowing freely.
Our eyes lock. He looks like he’s just becoming lucid. “You saved my life,” he says through gritted teeth.
“No, I didn’t. Not yet.” I lean forward, heaving him up into a sitting position and propping him up against the foot of the bed. “Pressure. Yeah, like that.” I take his hand and press it against the gunshot wound. He grimaces, pain crumpling his handsome face. “I’m going to go see what’s going on out there.”
But he catches my elbow as I stand, yanking me back down. “No. You’re not. You’re staying here, where I can…”
“What? Protect me?” But there’s something shockingly vulnerable in his cold, steely face, in his voice. So I sink back down beside him. “OK, fine. I’ll stay. Relax, Jesus.”
He breathes, settling back slightly. A sigh of relief? “I assume your father didn’t send Russians.”
“No,” I say, gripping the pistol and casting a look toward the hall. My breath has calmed, and my pulse has slowed. I’m ice. Totally steady. I guess my life has at least prepared me for eventualities like these. “He didn’t. I don’t suppose it was Ariana.”
He looks at me sharply, his eyes sobering through the pain. “No.”
I nod, taking him at his word. It doesn’t feel like the time to press, and anyway, the adrenaline is cooling off, and I’m starting to get restless. I shift, removing Luca’s hand and pulling aside the collar of his silk shirt. His olive chest is stippled and sticky with blood, but the wound is small, and the blood is already slowing.
“You’re lucky,” I say, replacing his shirt and then his hand, pressing mine over the top of his, applying pressure. It’s not lost on me that I’m practically in his lap or that he hasn’t even attempted to get his pistol back from me. Heat spreads through my face and up the back of my neck, and I give myself the mercy of averting my gaze from his. I still feel it on me, heavy. Penetrating. “It didn’t hit anything vital.”
He’s silent. When I look up, I find his dark eyes boring into mine. More lucid than the pain should allow. “I forget,” he says, almost softly. “That your life has not been so different from mine.”
My heart lurches into my throat. I want to look away again. This time, for some reason, I can’t. “Yeah. Likewise.”
He gazes at me—gazes, the ferocity in his face softening, a furrow appearing between his dark, angled brows. He cocks his head as though making me out. Deciphering. It makes me want to crawl out of my skin.
It makes me want to kiss him.
Then a sound comes from the hallway: the telltale, hard thunk thunk thunk of heavy footsteps. I look up sharply, my heart contracting. My mind tells me it’s Dome or one of the guards. Luckily, Luca is faster. He swipes the pistol up, his hand over mine, pulling the trigger the instant the Russian turns the corner. It’s a headshot, easier and more elegant than mine. The man falls, slumping heavily over the others.
I look at Luca. His hand is still wrapped around mine on the grip of the pistol. His eyes slant toward me, and he smiles. “My men don’t wear steel-toed boots.”
I nod once, brows raised. Luca releases my hand. “Good to know.”
A ringtone sounds softly from Luca’s pocket, and with effort, he pulls out his phone and answers in Italian. I sit back on my heels, the pistol in my bloody hands. Finally, after another series of quick exchanges, Luca puts down his phone and looks at me.
“Looks like we’ve pulled through this time, McNamara,” he says. “Now, help me stand.”