MATTEO I had always suspected that there was a time for Luke and me when the darkness within us would rise too high, so high that it would overflow and smother all the light, all the good that remained. I feared that the time had come for Luca.
I prevented Romero from approaching Luca with a hand on my chest. Romero frowned, but then looked at Luca and stiffened. I, too, was paralyzed with apprehension.
Luca and I had spent our whole lives together, we had been through the bad and the worse, we had killed and suffered, we had laughed and argued. I had never been truly wary of my brother. Not when he had crushed our cousin’s throat, not when he had threatened me because I had spoken ill of Aria, but until then I had never seen that look on his face.
I wasn’t sure what had made him look that way, but I knew only one thing that had the power to bring him to his knees, only one thing that could destroy Luke, that could make him snap once and for all. He was the only person I had thought would stop him from snapping in the first place.
“Luca?” I asked cautiously.
He stared at a picture on the screen. I approached and what I saw made the blood drain from my face. It was a picture of Aria holding Dante’s hand. It took me a moment to comprehend what I was seeing. It didn’t even make sense. Romero also cast a glance at the photo and then frowned.
Gianna, of course, chose that moment to walk slowly into the living room wearing only a nightgown, but she stopped when she saw us. Her eyes darted from me to Luca and the smile faded from her face.
“Where is Aria?” I asked her abruptly.
“Don’t use that tone with me,” she muttered, her eyes darting back to Luca, who still hadn’t moved a muscle and was still staring at his phone, but I knew he was listening.
“Gianna, where the fuck is Aria? This is serious,” I growled .
Lily appeared behind her, but Romero shook his head and motioned her not to approach. “Where?” he asked her.
“I don’t know,” she said softly, but it was a lie. Romero knew. I knew it. Luca knew it.
“Is he in Chicago?” I asked.
Gianna and Lily exchanged a look but remained silent.
“What’s going on here?” asked Gianna.
And Luca lifted his eyes from the phone.
“Fuck,” I muttered because that look in his eyes?
scared the hell out of me.
“Lily,” Romero began, but he couldn’t finish the warning he wanted to express.
“Did you know?” asked Luca in a voice I had never heard from him before. Low, somber, on the verge of breaking.
He turned the phone so that Gianna and Lily could see the picture of Aria holding Dante’s hand, then clicked on the next picture that showed Dante with his hands on Aria’s shoulder, his mouth on her ear in an intimate gesture. And the next one, the worst: Aria in the car with Dante and he was leaning over her, his back to the camera, hiding most of his body from view.
You could not see their faces, but they were close and his arm reached between her legs.
Lily held her breath and somehow it was the straw that broke the camel’s back. Luca roared and threw the phone away. It shattered against the wall. Then he grabbed the Christmas tree and threw it to the ground. I grabbed Gianna’s arm and pushed her toward the front door. “Go away! Go to the car and wait for me.”
Gianna refused to leave, unlike Lily, who had allowed Romero to lead her out. “Luca, stop being an idiot. Aria would never betray you, you stupid asshole!”
shouted Gianna.
Luca had pulled out a knife and was staring at the blade, his chest and shoulders heaving, his face a mask of acute agony. I had never seen him like that. Not even when our father had tortured us with knives, lighters and needles.
I grabbed Gianna’s arm and dragged her out of the house and toward my Porsche, heedless of the fact that she was barefoot.
She tried to shake me off. “Stop it, Matteo. He’s doing it wrong !” she shrieked.
I didn’t listen. I had to get her to safety and then get back to Luca and try to keep him from collapsing in a scary serial killer way. I pushed her into the car, then locked the doors. Gianna beat against the windows.
Romero had locked Lily in his Jeep and gave me a worried look. “Aria wouldn’t cheat,” he said.
“Are you sure?” I mumbled.
“You have to calm him down before he does something that can’t be undone,” Romero said.
I nodded, “Go away.”
“I’ll get a room in a hotel nearby. Call me if you need me.”
Gianna started honking her horn, driving me crazy, but I wouldn’t let her out of the car. I didn’t want her to approach Luca when she was in that mood.
With a deep breath, I went back to the villa. Luca still held the knife in his right hand, but in his left he held the iPad, with that anguished expression lingering on his face.
“Luca?” I ventured. He did not respond. I approached him. He had opened the photos on the iPad as if seeing them in a larger format made them less real.
“A lot of shit was thrown at you today. Maybe you should try to calm down before giving vent to your anger.”
Luca put the iPad down on the living room table and went to the bar cabinet. If he hadn’t dropped the fucking knife soon, I might have considered pulling out my own. He picked up a bottle of whiskey, opened it with his teeth, spit out the screw cap, and took a long swig. Alcohol would not have made him any less dangerous.
“Go away,” he croaked.
“Luca, you love Aria.”
Luca staggered toward me and I had to fight the urge to draw a weapon. “Love!” He threw me a glare of lightning. “You might be okay with Gianna buzzing behind your back, but I can’t… I can’t stand the thought of Aria…” His voice cracked and anger contorted his face. Gianna hadn’t buzzed, but there was no point in arguing with Luke, and I certainly wasn’t going to let him turn on my anger.
“Get out!” he roared. “Go to your wife and let me handle this!”
I nodded and took a step back. “Luca, some things cannot be undone,” I repeated what Romero had told me.
Luca turned his back on me, his shoulders shaking with anger and worse, with heartbreak. The first he could handle, but the second he had never had to deal with before.
But I could not interfere, not without risking a fight with Luca, and today one of us would be dead. I might have been willing to die for Gianna and even for Luca, but not for Aria, not when she might betray my brother. I stepped back, with a bloody tight chest. I wasn’t sure I would see Luca again, not the Luca I knew, because if he hurt Aria, he wouldn’t recover. I wasn’t sure he would recover either way.
Gianna grabbed my shirt as I slid behind the wheel. “Matteo, you bastard, let me go to Luca!”
“No,” I hissed. Luca barely tolerated Gianna on the best of days, and today was the worst time I had ever seen him, and I had been with him through every bad and worst moment of his life.
“Then let me call Aria. I have to warn her. Luca has lost his mind. He will kill her if he thinks she has betrayed him.
He is a possessive asshole.”
Luca would not kill Aria because he was a possessive asshole. He was going to kill her because she had made him love and trust her, and she had fucking betrayed him, had broken his fucking heart. I started the car but Gianna pushed my arm.
“Matteo, damn it!”
“They’re going to have to work this out.”
“Solve this thing? The only way Luca is going to solve this is with his fucking knife. Matteo, I swear, if you let your brother hurt Aria, it’s over.”
Tears were shining in his eyes but I did not interfere. “To stop Luca, I would have to knock him out, and to do that, I would have to kill him. And that’s not something you can ask me , Gianna. Not when your sister brought it on herself.
She knows Luca better than anyone else.”
“She didn’t betray him, Matteo,” Gianna whispered desperately. “She wouldn’t. She loves Luca. And he will destroy everything.”
“No,” I growled. “Aria has destroyed everything. She betrayed Luca’s trust. She should have known better. Luca is not someone who has ever loved or trusted anyone the way he does Aria. He should not have gone behind her back.”
Gianna shook her head. “He didn’t cheat. He didn’t.
He needs to understand that.” She closed her eyes and let out a sob that tore at my heart. Gianna was not a crier, and I had never heard her sound like that.
“Luca loves Aria more than his own life,” I told her. “He will put down his life before he kills her.”
With anyone else, those words would have been a lie, but Aria might be the only one who could break my brother’s heart and come out unscathed in the end.
ARIA Would Luca have been happy when I told him about the baby?
He didn’t want children yet, but I hoped he would accept my pregnancy. The hardest part would be keeping it a secret from Lily and Gianna until I could tell Luca. I wasn’t sure when he would be done with business in New York and when he would return to the Hamptons.
There were no guards around the perimeter when the taxi driver dropped me off at the gates. I typed the code on the gates’ keypad, then slipped inside, confused. I thought I had to sneak in, but there was no one around. The mansion was also strangely quiet when I entered, and the curtains in the living area were closed, preventing the morning light from entering. Everyone must have left, but why?
Worry had crept into the pit of my stomach.
“Lily?” I called. “Gianna?”
“I’m not here,” growled low from the back.
Luca.
He was sitting in the dark on the couch. I groped for the ‘light switch and dipped us into the soft light. “Luca?”
My eyes landed on the Christmas tree on the floor, its balls gone to pieces, and next to it Luca’s broken cell phone. What had happened?
Had there been another Bratva attack?
My eyes found Luca bent over the couch, dressed in a white shirt with the sleeves rolled up. His elbows were resting on his strong thighs and he was staring at something. He did not look up at me.
I approached slowly, concerned about his strange behavior. His shoulders were heaving with breath as if he had been running for several miles. I stopped beside him and followed his gaze to the black screen of his iPad.
“A press contributor contacted me with photos that should have made the news,” he said in a cold voice.
That voice was not the one he usually used with me.
“Photos?”
Luca touched his iPad and it lit up.
I inhaled deeply.
The screen showed a picture taken through the windows of the restaurant I had chosen for my meeting with Val. But Val was not in it.
It showed me with Dante’s hands on my shoulders.
He was behind me, his face tilted toward me, his mouth close to my ear as if he was whispering secrets to me when all he had done was warn me not to run away.
The next picture was of Dante and me walking out of the restaurant together, hand in hand. I had my face down, so Luca did not see how tense I was at that moment.
Luca took the next picture.
A picture of me in the car with Dante, and it looked like he had his hand between my legs, and not because he reached for his bag.
Bile rose up in my throat.
They looked ugly.
Really ugly. They would have looked bad to someone who trusted people little, but Luca was wary, suspicious, and cautious. To him, those pictures could only lead to one conclusion. But he couldn’t believe that I was having an affair with Dante? God, he should have known better.
He knew me.
“Luca,” I whispered, reaching out to touch his shoulder, but froze when he raised his eyes to mine. I had never seen that look in his eyes. They were wild with anger.
I wanted to run as far away as I could.
My eyes darted to the empty bottle of whiskey at his feet. Luca had drunk most of it. Some of the amber liquid had spilled and stained the beige carpet, but there were darker stains as well. Slowly my gaze shifted to his hands, which were clutching a knife. One of his palms was so tight around the blade that blood was dripping down his hand and onto the carpet.
I knew I had to run, but that would be admitting to a crime I had not committed. I had not betrayed Luca; I would never do that. And the words Luca had said to me on our wedding night flashed through my mind. Didn’t your father ever teach you to hide your fear from monsters?
If you run away, they chase you.
“You’re bleeding. You hurt yourself,” I said in a persuasive voice, trying to get to him. I needed to get past the demons the alcohol and compromising photos had conjured.
His face contorted in anger, so much so that I recoiled. He let go of the blade and more blood dripped down his hand as he straightened from the couch.
I took a step back, unable to stop myself.
The arm with the knife hung inert at his side.
I forced myself to meet his gaze again. Luca was in there somewhere. Behind the anger and pain, my Luca was in there .
“Luca, please listen to me. It’s not what it looks like.”
“So you didn’t let Cavallaro have what’s mine?”
he roared. And he was on me, his bleeding hand pressed on my forearm. He still held the knife in his hand.
“I would never do that! You will always be the only man I want to be with. I went to Chicago to meet Val and talk to Fabi. But Dante followed Val and wanted to talk to me.
That’s all, I swear.”
“And what is your oath worth? You have betrayed me before.”
“I have never lied to you. I have never betrayed you. I helped my sisters and I didn’t always tell you everything, but I never lied to you.” He was the one who had betrayed, and it wasn’t as if he had never kept a secret from me, like Matthew asking for Gianna’s hand.
His eyes seemed to pierce me. There was not only anger in them, and the other emotion worried me more, for it was agony.
“Luca, can you please put the knife down?
It’s making me nervous.”
His eyes slid over the bloody blade as if he had completely forgotten about it and let it go, not even hesitating despite what he thought I had done. The steel fell clangorously to the floor, splattering it even more with blood.
Then his eyes shifted upward again. He pulled me abruptly against him and kissed me fiercely, brutally. There was only anger and desperation in his kiss.
I knew what he wanted, what he needed. And I would have gladly given it to him if the test had not changed everything. Luca didn’t want to hurt me, but the last time he had gotten so angry when we had sex, he had been more violent than I could risk so early in this pregnancy. I had to protect our son and Luca. He would never forgive himself if he hurt our baby.
His hands roamed my body eagerly, and a small part of me felt elated by the sensation, but I pulled away from him. “No!” he tried to pull me back against him.
“Luca, stop it! I don’t want this!”
His lips were an inch from mine and he was breathing heavily, his eyes were like molten steel. “Do you deny me?”
I held back a curt comment. I had denied him before when I wasn’t feeling well or in the mood, and he had always honored my desire. I knew he was drunk and hurt and on the verge of losing control. That he had not yet shown how much he loved me. He had killed his first man when he was eleven, killed and tortured countless others, called himself a ruthless monster on many occasions. And I knew what he was. With others.
“It’s funny that you say you haven’t been with Dante, yet you can’t stand my touch.”
God, did he think my rejection was an admission of betrayal?
“Don’t do anything you’ll regret tomorrow,” I said softly, pleading with his eyes.
His lips curved into a cruel smile. So wrong. “What makes you think I might regret anything?”
I knew he would because I knew him better than anyone, better than he knew himself.
“Our love is too important.”
“Love,” he spat out the word. “That I ever loved you was my biggest mistake. I won’t do it again.”
Loved? I could feel my heart breaking as I looked at his menacing face.
“Luca, please.” I reached out my hand toward him but he shook me away.
There was only cold anger in his eyes.
“Because you are my wife, you will live. Don’t expect any more.
We’re done.”
I couldn’t understand what he was saying. I stared at him , with my throat closed, my heart pounding in my chest.
For a moment he hesitated but then turned and strided away, leaving me there alone.
I sank down on the couch, where Luca had sat earlier. The skin was still warm. I touched my stomach and wept.
I cried because I could have destroyed our love. That Luca had let me love him alone had been a miracle. What if I had lost him forever?
I was still sitting in the same place when Matthew cautiously entered the room a couple of hours later. He pressed the button that opened the curtains and light flooded the room. I blinked twice, but my eyelids felt like they were made of lead. I slowly lowered my palm from my stomach.
“It didn’t kill you,” Matteo said. His voice did not reveal his emotions. His features were similar to Luke’s, but Matthew was a cute poster boy where Luke was all hard lines and raw charm. But he looked enough like Luca to set my heart on fire with heartbreak.
He walked toward me, his eyes watching my bloody clothes and the blood on the couch and on the floor.
“Do you need a doctor?”
“It’s not my blood,” I whispered in a rough voice.
Matteo said nothing for a while, just looked at me.
“Make him bleed. You’re pretty good for a woman.”
I looked up to meet his straight. My eyes burned with unshed tears, but I couldn’t cry anymore. I had cried for hours. I stood, my legs trembling. I grabbed Matteo’s arm.
He let me do it, just looked at me without emotion.
“Matteo, I didn’t do anything. I swear on my life. I swear it on my…” I stopped. I almost said “baby.” “Please help me . Help me make Luca see the truth.”
“The pictures.” ” The photos show me with Dante in a restaurant and in the car. We talked. He thought to use me against the Family as leverage. That’s all.”
“Then why did he let you go, Aria. Why?”
I looked up at Matteo. I couldn’t tell him about the baby when I hadn’t even told Luca. “Because he has an ounce of decency in him.”
A grim smile curved his lips. “Really?”
“Call Dante, call Valentina. They’ll tell you what I said.”
“As if their word means anything. They are the enemy.
You remember that, don’t you?”
“Then look for the person who took the pictures.
He probably took more photos that prove my innocence. Isn’t it strange that Luca only gets the photos that make it look like I betrayed? Maybe someone wants to weaken Luca by destroying our marriage. Maybe this is the work of the Outfit, or someone within the Family.”
I could tell that Matteo was thinking seriously about this. “And do you really think Luca needs you to be strong? Do you think they could weaken the Family if they destroyed your marriage to my brother?”
I wanted to say yes, but I wasn’t sure about anything anymore. I was so broken and confused.
“I would gladly die for Luke,” I said instead. “I love him more than anything else.”
Except the child growing in me. Our baby.
“Then maybe you should take that knife and give your life.”
I was stunned. “Do you think he’s better off without me?
Luca loves me.”
Or loved? My heart clenched with such sharp pain that I almost crumpled.
“He would go back to what he was before you. He would be worse than that. He would be the monster he needs to reign over New York. Whatever little part of him was capable of love, maybe you killed it.”
I nodded mechanically, my insides churning violently as I struggled for composure. I turned away from Matteo’s anger, unable to bear it because I knew he was right to be angry.
Luca was not a normal man. He was Chief. He had been raised to be Chief and had risked so much for me, and now he thought I had betrayed him. If I could ever win back his trust, I would never do anything without him again, not for Gianna, not for Lily, not for Fabi, not for anything in the world.
“You know I’ve seen our father stick a needle under Luca’s fingernails, I’ve seen him cut Luca with a knife, I’ve seen him beat Luca so hard that he lost consciousness, but in all this, I’ve never seen Luca show the agony on his face when he saw you with Dante.”
I covered my mouth with my palm and sobbed. I couldn’t bear the thought of having hurt Luca like that. “I didn’t cheat,” I said in a choked voice. “If you don’t believe me, torture me.
You said it yourself once: if you use your knife on me, I won’t be able to keep a secret.”
Matteo turned to look at me and shook his head. “It doesn’t matter what I believe as long as Luca thinks you cheated.”
I touched his forearm. “Please, Matteo, help me prove my innocence. Please, not just for me.”
“Although you did not betray him, you went behind his back. You visited enemy territory and risked not only your life but also Luke’s. He would have sacrificed his life in front of Dante to save you; did you think about that when you were strutting around Chicago?”
“I just wanted to see Fabi. It’s Christmas,” I said voicelessly.
“Yeah, well, now we’re all going to have a fucking wonderful Christmas, thanks to you.”
The corners of my vision turned black. I felt weak. I wasn’t sure if it was because of the pregnancy, because I hadn’t eaten anything in almost a day, or because my heart was breaking. I staggered and my legs folded in on themselves.
“Fuck,” Matteo growled and grabbed my arms, stopping my fall. He helped me down onto the couch before squatting down in front of me. He grabbed my chin and lifted my face so that I met his hard, unrelenting eyes. “You swear you didn’t cheat on Luca?”
“I swear, Matteo. I would never betray Luca.
I love him. There is no other man and there never will be.”
He sighed and let go of my chin. “I’ll try to get my hands on the photographer who took the pictures, and then I’ll have a long talk with him. It’s not going to be easy. I can’t go to Chicago, and there are very few men I can send there in my place, but there may be another way…. But even if you get your hands on that guy and he proves your innocence, I can’t promise that Luca will change his mind. The only reason she believed you betrayed her in the first place is because you talked behind his back.” He shook his head again. “Fuck.” He straightened up.
“Are you sure you don’t want to see the doctor? You look like a mess.”
“I’m sure,” I said quickly. I didn’t want the doctor to find out I was pregnant. He would have told Luca. He was not bound by medical confidentiality like other doctors.
“Now I will release Gianna,” Matteo said with a sigh.
“Release?” I whispered.
“I locked her in the car.”
As he got out, he lifted the cell phone to his head.
“Romero? Yes, I need you to come.”
I stared at the bloodstained carpet.
Luca’s blood.
“Aria!” Gianna’s scream made me jerk and then she rushed toward me, her hair ruffled and her nightgown half torn as if she had wriggled out of it, and threw herself at me, hugging me so tightly I couldn’t breathe. She shook against me and something wet hit my throat.
I touched the back of her head. “Shh. I’m okay.” ” No, you’re not,” Gianna whispered as she pulled back, her eyes scanning me before moving to the mess on the carpet. “Did it hurt?”
I shook my head as my heart tightened.
“I thought it would kill you. I wanted to warn you but Matteo, that asshole, wouldn’t let me.”
It felt like a part of me had died, but Luca would never kill me.
“Matteo tried to save your pretty butt,” Matteo said to Gianna. “Even if something stops Luca from breaking Aria’s neck, it won’t stop him with you, believe me.”
“I’m not talking to you,” Gianna said abruptly, and this time it wasn’t a game.
I touched her leg. “He wanted to protect you. Don’t be angry with him, please. It’s bad enough that I destroyed my marriage; I don’t want to be responsible for another one.”
“Luke will change his mind,” she said, but her words lacked conviction.
The sound of the front door opening and closing filled me with hope, but when Lily and Romero walked in, not Luca, I deflated. Lily also came up to me and hugged me tightly, her arms trembling. Her eyes were red from crying. Guilt overwhelmed me.
“We were so worried about you,” she said. I looked up at Romero, who was standing next to Matthew and listening to him , but Romero’s eyes were on me. Pity could be seen in his, not the anger I expected, and for some reason that made things worse.