Lucca stirred the pot of the red secret sauce. “Not yet.”
“Damn.” Taking a seat at the counter in her favorite spot, she was too high on life to see that Lucca took notice that her expression did not match her words.
Crossing his arms, he leaned against the counter. “How was the spa?”
“Good.” She snapped her head back toward the living room when she heard Chloe’s giggle grow louder than the others. “She seems happy.” Turning back to her oldest brother, she gave him a wink. “I guess you sorted everything out?”
Lucca didn’t answer, going back to stirring his pot.
“Hey, Maria.” Chloe’s sweet voice came up beside her. “How was your day?”
“Relaxing. And yours?”
Opening the fridge door, she got herself a water. “It was okay.”
Okay? Hm.
“Come here and try this for me,” Lucca said from behind, holding out the wooden spoon that was covered in sauce, while he hovered his other hand below it to catch any drippings.
Chloe did as he asked, standing on her tippy-toes and sipping off the spoon. “Mmm … it’s really yummy.”
Okay, that was kinda cute. Wait. What? Is that cute? Or am I going fucking crazy?
“Don’t you fucking dare put that back in the pot!” Maria blurted, seeing Lucca was about to stir it again. “I love Chloe and all, but that’s your fiancée, not mine.”
Taking it to the sink, he narrowed his eyes on his sister. “I wasn’t.”
Bullshit. “You don’t fucking do that when no one’s looking, do you?”
Lucca was able to keep a straight face. Chloe, however, could not.
“You do!” Maria could see it written all over the pretty, scarred face. “That is vile.”
There was a special place in hell for people who licked their utensils while feeding a group of people. That was called L-A-Z-Y, all because the cook didn’t want to dirty a new spoon. Even if they were all family, there were still family members she definitely didn’t want to eat after. Like her whore of a brother before he got with Elle. Maria hadn’t even trusted Nero’s hands back then.
“I don’t.” His lie was ruined when Chloe quickly took her water, heading back to her game and giggling like she was before.
Gosh, that girl’s personality was becoming more unrecognizable every day. The only thing that hadn’t changed was her outside—still beautifully scarred. Chloe was happy, though, which meant she stood a chance at surviving the life Lucca had planned for her.
Being at the botanical garden today, her thoughts hadn’t left her mother, that forever burning question still heating her mind. “Do you know if Mom was happy with Dad?”
Lucca stopped what he was doing, standing as still as ice. “What?”
The importance of her question in that moment was the only reason she continued to ask it, feeling as if it might be a key to help her own life. “I can’t remember if Mom was happy. Like, truly happy … with her life and our father,” she admitted what she wished she hadn’t forgotten.
Since Lucca had been slightly older, it allowed him more memories with their beautiful mother than the rest of his siblings. More reason to remember and more reason to never forget.
In his dark voice, he spoke low enough for only her ears to hear. “That is the only reason I have left as to why I will not kill our father, Maria. As much as I have grown to despise him, the only reason I don’t hate him is for how happy he made her.”
Solemnly nodding after finally finding out the truth, Maria thought she would have been happy. Instead, she didn’t know how to feel, didn’t know what to do with that information.
Lucca went back to the stove, turning on the gas to light the flame underneath the filled pot. He watched it begin to boil before he turned back to look at his sister. “Dominic asked about you the other day.”
Her eyes flew up to his, narrowing them on him to silently tell him why she would give a fuck. “Okay ….”
“He wanted me to tell you, thank you.”
“Oh.” She didn’t know what she had expected him to say, but she wouldn’t have thought Dominic would thank her for telling her father that he had been with her during the shooting. “Well, then you can tell him there’s no need to thank me. I was just telling the truth.”
“All right.”
Maria watched Lucca do his annoying thing of staring at her a lot lately, and since he was here already, judging, she asked another question about the Luciano boss. “Is it true Dominic can break down his Glock and put it back together in ten seconds?”
“Why don’t you ask him?” he told her, turning around to his boiling pot of water.
Wanting to reach into the sink for the wooden spoon to throw at the back of his head, she was just about to dare herself to do so when dirty blond hair appeared out of the corner of her eye.