Ten. He was achild.
His mother was supposed to care for him, to see to his safety, and she sold him for drugs. I couldn’t imagine what fear he must have felt, the confusion in his mind once he realized what she had done. My father was a bastard by every stretch of the imagination, but at least he only threatened me with it.
“You wouldn’t believe the number of sick fucks that pays to be with a child,” Lucas continued, his hand clenching into a fist. “Men and women.”
Oh God.
Lucas thrust a hand through his hair. “When I was fifteen, I was brought in to the Mafia world. There were both men and women who enjoyed cheating on their wives, and since I was coming into my own with my body and had the skills to please them, I was used frequently at their parties. Always waiting in the back room for them to stream in one right after the other.” He let out a snort. “Sometimes two at a time, but it didn’t matter. By that point I was numb to what I was doing.”
I started to take a step forward but stopped myself just in time. It had nothing to do with what he was saying. I wanted to comfort him, to comfort the child that had been subjected to that form of awful torture in his life but also the man who had bottled it up inside, having no one to share his pain. My heart ached at the thought of how Lucas had survived and what he had done to compartmentalize the pain he had to have felt.
“One night,” he continued, oblivious to the tears on my cheeks. “Cosimo came in with his wife. She was a pretty young thing, one that he had just knocked up. He had this fantasy, you see, of watching his pregnant wife get fucked by another man. I was big enough then, at seventeen, to fulfill that fantasy for him.”
I shivered as I thought about my husband watching me have sex with another man. I knew that there were those out there that thrived on the excitement, but to me, sex was something that should be enjoyed first and not exploited.
“Cosimo saw how strong I was and decided to outright own me,” Lucas said. “He bought me, and made me his enforcer first. I learned to kill. He had me protecting and pleasuring him and his wife without regard for my own.” Lucas braced his hand on the window, hanging his head. “I was like his shadow. When his wife was murdered, I was with him. He never forgave himself, but he forgave me. From that day on, I was an enforcer in full. Nd before he died, he willed that I be the Don. You were right. I have no fucking idea what I’m doing as Don because I was thrown into the position.”
I couldn’t help it any longer. I closed the distance between us and touched his back, feeling him stiffen. “What are you doing?” he asked harshly. “You should be fucking running away, Leda. Hell, I won’t even come after you this time.”
Leaving was the furthest from my mind at this point. Now I understood why he acted the way he did, why I was such a blind spot to someone like him.
Lucas had never been loved. He lived in a world of pain and torture, as he had all his life. He didn’t know anything different. “Lucas,” I said, feeling his warmth through his shirt. “Look at me.”
He hesitated, but finally he turned around, and I saw the flicker of pain etched on his face. Telling his story couldn’t have been easy, but it made me love him even more.
There was something else in his expression, something that told me that he expected me to look at him differently now, that his past was going to drive me away. I reached up and cupped his cheek, feeling the roughness of his stubble against my open palm.
“I can’t take away your past,” I said softly, my eyes searching his. “But I can help you with your future if you will let me.”
“You hate me.”
The harsh tone of his voice should have had me flinching. That was what he had expected me to do.
“No,” I stated, bringing up my other hand to frame his face. “I don’t hate you. Don’t you see, Lucas? Your past doesn’t define you. You could have given up a long time ago, let them ruin your life, but you didn’t, and that is what matters. You didn’t give up.”
I was staring at one of the strongest people I knew, a person who had been at the bottom and who had worked his way up to become the man before me.
“I love you,” I told him. “Before, there had been a question of whether or not what I felt was love, but now, I know without question that it is.”
His entire body shuddered, and I took the opportunity to stand on my toes and press my lips to his, wanting him to see that he was worth the fight. To me he was worth the fight.
His arms came around me, and Lucas pressed me to his body, letting me feel his need. Some other person might have been disgusted by what he had been forced into when he was young or the killing he had done when he was older.
But to me, that was his past.
I wanted to be his future.
Chapter 31
Leda
I broke the kiss before he could deepen it. “I want to love you,” I gasped. “Please.”
“Leda,” Lucas said roughly. “You shouldn’t.”
He was right. I shouldn’t love him, but I couldn’t help it. This broken man before me was who I wanted in my life, who I wanted to care for. “Don’t tell me what to do,” I said instead. His eyes flashed, but he dropped his arms, and I knew I had won. My hands trembled as I reached for the hem of his shirt, my eyes never leaving his. I wanted him to see himself through my eyes, to feel my touch erase anyone that had touched him wrongly before.
When he slid the shirt over his head, I saw his body in a different light. He had many scars on his torso that I had noticed before but not really paid that much attention to.