Leda stopped just inside the bedroom door, whirling around to face me. Her face was red with anger, her eyes flashing, and I felt the stirring of my cock at the sight.
Goddammit, there must be something wrong with me. Getting turned on by this fight we were having was not what I wanted or needed right now.
“What you don’t understand,” she was saying, pressing her finger into my chest. “Is that none of this matter if we can’t stop my father, Lucas! We will lose everything if he wins. Nothing I told those capos was a lie. My father will burn this city down once he has everything he needs to guarantee his legacy.”
“I will stop him, not you.” I reached up to grasp her upper arms. “Leda… Don’t you understand that you are the very air I breathe? I won’t let you anywhere near him.”
It was terrifying to have her mean that much to me, but there was no use in denying it.
Instead of softening, she laughed. “We won’t win by sitting on the sidelines, Lucas.”
That she wasn’t wrong about, but it didn’t have to be her in front, ready to take the blows. “No, Leda. We won’t. But we won’t win by walking into a trap either!”
“You’re hurting me.” Leda tried wrest her arm out of my grasp, but I refused to let go.
“And you think your father won’t?” I challenged. “He’s going to make an example out of you, Leda, and I’m not going to stand by and watch him do it.”
Unless Carmine was hiding under a rock, he would know how much Leda meant to me and what I would be willing to do to save her.
I needed to make sure that Leda understood what was at stake, to remind her of who we were dealing with.
“Do you know what happened to Cosimo’s first wife?” I asked.
Leda remained silent. Odds are, she had an inkling, but she wanted to hear me say it.
There weren’t many that knew about his tragedy. It was something that he kept close to himself. I likened it to a failure he couldn’t control, the one thing he hadn’t been able to protect no matter his title, and hell, I felt like I was in his shoes right now. If I couldn’t get Leda to see reason, I could be facing the same.
“His wife was alive when they cut the baby from her womb. They chopped him up into seven pieces and distributed them all across the city for Cosimo to find.”
Cosimo had found all of them, burying the child with his mother in some unmarked grave so that his enemies could never get their hands on his family again. When he had died, I would have liked to bury him next to his wife, but I couldn’t find the grave no matter how much I tried. Cosimo told me once that I would find the very person I couldn’t live without one day and would do all that I could to protect her.
He hadn’t been wrong at all. I was looking at her, watching her want to go and save someone else, not caring about what it would do to me if I lost her.
“And do you know who had that twisted idea?” I continued, pushing past my thoughts. “Do you know who suggested it? It was your father.”
Leda gasped, but I wasn’t done. She wasn’t seeing the big picture of how I couldn’t let something like that happen to her.
“If everything you said is true,” I pressed on. “If you truly no longer matter to him, then that will be your fate, Leda. That’s why I won’t let this happen.”
I would never forgive myself for letting her go to her father.
“What about Rory?” she said after a moment. “She’s pregnant too, remember? This could be happening to her right fucking now, Lucas!”
“You are my fucking family,” I told her, increasing the pressure on her arms. “You are my future, and I won’t let that go for anyone or anything, Leda.”
“You don’t get to make that decision for me!” She shot back, struggling in my grasp. “It’s my decision, not yours!”
I pulled her against me, and her eyes widened as she felt the hard arousal jutting up against her stomach.
“You sick bastard,” she seethed.
“Watch what you say, Leda,” I said coolly, knowing she was just as turned on as I was. It was what we did when times got hard, the attraction between us never dimming.
She stared up at me defiantly, her eyes not only flashing anger but also a hint of need like I was feeling right now.
When was the last time we had come together, lost ourselves in each other’s touch? I fucking ached for her constantly and could not care less that she was pregnant with our child. It made it all the more intense for me, knowing that she was mine in every sense of the word. I didn’t need a ring on her finger to know that I had laid claim to her.
“Or what?” she challenged. “Are you going to beat me? Hurt me? Whatever you do to me, Lucas, it isn’t going to change my mind.”