My god, he’s fucking gorgeous, is the last ridiculous thought that goes through my head as I wobble, tilting dangerously to one side.
And then, as my rescuer looks grimly down at me, I pass out cold.
Luca
Every time I see Sofia Ferretti, she’s in tears.
Last time was at her father’s funeral, when she was a round-faced, snot-nosed twelve-year-old.
Now she looks entirely different. She’s lost the baby fat, and her hair is platinum blonde instead of dark brown—dyed, no doubt.Something that I’ll put a stop to as soon as we’re married.Just like eight years ago, her face is tear-streaked and red, but there’s only one, startling thought in my head as I set eyes on Sofia Ferretti all grown up for the first time.
She’s beautiful.
“Luca.”
Don Rossi’s voice cuts into my thoughts. “There’s one still alive.”
My stomach twists.I don’t want to torture anyone else. I want to get Sofia out of here.The urgency of the thought startles me. I don’t want to care about her. But in this room that smells like gunpowder, blood and death, all I can think is that she shouldn’t wake up and see this. The look in her eyes just before she passed out isn’t something I’ll soon forget. She looked like a terrified animal caught in a trap—which is an apt description for the situation she was in before we arrived.
“I want to get my bride out of here,” I say calmly, turning towards Rossi. “I don’t want her to see the bodies.”
Rossi looks at me curiously. “I thought you didn’t give a shit about her.”
“I don’t.” I keep my voice cool. “But I’d rather her first impression of me not be—this.” I wave my hand around the room. There’s bodies everywhere, blood splattering the walls. Bullet holes in multiple surfaces.
Rossi glances over at the surviving Russian. He has a defiant sneer on his face, and I think I recognize him vaguely, though I wouldn’t know his name. One of Viktor’s brigadiers, if I remember correctly.
“Bruno can handle him,” he says finally. “Get Sofia out of here.”
“Thank you.” I nod respectfully, mindful despite everything that Rossi is the Don, the head of the family. It could have cost me a great deal to argue with him the way I just did, and I’m not sure why I risked it. So that Sofia could be spared the sight of blood and dead bodies?
Striding towards the closet, I scoop Sofia up into my arms. She feels very light, and her head lolls against my shoulder, her face paper-white and bloodless. I make a mental note to call the doctor who makes house calls for the family on the way back.If those dogs so much as laid a hand on her—
As her head tilts in the light, I can see that at least one of them did. Her bottom lip is split, and there’s blood dried there and on her chin. A faint bruise is forming on her cheek, and a hot, burning rage rises up in my chest as I walk through the room with Sofia in my arms. I hadn’t regretted a single Russian that I killed tonight, but now I’m glad of it. The thought of one of them striking her fills me with an unfamiliar, almost primal rage.
It’s an unsettling feeling.
I’ve made it a point all my life to care only about my job, my position, and my wealth. My father’s death taught me a lesson that served me well—everyone in the family lives a life that can end at any time. It’s not just the men, either. Our women can be murdered, kidnapped, used as pawns against us. I’ve seen men brought down, made men who broke the code of silence because they believed the threats against their wives or children.
Loving someone means a loss of control. It means that something can be taken from you, and there’s nothing you can do about it. That’s not something that fits with the way I’ve chosen to live my life.
I lay Sofia carefully down in the backseat of the town car, taking a seat across from her. Leaning back as the car pulls out into the late-evening Manhattan traffic, I watch the slight rise and fall of her chest in the tight black dress that she’s wearing, study the pale hue of her face, the bow-shaped curve of her rosy lips. There’s a faint stain of lipstick around her mouth still, but the color there now is hers, warm and pink and soft. It makes my cock twitch, hardening slightly as I let my gaze drift over her prone body, and I think for a moment of what it might be like to have her as my wife, in my bed.
She’s not a child anymore. She’s a woman, and a remarkably beautiful one. By tomorrow night, my ring will be on her finger, and before the week is out, she’ll be my bride in all ways. Sofia might not know what’s coming, but there has never been a woman yet who refused my bed.
I’ve lost count of how many I’ve had, and yet the allure of a new body to explore, new lips to taste, has never lost its appeal. I’ve never wanted to limit myself to one woman, and one of the many privileges of my position and wealth is that I’ll never be asked to. Mafia wives know that their husbands aren’t faithful. All they ask is discretion, and being gentlemen, we give it to them. But looking at Sofia’s face in the passing light, I feel something that I’ve never felt before—a possessiveness that makes me uncomfortable. A need not just for the pleasure of a woman’s body, but forhers.
When Don Rossi told me that she’d been taken, the obvious answer had been to go after her. Sofia is too valuable an asset to be left in the hands of the Russians—the choice was always to save her or eliminate her entirely. On the surface, it’s easy to tell myself that the carnage I just left behind was part of the job, safeguarding the territory of the Rossi family—the territory that will eventually pass to me.
But deep down, I know the truth.
The dead Bratva in that hotel aren’t lying in their own blood because of the need to protectterritory.
I killed them because they took what was mine.
* * *
Dr. Carella is already waitingwhen my driver pulls into the garage. I’ve never thought much about it before, but for the first time I’m glad that the doctor who makes house calls for Don Rossi, his associates and their families is a woman. Rossi thought that he was being very progressive when he chose her as our personal physician, but in this moment, I don’t care about the optics of it. The thought of another man putting his hands on Sofia, examining her, makes me tense all over again.