“Did Luca say anything to you about this afternoon?” he finally asked.
I snapped alert with an unpleasant bump. “Huh? What? No, why would he?”
“I just wondered.”
“Do you think he knows?”
“Oh, he knows,” Dante replied. “He knows everything that happens at Archhurst.”
“How can he?”
“Because he has security cameras installed everywhere. He probably recorded it.”
I blushed inside my mask. Could Luca really have been hiding in some dark corner watching Dante fuck me? Why should that bother me after Luca walked in on me with Dominic?
I still didn’t like it, but that was my fault for doing it with Dante in the living room. “Did he say anything toyou?”
“No,” Dante replied. “Actually, yes. He said Dominic and I were foolish to give into our lusts so easily.”
“You call that easy?” I huffed. Damn Luca anyway.
He laughed, bent down, and kissed me. “I’m glad he knows. I wouldn’t want to keep secrets from him.”
He whirled me the other way, and we sailed to the other side of the dance floor far away from Luca and Dominic. They vanished into the crowd, and I lost sight of them.
“Will everyone think I’m a floozy for kissing all three of you?” I asked. “Michael must have seen me making out with you and Dominic at the club.”
“They won’t think anything. If they know who you are, they might think you’re staying with us while we work out which of us you’re going to marry.”
“Marry!” I screamed.
He laughed again. “It isn’t necessarily a lock that you’ll marry Luca because he’s the king. He might pass on you and hand you off to one of his lieutenants. Who better to take you off his hands than one of his cousins? That way, we keep your bloodline in the family, even if you aren’t suitable to marry the king himself.”
I swatted his shoulder. “Shut up! I’m not a damn racehorse you can pass around.”
“Isn’t that what we’ve been doing?”
I slapped him even harder. “Knock it off! Fuck you.”
He laughed again. “Cool it, sweetheart. No one is passing you around, but that’s the way the mob works.”
I turned away and refused to look at him. I couldn’t stop blushing. At least this mask hid it from him.
Would I wind up marrying one of these men? Was that the logical conclusion of realizing I really was a member of the Fortino crime family? Why should that bother me?
“You want to hear something crazy?” He lowered his voice and almost whispered in my ear. His hot breath on my skin sent a shiver up my spine. “I used to think when we were younger that all three of us would marry you. I thought the four of us would live together forever and that we would all love you the way we did back then. I thought we would grow old together until we died.”
I still couldn’t look at him, but those words set every nerve on end. Dominic said the same thing, and I used to think that too. Was there any way to make that happen? That wasn’t the way the mob worked.
A Padrino needed a wife to father his children with. He needed to establish his children’s bloodline between two powerful families so his oldest son could inherit the empire. That was how the mob worked.
I didn’t want anything to start up between me and Luca that would interfere with my relationship with the twins. I didn’t want my relationship with either Dominic or Dante to interfere with my relationship with the other twin, but how could it be otherwise? I couldn’t marry all three of them. That was just a fantasy… a childhood daydream.
The thought of anything coming between us made my heart ache, and I rested my head against Dante’s chest. I didn’t want anything to take me away from him, but being with him meant he was taking me away from Dominic, didn’t it? Being with the twins meant nothing would ever happen between me and Luca.
Maybe Luca didn’t want that. Maybe that’s why he kept acting like an untouchable mob boss around me—to push me away and give me the message loud and clear that he wasn’t interested.
He was never interested in anything but this whole bait-the-Vittorios scheme of his. I was nothing but a means to an end for him. I would never be anything else, even if hediddecide to marry me. He would marry me for my bloodline, not because he loved me.