Page 45 of My Wedding Mafia Style

My eyes lift to his. “Because of you?”

“Yes.”

The answer is immediate. No games. No deflection. My breath catches.

Luca steps closer then, slow enough that I could move away if I wanted. I don’t. Of course I don’t. Apparently my survival instincts have joined the rest of me in mutiny.

“I don’t want to be useful to you,” I say.

His expression changes.

I force myself to continue before I lose the nerve. “I don’t mean I don’t want to help. I just mean… I don’t want to be another convenient thing. Another piece that makes your family see you differently. I can’t be that.”

For a moment, he says nothing. Then he closes the distance by one more step.

“You were useful for about ten minutes.”

I flinch before I can stop myself.

His jaw tightens. “Then you became inconvenient.”

“That is not better.”

“It is.” His voice lowers. “I know what to do with useful things. I control them. I position them. I make them serve a purpose.”

His hand lifts, but he stops just short of touching my face.

“I don’t know what to do with you.”

The words move through me more deeply than any perfect answer could have. Because they are not polished. They are not strategic. They sound like something dragged out of him before he could make it safer.

I step closer, enough that his fingers finally brush my cheek.

“Maybe you don’t have to do anything with me,” I whisper.

His eyes darken. “No?”

“Maybe you just have to be here.”

The air between us changes.

The yacht, the family, the lie, the Bahamas, all of it falls away until there is only this room and this man and the strange, impossible truth that I no longer feel like I’m pretending when he looks at me.

Luca’s hand slides fully against my cheek. “Tell me to stop.”

I should.

I should remember that somewhere beyond this cabin door, the Morettis are probably placing bets on whether I survive breakfast. I should remember that this started as a lie, that my dress is borrowed, that my purse had tobe rescued from land, and that I still don’t know exactly where this yacht is going.

Instead, I lift my hands to his shirt.

“No,” I whisper. “I’m tired of stopping before something real happens.”

And this time, when Luca kisses me, there is no audience, no lie, and no water left between who I was when I stepped onto this yacht and the woman I am becoming in his arms.

Chapter 13

Luca