Page 112 of Forsaking All Others

I paused to watch her roughly swallow another bite of bread.

“Because I do enjoy it.” My voice dropped an octave and my foot found hers under the table, dragging up the inside of the limb until I met her pressed-together thighs. I kicked them apart, waited until she obeyed, and then pushed the toe of my loafer against her cunt. “I like taking men apart like a mechanic disassembles a car. The smell of blood, hot and metallic? Heaven. The look of fear in the eyes of the men who deserve to die by my hand? It brings me peace, Fia. Death is my friend, and I am his instrument. What the fuck business do I have dreaming and wishing and focusing on the future of my life when any moment could bring death and I’d deserve it?”

“What right do I have?” she countered. “I’m just a pretty ornament for Dario to wear on his arm in public, something to be seen and not heard. I was supposed to marry for the Family and stay silent and meek my entire life. An entire life wasted. Do you think I let that happen?” she demanded imperially.

A smile hooked the side of my mouth. “No, ma’am.”

She sniffed. “Exactly. I took my life in my own hands. I do what I love, and I do it well. I like myself because I let myself become someone instead of the doll I was supposed to be. Who are you, Luca? Under the skin of your brother, behind the mask of a killer? Who is Luca Ferretti?”

Something hollowed out in my gut, and it felt curiously like fear.

“I . . .” I looked out the window, idly noting the parked SUV with blacked-out windows down the street and a man who had been loitering at the bus station outside the restaurant for the last forty minutes. “I don’t know.”

When I looked back at Fia, she seemed grimly satisfied, nodding curtly. “Okay. Well, while we search for Dario, we’ll search for you too. Okay?”

As simple as that.

“It won’t be that easy,” I said on a brief laugh that felt like razor blades coming up my throat.

“Nothing worth having ever is,” she quipped. “But you were robbed of a childhood and stripped of a life. I think the least you deserve is a real identity, even if you have to keep it hidden most of the time.”

The server arrived with the food, and Fia was blessedly silent as she tucked into her chicken cacciatore. I watched as she ate, taking comfort from her beauty and innate grace. Watching her soothed me the same way killing did.

It brought me peace.

Who was I?

I only knew two things for sure.

I was a weapon, a sharp-edged instrument of death, and no matter my origin story as a killer, I liked murder.

And next, that I was blindly, wildly, with-every-beat-of-my-heart obsessed with Fiammetta Ferretti.

If I thought too hard about it, if I taught myself to do such silly things as wish and dream, they would be about her.

I knew it.

And I had a feeling she did too.

Wanting her was bad enough. If she found the lost key to unlock the secret desires of my heart, buried so deep even I had no clue as to their shape, I worried there wasn’t anything that would stop me from keeping her safe and making her mine forever.

Even if it was at the expense of my brother.

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Luca

After dinner, I steered Fiammetta away from the parked car and started down the street, adopting a sedate stroll like two lovers out for a mindless, somehow romantic, wander.

“You really think they’ll attack us in public?” she murmured, pretending to admire something in the window of a jeweler.

“Yes,” I said without hesitation. “A hunter under pressure strikes when they have the first opportunity, especially if their prey is elusive. With only Ben and Paulie following us, they’d be fools not to take a shot.”

Ben and Paulie were two of my most trusted foot soldiers. Given the current climate within the Family, I was determined to handpick the men who ensured Fiammetta’s safety.

“So you think, kill Dario, kill you, leave a power vacuum in the Outfit, and what, step in to take over? It would be obvious they were the ones to orchestrate the coup,” she pointed out.

Dario had missed out not talking to his wife more.