Page 17 of Damiano De Luca (The Five Syndicates)
“Ms. De Luca.” Damian used the voice he did when he pretended to act natural but was looking to stir up trouble. It always fooled everyone but me. “Penny for your thoughts?”
She ran a rag across the bar top and poured him a beer on tap, though he hadn’t ordered and I knew he didn’t drink often. “I like to think they’re worth more than that.”
Poor girl. I almost pitied her. Perks of being a Vitali included knowing things others didn’t. For instance, while Damian remained blissfully unaware that he spoke with his half-sister, I knew when she’d been born, who she had been born to, and just how naughty Angelo De Luca had been all those years ago when Damian’s mother still lived.
“A barter it is.” Damian’s voice dipped lower. “I’ve had one Hell of a month or two. Giovanni Romano has been asking about a girl poking around his territory. Imagine my surprise when my last name slipped past his lips.”
“It’s just a last name.”
“Cut the crap, De Luca.” I could picture the hard glint in his eyes. “You share my last name, yet I’ve never heard of you. Why is that?”
“Why would you give me a heads up about Giovanni?”
Skirting around Damian’s questions never accomplished anything except diminishing his respect for you. “Answer the question, or I’ll answer it for you, and you won’t like my answer.”
The enforcer that had been blocking me from Damian’s view shifted, and just like when we’d met all those years ago, our eyes connected, and we saw past each other’s façades. Damian had always been a closed book, one that only I could open and read. But of everyone in this world, he was the only one who could say the same of me.
I shifted my eyes, but I knew he’d approach. Hell, Ariana De Luca knew it, too, because she took the opportunity to slip away to the other end of the bar.
“Princess.”
“Damsel.”
“Are you going to tell me what you’re doing in New York City?”
I could feel his eyes on my face, but I didn’t dare meet them. “Representing the Vitali name.”
Really, my mom had sent me, but that didn’t sound any cooler aloud than it did in my head.
“No.” His arm brushed mine as he took the seat next to mine. “You’re not.”
I gripped the glass tighter between my palms. “Excuse me?”
What did he want me to say? That I was here to see him?
“I see past your lies.” He nodded toward everyone else at L’Oscurità. “Don’t treat me like I’m one of them.” His breath brushed against my cheek as he leaned closer. “Treat me like I’m Day, and you’re Knight.”
Presumptuous.
That was what he was.
How else could I explain the way he talked to me after almost ten years apart? But his words rekindled the flame I held for him, the flame that had never once flickered in the nine or so years we’d spent apart. It was a piece of me I’d never been able to explain, and I’d given up trying long ago.
I finally turned to face him and met his eyes, silencing any hesitation that threatened to escape my body. “But you’re not Day, and I’m not Knight. You’re not Damsel, and I’m not Princess. We’re strangers who knew each other once upon a time, and that’s all we’ll ever be.”
Other than forcing myself to keep my distance, there was no reason to be this harsh. His dad was no longer a threat, and I was no longer a child whose decisions could be influenced by others. Yet, here I was, wearing a big chip on my shoulder that, sometime over the past ten years, I’d named “Bitch.”
If I were more honest, I would admit that fear played its hand here. I’d never open my heart again. Never.
He tilted so close to me, I knew others would think we were kissing. He smelled like he used to, and it took everything in me to not close my eyes and inhale. “You say I’m not the Day to your Knight, yet you lean into me like you’re gravitating toward me. Like you start where I end.”
“Stop this.”
“I never understood why you hated that nickname. Princess. It was
never an insult.” He pried the glass from my grip and dumped the Macallan into his untouched beer.
My fingers tingled where his had brushed against them. “I was drinking that.”
