“Can I ask you something?”
“Hmmm?” I mumble, lying on top of him and playing with his hair.
“Did you tell your bodyguard about the attack? Your brothers?” Lucca strokes his calloused fingertips down my arm.
“No, I didn’t.”
“Tell me why,” he said, concerned. “Don’t you think this is something they need to know? The Costa Mafia isn’t one of the most powerful ones in Europe, but they make up for it by being the most evil.”
Frowning, I roll off him, sitting up. “I haven’t considered the repercussions, damn it. I didn’t tell Lev because…” I waved my hands, trying to shape my emotions into words. “Lev’s taken care of me for half my life. He came at a very bad time for me, and he helped me cope. I felt safe with him. If he finds out this happened while he’s been rotting away in town not ten minutes from here, it would…” Shaking my head, “It would kill him. He’s risked his life so many times to protect me. If I tell my brothers, they’ll completely lose it. I have no idea what they would do but it would take their attention away from this threat that’s trying to destroy our Bratva.”
Lucca sits up, pulling me onto his lap, wrapping his arms around me. “What happened back then? What did he help you with?” His fingers slide down my back, lightly touching my thick, ugly scar. “Does it have something to do with this?”
I try to pull away, but he keeps his arms around me and he’s warm and I rest my cheek against his lovely, sculpted chest so that I don’t have to look at him.
“I was kidnapped when I was ten. My bodyguard was an older soldier who was furious about getting assigned to me. He felt like it was demeaning, I suspect, like he was too old to handle anything that would bring him more attention or praise.
“So, it was easy for the men to take me. Albanians. They were trying to get a foothold in Canada and they thought I was an easy way to make the Aslanov Bratva lose face. ‘Look, they can’t even keep track of their little girl!’”
He’s listening carefully, rubbing his hands on my back. “You must have been terrified. Only ten years old.”
“My captors told me that they would start cutting off pieces of me to send to my father,” I said, “I was lucky, though. My brothers tracked them down pretty quickly, just a couple of days later. I was chained in a warehouse, in the basement. When the Albanian guarding me realized they’d broken in and killed everyone, he stabbed me in the back. He was aiming up, trying to hit my heart but the blade bounced off a rib. It’s an ugly scar.”
“It’s beautiful,” he insists, leaning down to press his lips against it. “It’s beautiful because it shows you were strong enough to survive.”
“I didn’t feel very strong,” I said. “My mother wanted to pretend it didn’t happen, like it would just… go away if we never talked about it. I couldn’t sleep, I’d wake up screaming because I was so scared the men would come back. Roman sent Lev from Moscow to be my new bodyguard. He’s the one who taught me to breathe through panic attacks, he started training me in self-defense but my mother put a stop to that. She said it was unladylike, but I suspect she hated seeing me train because it reminded her that I could be kidnapped again.”
Lucca cups my face in his hands, kissing my forehead, each cheekbone, and then my lips. “You are strong. Courageous. Thank you for telling me,piccolo bacio,my little kiss.”
Lucca…
Late December…
It’s been so long since I’ve been happy - truly happy - that I’ve forgotten how effortless it is. No paranoia about whether it’s real, no anticipation of the one-two punch sure to come for having the audacity to feel this way. The anxiety that it’s going to be taken away is absent when it comes to Tatiana.
I don’t know if it’s because she’s been sheltered so much, but she doesn’t have the artifice, the cynicism that most women in our world do. When I walk into a room, she lights up, genuinely happy to see me and not afraid to show it.
Tatiana and Mariya are sitting on our couch, laughing over something they’re looking at on Tati’s illegal laptop.
“What’s making you laugh?” I ask, dropping a kiss on her shoulder. “Or do I really not want to know?”
“Oh, Mariya’s showing me a hairstyle she wants to wear for the Christmas party.” She turns the screen toward me and I try to disguise my laugh as a cough.
“I see. It’s very… complicated.” It’s a horrible mix of braids, the fabric things girls put in their hair - scrunchies? - and fake flowers.
“Kon insisted that we needed to go to the party together to ‘keep up appearances,’” Mariya said, making a mocking quote sign with two fingers. “So, I want to look my best.”
“Yeah, I can see that,” I agree, straight-faced. “Kon’s not… uh, smooth when it comes to you. But I promise his heart is in the right place.”
“Smooth?” Mariya snarled, “He certainly seems smooth enough with the fifty percent of the female population he’s banged here on campus. Believe me, no one’s shy about letting me know they’ve slept with him.”
I winced. “Look, I’m sorry. They’re bitches for bragging to you like that.”
“That’s what I told her!” Tatiana adds.
“I can promise you that since you came here, he hasn’t been with anyone,” I tell Mariya, watching her mutinous expression. There’s the slightest hint of hope there, too.
“Then why is he such a grumpy asshole to her?” Tatiana asks.
