Luc closed his eyes and squeezed my hands before resting his forehead against my stomach. “I would never have been able to go through with it,” he whispered.
“Because of the baby,” I finished his sentence.
“No, Mia,” he said, looking up at me again. “Because I love you. Because even when you left me, I was still in love with you. Before Dante told me everything, I thought you’d left because you didn’t want anything to do with me or this life. Then I found out you were pregnant, and I thought you believed I wasn’t good enough to be a Dad.”
“That wasn’t what I thought.”
“I know,” Luc said, lacing our fingers together. “I know that now.”
We sat together in the silence of the room, the only noise the blood thundering in my ears. Luc’s skin was warm against my own, he’d caught the sun over the summer, and I saw the familiar lines that creased his brow when he was thinking over something. His index finger hooked itself on the bracelet around my wrist and I bit my bottom lip as he pulled my wrist to his lips. I’d never stopped loving him and would wager that I was incapable of loving anyone else as deeply as I did Luc.
“What happens next?” I asked. “What are you going to do about Xavier?”
Luc stood up, traces of affection vanished from his demeanor and something eerily calm came over him. “You don’t need to worry about that.”
The moment someone told you not to worry was the exact moment it took over. I stood up from the bed and narrowed my eyes. “Luc, you need to be careful.”
“Leave it to me, princess.” His hand cupped my cheek and I leaned into his touch, a kneejerk reaction that I would never be able to rid myself of. “Don’t trust anyone but me or Dante. Do you understand?”
Luc was asking me to trust him. There was some small part of me that wanted to tell him there was no chance in hell after seeing what he had been willing to do, but we had both been in the wrong. Looking into his green eyes, I knew I could put my life in his hands without worry. “Yes,” I answered.
“No one else knows about this?”
“Just you, me and Dante.”
“It stays that way. Get some rest and we can talk in the morning.”
“I’m busy tomorrow,” I told him. “I’m meeting Carmen for brunch before we head home.”
“I’ll take you.”
“Franco’s not going to like that.”
“Fuck Franco.”
A smile tugged at my lips. “Okay, you can take me, but you can repeat those words to Franco.”
Chapter Twenty Five
Lucas
Franco was seething when he found out that Mia and I had spoken without his knowledge, and even more so when I insisted that I would escort Mia to her brunch with Carmen. He had whipped out his phone the second I turned away, no doubt to let Gabriel know of the development. A monkey reporting back to the monkey who was higher up the chain. It would be a stretch to refer to Gabe as an organ grinder.
My mood brightened considerably when Mia walked into the foyer of the hotel. Gone was the sundress that she’d worn for the ceremony yesterday, and instead she’d swamped herself in a large t-shirt and jeans with her hair piled onto the crown of her head in a bun.
“Morning,” I said as she came toward me.
“Morning.” She stood in front of me, looking unsure of herself. “We should probably get going or I’ll be late, and I’ll never hear the end of it from Carmen.”
I nodded and led her out of the hotel and to the car. Traffic was light as I followed the directions Mia had punched into my phone.
“Thank you,” Mia said as I navigated through the traffic. “For taking me. It’s nice to have a break from Franco.”
“He’s not as subtle as Dom.”
“I wouldn’t call Dom subtle,” she said, a smile tugging at her lips. Mia had corrupted Dom so that my strait-laced handy man became her friend before anything else. “He’s definitely nowhere near as talkative either.”
The realization hit me as to just how lonely Mia must have been in her time away. She’d lost her father and left all the friends she’d made. Carmen would have paid sparing visits when she had the time. Alone with her grief and heartbreak, Mia would have processed everything in bitter silence while I was surrounded by people who I chose to push away. She’d always had a knack for making me realize that I was an ungrateful prick.
