I had no confirmation that she’d keep quiet and I wouldn’t get one either. Quietly, I unfolded myself and straightened up. “Drive safe,” I told her and shut the door. Vittoria left without glancing back, and I walked into the house again.
Chapter Twenty
Lucas
Mia was nestled against my side, head on my chest, radiating warmth as she slept. Vittoria's impromptu visit last night had led to an argument that had Dante escape for home and left us going to bed on a frosty note. Mia could hold a grudge and I struggled to crack her last night before she fell asleep at the far end of the bed, refusing to even brush against me. Apparently, her subconscious was a little more forgiving. In the silence of the room, I looked at my woman completely at peace. The opposite end of the spectrum from how she'd been when she looked moments away from throwing Link’s bottle at my head.
It was rare that I was awake before Mia, she was fine tuned to the sound of Link's subtlest movements, but when I was, I wondered what she dreamed of. I was curious if all those books she lost herself in unwound in her brain and let her live a thousand lives or if they'd become disturbed like mine, so filled with blood and pain that the waking world felt like more of a comfort.
Mia stirred against me and I drew my fingers up her spine in a feather-light touch and watched as a tired smile tugged at her lips. She pressed up against me to save herself from the ticklish sensation. "Stop," she mumbled, turning her face into my chest.
Then the spell was broken.
She opened her eyes, sticky with sleep, and registered where she was and attempted to put some space between us. As if it would be that easy. My arm was wrapped around her keeping her securely on the spot and I placed a finger against my lips, knowing she wouldn't want to wake Link early. She gave one more half assed push to try and separate us before accepting that she wasn't going to win this battle.
"We are still fighting," Mia informed me, then promptly dropped her head back on my chest.
I laughed quietly and kissed the top of her head. "Whatever you say, love."
"I mean it, Luc." Her sternness was marred with sleepiness, losing the effect she wanted.
"You know," I told her, dragging my fingers down her spine this time so that she stayed as close as possible to me. "You're not meant to go to bed on an argument. You wouldn't want the last things we said to each other to be in anger."
For someone who wasn't fully awake, Mia's slap stung, and I hissed as her palm connected to my chest. "Don't joke about things like that," she said sadly.
"I wasn't joking," I replied, the skin heating up from where her hit had landed. "There's no guarantees." It was a low blow to play the mortality card but a sure-fire way to get her to talk to me again.
She let out a long, slow breath, mulling over my words before shifting herself under the covers and straddling me. Mia hadn't won with words so she moved to a position of dominance. If it made her feel better, she could stay there. "Are you planning to die on me before we get married?"
"Not if I can help it."
"Then you need to keep better hold of your temper."
I reached up to kiss her, lips barely brushing as she pulled back. My hand went to the back of her neck and pulled her back down to me to get what I wanted. She melted into the kiss, eventually breaking away from it and mumbling, “You never fight fair.”
“I fight to win. Fuck fair.”
“You weren’t fighting to win last night,” she pointed out. Mia wasn’t about to let this go. “You never should have told off Tori like that. I don’t even want to know what’s waiting for us today.”
Vittoria barging her way into our home last night and demanding answers had tipped me into the foulest mood. I was sick of Morettis walking around and acting as if they were better than the rest of us. They deserved to be brought down a peg or two and, in my anger, and eagerness to deliver the lesson, I’d let go of the truth. I couldn’t deny that there was a lasting sense of smugness at watching Vittoria’s face fall.
“Luc,” Mia said, disapproval in her tone. “This is nothing to smile about. We’re going to need to deal with the fallout of this.”
“And we will.”
“This was not our plan. This is not what I worked for.”
Not we but I, and it was a fair assessment. She was making a point. After all the flack I had given her for attending Silas’s funeral. After all the fuss I’d made about how it would look to the family, and I’d trumped her. Mia had put in more work than I had to win people around. She’d started from scratch when she came back from her stint with Carmen, and we reaped the benefits of her labour.
"Do you want to stop?" I asked her seriously, curious to whether I’d pushed her a step too far with my antics last night.
"No," Mia answered honestly. Her forehead rested against mine, nose brushing my own. "I enjoy the power." It was just the two of us awake and safe in the darkness where she could let the mask slip away. We’d tapped into a hunger that she possessed, and Mia enjoyed feeding the beast. “But if Vittoria tells everyone, we’re going to end up with nothing.”
“We’ll never end up with nothing, Mia. We’ll have our family and the business.”
“You know what I mean. They won’t accept you properly. You said that yourself.”
Quietly, I moved us so that she laid beneath me, the power balance shifting again. I’d asked more from Mia than I’d ever intended to when we first met. I’d asked her to accept my life, to actively be involved in it and to raise our boy in all the madness. I’d asked for more than I’d given to her, and I knew with every breath that I took that I was completely undeserving of this woman. A better man would have let her go. But I was the worst of them and losing my salvation wasn’t an option. It never would be.
