Luca had chosen his son over his father.
And he’d chosen me too.
Because when Luca had gotten V and Gio settled in the car, he’d turned to me and softly told me to get in the car as well.
It hadn’t been an order.
Our fatherhad been shouting orders.
At me.
First to tell me to stop Luca from leaving, then to get my ass up the stairs so I could take my place at his side, which really meant behind him.
I still hated the fact that I’d hesitated even for a second. When Luca had quietly whispered in my ear to trust him, it was like he’d given me what I’d needed to break the collarI’dbeen wearing around my neck for most of my life.
My collar may not have been a physical one like Aleks’s had been, but I’d been owned just the same.
And I’d been released from my prison by someone who’d always vowed to watch out for me.
Which he had.
I’d learned only after we’d left our father’s overpriced, oversized mansion that just about everything was already in Luca’s name. Our father had been so confident in being able to keep the noose around Luca’s neck for his entire life that he’d started transferring assets to either Luca’s name or the business in order to stay under the IRS’s radar.
But Luca had slipped the noose and it had cost our father everything.
By the time he’d died six months later, Luca had been giving him just enough money to survive on… and he’d only done that out of respect for our mother. For whatever reason, she’d loved Vidone Covello and Luca hadn’t been willing to shit on that.
But despite Luca being able to break free of our father’s control, he’d known from the day Gio had been born that in addition to inheriting Vidone’s business and assets, Luca had also inherited the man’s enemies.
The solution had taken its toll on Luca, but he’d been adamant that he wouldn’t lose his son the way we’d both lost our mother, and I’d wholeheartedly agreed with him. To protect Gio, Luca had never publicly acknowledged the boy was his child, even after he’d told our father about him. He’d still showered his son with all the love he could and he’d given him everything money could buy andhad made sure V had never wanted for anything, but the lengths we’d had to go to while Luca had spent time with his son had been extreme. There hadn’t been days where he could just go pick his kid up from school and walk him home. There’d been no career days or going to school carnivals or any of the little plays that Gio’s class would put on.
Any activity where Luca’s real name could come out had had to be nixed, but that hadn’t meant there hadn’t been lots of family dinners both at V’s house and at the house in the Hamptons. Our entire little extended family had bonded with Gio and had made sure he never felt like he just had a mother and nothing else. But we’d had to work harder than most families to make it happen.
But it had worked because Gio had been safe from Luca’s enemies.
Until an enemy we hadn’t seen coming had snuck under our radar and stolen both Gio and V from us.
And changed Luca’s – and all our lives – forever.
“You took him flying, huh?” Luca asked after a few minutes of silence. Some of my anger at Luca for his role in trying to abduct Aleks was still there, but I’d had time to accept that desperation and a sense of betrayal had driven my brother to do what he’d done. He’d treated Aleks with kid gloves since then, so I did believe that if he’d been successful in taking him in Seattle, he wouldn’t have allowed any harm to come to him.
“Yeah,” I said as I glanced at my brother. The fact that I’d taken Aleks up in the little Piper single-engine plane was pretty telling. Even back before Gio had gone missing and I’d bought the plane, or rather, Luca had bought it for me and surprised me with it one day, I hadn’t taken anyone up in it with me. I’d paid a guy at the private airport nearby a small fortune to store the plane for me and to keep up the maintenance on it, but I wasn’t sure if Luca had known that.
Clearly, he knew pretty much everything.
He probably also knew I’d kept my pilot’s license up to date, despite the fact that I hadn’t flown much in the past several years. Only on the rarest of occasions had I left the dark world I lived in to escape to the skies for an hour or two.
But being in the air with Aleks by my side had brought a host of emotions to the surface that I hadn’t been expecting.
Like how much flying really was in my blood. It was a high that was second only to being with Aleks.
So Aleks and flying at the same time… utter heaven.
And as soon as we’d landed I’d felt so fucking guilty for having those few hours of pleasure.
Hours where I hadn’t allowed myself to remember that Gio was out there waiting for us to come and get him. Hours where I didn’t fucking drive myself crazy wondering what was happening to him while I was letting myself feel the freedom he might never know again.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
