Bound By Love: Chapter 17

MATTEO

I had always suspected there was a point for both Luca and me when the darkness in us would rise too high, so high it would spill over and drown out all the light, all the good that remained. I feared this was the moment for Luca.

I stopped Romero from moving closer to Luca with a hand against his chest. Romero frowned, but then he looked at Luca and tensed. I, too, was frozen with apprehension.

Luca and I had spent all our lives together, had gone through the bad and the worse, had killed and suffered, had laughed and fought. I had never been truly wary of my brother. Not when he’d crushed our cousin’s throat, not when he’d threatened me for talking shit about Aria, but until now I’d never seen that look on his face.

I wasn’t sure what had him looking that way, but I knew only one thing that had the power to bring him to his knees, only one thing that could destroy Luca, that could make him snap once and for all. It was the one person I’d thought would stop him from snapping in the first place.

“Luca?” I asked carefully.

He stared down at a photo on his screen. I moved closer and what I saw made the blood drain from my face. It was a photo of Aria holding hands with Dante. It took me a moment to comprehend what I was seeing. It didn’t even make sense. Romero, too, threw a glance at the photo then frowned.

Gianna, of course, chose that moment to saunter into the living room in nothing but a nightgown, but stopped when she saw us. Her eyes darted from me to Luca and the smile slipped off her face.

“Where’s Aria?” I asked her sharply.

“Don’t take that tone with me,” she muttered, her eyes darting to Luca once more, who still hadn’t moved a muscle and who was still staring down at his phone, but I knew he was listening.

“Gianna, where the fuck is Aria? This is serious,” I snarled.

Lily appeared behind her, but Romero shook his head and gestured at her not to come closer. “Where?” he asked her.

“I don’t know,” she said quietly, but it was a lie. Romero knew it. I knew it. Luca knew it.

“Is she in Chicago?” I asked.

Gianna and Lily exchanged a glance but remained silent.

“What’s going on here?” Gianna asked.

And Luca raised his eyes from the phone.

“Fuck,” I muttered because that look in his eyes…it scared me shitless.

“Lily,” Romero began, but he didn’t get to finish whatever warning he’d wanted to voice.

“Did you know about this?” Luca asked in a voice I’d never heard from him. Low, dark, on the verge of breaking. He turned his phone so Gianna and Lily saw the photo of Aria holding hands with Dante, then he clicked to the next photo showing Dante with his hands on Aria’s shoulder, his mouth at her ear in an intimate gesture. And the next, the worst: Aria in a car with Dante and he was leaning over her, his back to the camera, hiding most of her body from view. You couldn’t see their faces, but they were close and his arm reached between her legs.

Lily sucked in a breath, and somehow it was the last straw. Luca roared and flung the phone away. It shattered against the wall. Next he gripped the Christmas tree and threw it to the ground. I grabbed Gianna’s arm and shoved her toward the entrance door. “Leave! Go to the car and wait for me.”

Gianna refused to leave, unlike Lily, who had allowed Romero to lead her outside. “Luca, stop being an idiot. Aria would never cheat on you, you stupid asshole!” Gianna shouted.

Luca had pulled a knife and was staring down at the blade, his chest and shoulders heaving, his face a mask of acute agony. Never had I seen him like that. Not even when our father had tortured us with knives, lighters and needles.

I gripped Gianna’s arm and pulled her out of the house and toward my Porsche, not caring that she was barefoot. She tried to shake me off. “Stop it, Matteo. He’s getting it wrong!” she shrieked.

I didn’t listen. I needed to get her to safety and then return to Luca and try to keep him from falling apart in a scary serial killer kind of way. I pushed her into the car, then locked the doors. Gianna hammered against the windows.

Romero had locked Lily in his Jeep, and gave me a worried look. “Aria wouldn’t cheat,” he said.

“You sure about that?” I muttered.

“You have to calm him down before he does something that can’t be undone,” Romero said.

I nodded. “Leave.”

“I’ll take a room in a hotel close by. Call me if you need me.”

Gianna started honking, driving me insane, but I wouldn’t let her out of the car. I didn’t want her anywhere near Luca when he was in that kind of mood.

With a deep breath, I returned to the mansion. Luca still held the knife in his right hand but in his left hand he held his iPad, that agonized look lingering on his face.

“Luca?” I ventured. He didn’t react. I moved closer. He had opened the photos on the iPad as if seeing them in a bigger format would make them less real.

“You had a lot of shit thrown your way today. Perhaps you should try to calm down before you act on your anger.”

Luca put down the iPad on the living room table and went to the liquor cabinet. If he didn’t drop that fucking knife soon, I might consider getting my own out. He grabbed a bottle of whisky, opened it with his teeth, spit out the screw cap and took a deep swig. Alcohol wouldn’t make him any less dangerous.

“Leave,” he rasped.

“Luca, you love Aria.”

Luca staggered toward me, and I had to fight the urge to draw a weapon. “Love!” He glared. “You might be okay with Gianna fucking around behind your back, but I can’t…I can’t fucking bear the thought of Aria…” His voice broke and fury contorted his face. Gianna hadn’t fucked around, but it was futile to argue with Luca, and I definitely wouldn’t let him ignite my own anger.

“Leave!” he roared. “Go to your wife and let me handle my own!”

I nodded, and took a step back. “Luca, some things can’t be undone,” I repeated what Romero had told me.

Luca turned his back to me, shoulders shaking with anger and worse—heartbreak. The former he could handle, but the latter he’d never had to deal with before.

But I couldn’t interfere, not without risking a fight with Luca, and today one of us would die. I might be willing to die for Gianna and even for Luca, but not for Aria, not when she might have cheated on my brother. I backed away, my chest fucking tight. I wasn’t sure if I’d see Luca again, not the Luca I knew, because if he hurt Aria, he wouldn’t recover. I wasn’t sure he would recover either way.

Gianna clutched my shirt when I slipped behind the wheel. “Matteo, you bastard, let me go to Luca!”

“No,” I hissed. Luca hardly tolerated Gianna on the best of days, and today was the worst I’d ever seen him—and I had been with him at every bad and worse moment in his life.

“Then let me call Aria. I need to warn her. Luca has lost his mind. He will kill her if he thinks she cheated on him. He’s a possessive asshole.”

Luca wouldn’t kill Aria because he was a possessive asshole. He’d kill her because she’d made him love and trust her, and had fucking betrayed him, had broken his fucking heart. I started the car but Gianna shoved my arm. “Matteo, damn it!”

“They will have to settle this.”

“Settle this? The only way Luca will settle this is with his fucking knife. Matteo, I swear, if you let your brother hurt Aria, we’re done.”

Tears shone in her eyes but I wouldn’t interfere. “For me to stop Luca, I’d have to disable him and for me to succeed, I’d have to kill him. And that’s not something you can ask of me, Gianna. Not when your sister brought this on herself. She knows Luca better than anyone.”

“She didn’t cheat on him, Matteo,” Gianna whispered desperately. “She would never do it. She loves Luca. And he’s going to destroy everything.”

“No,” I growled. “Aria destroyed everything. She broke Luca’s trust. She should have known better. Luca isn’t someone who ever loved or trusted anyone like he does Aria. She shouldn’t have gone behind his back.”

Gianna shook her head. “She didn’t cheat. She didn’t. He must realize that.” She closed her eyes and let out a sob that tore at my heart. Gianna wasn’t a crier, and I’d never heard a sound like that from her.

“Luca loves Aria more than his own life,” I told her. “He will put his own life down before he kills her.”

With anyone else, those words would have been a lie, but Aria might be the only one who could break my brother’s heart and come out unscathed in the end.

ARIA

Would Luca be happy when I told him about the baby? He didn’t want kids yet but I hoped he’d come to terms with my pregnancy. The most difficult part would be to keep it a secret from Lily and Gianna until I could tell Luca. I wasn’t sure when he would be done with business in New York and when he’d return to the Hamptons.

There weren’t any guards around the perimeter when the taxi driver dropped me off at the gates. I entered the code in the keypad at the gates, then slipped in, confused. I’d thought I would have to sneak in, but there wasn’t anyone around. The mansion, too, was oddly quiet when I stepped inside and the curtains in the living area were closed, stopping the early morning light from spilling in. Everyone must have left, but why?

Worry settled in the pit of my stomach.

“Lily?” I called. “Gianna?”

“They aren’t here,” came a low growl from the back.

Luca.

He was sitting in the dark on the couch. I felt for the light switch and bathed us in the soft glow. “Luca?”

My eyes took in the Christmas tree on the floor, its baubles smashed to pieces, and next to it Luca’s broken mobile. What happened here?

Had there been another Bratva attack?

My eyes found Luca hunched over on the couch, dressed in a white shirt with the sleeves rolled up. His elbows were propped up on his strong thighs and he was staring down at something. He didn’t look up at me.

I approached him slowly, worried about his strange behavior. His shoulders were heaving with his breaths as if he’d run several miles. I stopped beside him and followed his gaze down to the black screen of his iPad.

“An associate from the press contacted me with photos that were supposed to make headline,” he said in a cold voice.

That voice wasn’t one he usually used for me.

“Photos?”

Luca touched his iPad and it flickered to life.

I sucked in a deep breath.

The screen showed a photo taken through the windows of the restaurant I’d chosen for my meeting with Val. But Val wasn’t in it.

It showed me with Dante’s hands on my shoulders. He was close behind me, his face tilted toward me, mouth close to my ear as if he was whispering secrets into it when all he’d done was warn me not to run.

The next photo was of Dante and me leaving the restaurant together, hand in hand. My face was lowered, so Luca didn’t see how tense I’d been in that moment.

Luca clicked the next photo.

A photo of me in a car with Dante, and it looked as if he had his hand between my legs—and not because he’d reached for the purse.

Bile traveled up my throat.

These looked bad.

Really bad. They would have looked bad to someone who had average trust in people, but Luca was distrustful, suspicious and cautious. For him these photos could only lead to one conclusion. But he couldn’t possibly believe I had an affair with Dante? God, he should know better. He knew me.

“Luca,” I whispered, reaching out to touch his shoulder, but I froze when he raised his eyes to mine. I had never seen that look in his eyes. They were wild with anger.

I wanted to run as far away as I could.

My eyes flickered to the empty bottle of whisky at his feet. Luca had drunk most of it. Some of the amber liquid had spilled and stained the beige carpet, but there were also darker stains. Slowly my gaze moved on to his hands, which were clutching a knife. One of his palms was curled around the blade so tightly that blood was dripping down his hand and onto the carpet.

I knew I needed to run, but that would have been admittance to a crime I hadn’t committed. I hadn’t cheated on Luca, would never do it. And the words Luca had said to me on our wedding night flashed through my mind. Did your father never teach you to hide your fear from monsters? They give chase if you run.

“You’re bleeding. You’ve hurt yourself,” I said in a soothing voice, trying to get through to him. I needed to get past the demons the alcohol and the compromising photos had summoned.

His face twisted with so much rage, I recoiled from it. He released the blade and more blood dripped down his hand as he straightened from the sofa.

I took a step back, couldn’t stop myself.

The arm with the knife hung limply at his side.

I forced myself to meet his gaze again. Luca was in there somewhere. Behind the anger and the hurt, my Luca was in there.

“Luca, please listen to me. It’s not how it looks.”

“So you didn’t let Cavallaro have what’s mine?” he roared. And he was upon me, his bleeding hand clamped down on my forearm. He was still holding the knife.

“I would never do that! You will always be the only man I want to be with. I went to Chicago to meet with Val and talk to Fabi. But Dante followed Val and wanted to talk to me. That’s all, I swear.”

“And what’s your swear worth? You’ve betrayed me before.”

“I never lied to you. I never cheated. I helped my sisters and didn’t always tell you everything, but I never lied to you.” He was the one who’d cheated, and it wasn’t like he’d never kept a secret from me—like Matteo asking for Gianna’s hand.

His eyes seemed to bore through me. There wasn’t only anger in them, and the other emotion worried me more, because it was agony.

“Luca, can you please put down the knife? It’s making me nervous.”

His eyes trailed down to the blood-covered blade as if he had forgotten all about it and he released it, not even hesitating despite what he thought I’d done. The steel clanged to the floor, splattering it even more with blood. Then his eyes moved back up. He pulled me sharply against him and kissed me fiercely, brutally. There was only anger and despair in his kiss.

I knew what he wanted, what he needed. And I would have gladly given it to him if the test hadn’t changed everything. Luca didn’t want to hurt me, but the last time he’d been this angry when we’d had sex, he’d been rougher than I could risk so early in this pregnancy. I had to protect our child and Luca. He would never forgive himself if he hurt our baby.

His hands roamed over my body hungrily, and a small part of me felt exhilarated at the sensation, but I ripped away from him. “No!” He tried to pull me against him again. “Luca, stop! I don’t want this!”

His lips were an inch from mine and he was breathing harshly, his eyes like molten steel. “You deny me?”

I bit back a snappy comment. I’d denied him before when I hadn’t felt well or wasn’t in the mood, and he had always honored my wish. I knew he was drunk and hurt and on the verge of losing control. That he hadn’t yet showed how much he loved me. He had killed his first man at eleven, had killed and tortured countless more, had called himself a merciless monster on many occasions. And I knew what he was. With others.

“Funny that you say you haven’t been with Dante, and yet you can’t bear my touch.”

God, he thought my refusal was admittance to me cheating?

“Don’t do anything you will regret tomorrow,” I said quietly, begging him with my eyes.

His lips curled in a cruel smile. So wrong. “What makes you think I would regret anything?”

I knew he would because I knew him better than anyone else, better than he knew himself.

“Our love is too important.”

“Love,” he spat the word. “That I ever loved you was my biggest mistake. I won’t make it again.”

Loved? I could feel my heart shatter as I looked into his menacing face.

“Luca, please.” I reached for him but he shook me off. There was only cold anger in his eyes.

“Because you are my wife, you’ll live. Don’t expect more. We are done.”

I couldn’t comprehend what he was saying. I stared at him, my throat clogging, my heart drumming in my chest. For a moment, he hesitated but then he turned and stalked off, leaving me standing there alone.

I sank down on the sofa, where Luca had sat before. The leather was still warm. I touched my stomach and I cried. Cried because I might have destroyed our love. That Luca had let himself love me in the first place had been a miracle. What if I’d lost him forever?

I was still sitting in the same spot when Matteo entered the room cautiously a couple of hours later. He pushed the button that opened the curtains and light flooded the room. I blinked twice, but my lids felt like they were made from lead. Slowly I lowered my palm from my stomach.

“He didn’t kill you,” Matteo said. His voice didn’t reveal his emotions. His facial features were similar to Luca’s, but Matteo was poster-boy pretty where Luca was all hard lines and raw attractiveness. But he looked enough like Luca to set my heart aflame with heartbreak.

He walked toward me, his eyes taking in my bloody clothes and the blood on the couch and the ground.

“Do you need a doctor?”

“It’s not my blood,” I whispered in a raw voice.

Matteo didn’t say anything for a while, only regarded me. “Making him bleed. You are quite good at it for a woman.”

I raised my gaze to meet his straight on. My eyes burnt with unshed tears, but I couldn’t cry anymore. I’d cried for hours. I stood, legs shaky. I grabbed Matteo’s arm. He let me, only regarded me emotionlessly.

“Matteo, I didn’t do anything. I swear on my life. I swear on my…” I trailed off. I’d almost said “child.” “Please, help me. Help me make Luca see the truth.”

“The photos.”

“The photos show me with Dante in a restaurant and a car. We talked. He considered using me against the Famiglia as leverage. That’s all.”

“Then why did he let you go, Aria. Why?”

I stared up at Matteo. I couldn’t tell him about the child when I hadn’t even told Luca. “Because he has an ounce of decency in his body.”

A dark smile curled his lips. “Is that so?”

“Call Dante, call Valentina. They will tell you what I told you.”

“As if their word means anything. They are the enemy. You remember that, don’t you?”

“Then look for the person who took the photos. They probably shot more photos that prove my innocence. Isn’t it strange that Luca gets only the photos that make it look like I cheated? Perhaps someone wants to weaken Luca by destroying our marriage. Perhaps it’s the Outfit’s doing, or someone within the Famiglia.”

I could tell that Matteo was really considering it. “And you really think Luca needs you to be strong? You think they could weaken the Famiglia if they destroyed your marriage to my brother?”

I wanted to say yes, but I wasn’t sure about anything anymore. I was so broken up and confused.

“I would gladly die for Luca,” I said instead. “I love him more than anything else.”

Except for the child growing in me. Our child.

“Then perhaps you should take that knife and put your life down.”

I was stunned. “Do you think he’s better off without me? Luca loves me.”

Or loved? My heart clenched with a pain so acute I almost crumpled.

“He would return to being what he was before you. He’d be worse than that. He would be the monster he needs to be to reign over New York. Whatever small part of him was capable of love, maybe you killed it.”

I nodded mechanically, my insides churning violently as I fought for composure. I turned away from Matteo’s anger, unable to bear it because I knew he was right to be angry. Luca wasn’t a normal man. He was Capo. He was raised to be Capo and for me he’d risked so much, and now he thought I’d cheated on him. If I ever managed to gain his trust back, I’d never do anything without him ever again, not for Gianna, not for Lily, not for Fabi, not for anything in this world.

“You know I’ve watched our father shove a needle under Luca’s fingernails, have seen him cut Luca with a knife, have seen him beat Luca so hard he lost consciousness, but through all that, I never saw Luca show the agony he had on his face when he saw you with Dante.”

I cupped my mouth with my palm, and sobbed. I couldn’t bear the thought of having hurt Luca like that. “I didn’t cheat,” I choked out. “If you don’t believe me, torture me. You said it yourself once: if you use your knife on me, I won’t be able to keep a secret.”

Matteo walked around to face me and shook his head. “It doesn’t matter what I believe as long as Luca thinks you cheated.”

I touched his forearm. “Please, Matteo, help me prove my innocence. Please, not just for me.”

“Even if you didn’t cheat on him, you went behind his back. You visited enemy territory and risked not only your life, but also Luca’s. He would have put down his life in front of Dante to save you; had you thought about that when you strutted around Chicago?”

“I only wanted to see Fabi. It’s Christmas time,” I said voicelessly.

“Yeah, well, now we’ll all have a fucking marvelous Christmas, thanks to you.”

The corners of my vision turned black. I felt faint. I wasn’t sure if it was because of the pregnancy, because I hadn’t eaten anything in close to a day or because my heart was breaking. I swayed and my legs folded in on themselves.

“Fuck,” Matteo growled and grabbed my arms, stopping my fall. He helped me down on the sofa before he squatted in front of me. He grasped my chin and tilted my face up so I met his hard, relentless eyes. “You swear you didn’t cheat on Luca?”

“I swear it, Matteo. I would never cheat on Luca. I love him. There’s no other man and there won’t ever be.”

He sighed and released my chin. “I’ll try to get my hands on the photographer who took the photos, and then I’ll have a long talk with him. It won’t be easy. I can’t go to Chicago, and there are very few men I can send there in my stead, but there may be another way…. But even if I get my hands on the guy and he proves your innocence, I can’t promise that Luca will come around. The only reason he believed you cheated in the first place is because you went behind his back.” He shook his head again. “Fuck.” He straightened. “Are you sure you don’t want to see the Doc? You look a mess.”

“I’m sure,” I said quickly. I didn’t want the Doc to find out I was pregnant. He would tell Luca. He wasn’t bound by medical confidentiality like other doctors.

“I will release Gianna now,” Matteo said with a sigh.

“Release her?” I whispered.

“Locked her in the car.”

As he walked out he raised his mobile to his head. “Romero? Yeah, I need you to come over.”

I stared down at the carpet with the bloodstains. Luca’s blood.

“Aria!” Gianna’s scream made me jump and then she stormed my way, hair wild and nightgown half-torn as if she’d struggled, and flung herself at me, hugging me so tightly I couldn’t breathe. She shook against me, and something wet hit my throat.

I touched the back of her head. “Shh. I’m okay.”

“No, you’re not,” Gianna whispered as she pulled back, her eyes raking over me before they moved on to the mess on the carpet. “Did he hurt you?”

I shook my head even as my heart clenched tightly.

“I thought he’d kill you. I wanted to warn you but Matteo, the asshole, didn’t let me.”

It felt like part of me had died, but Luca would never kill me.

“Matteo tried to save your pretty ass,” Matteo said to Gianna. “While something stops Luca from snapping Aria’s neck, it won’t stop him with you, trust me.”

“I’m not talking to you,” Gianna said sharply, and this time it wasn’t a game.

I touched her leg. “He wanted to protect you. Don’t be mad at him, please. It’s bad enough that I destroyed my own marriage; I don’t want to be responsible for another one.”

“Luca will come around,” she said, but her words lacked conviction.

The sound of the front door opening and closing filled me with hope but when Lily and Romero walked in, not Luca, I deflated. Lily also came over to me and hugged me tightly, her arms trembling. Her eyes were red from crying. Guilt crashed over me.

“We were so worried about you,” she said. I raised my eyes to Romero, who stood beside Matteo and listened to him, but Romero’s eyes were on me. Pity showed in his, not anger as I’d expected, and for some reason that made things worse.