????MAFIA POSSESSION ????????
( HIS ADDICTION ????)
BY, ROYAL DIADEM ❣️
CHAPTER 11
Copy and have your life shortened ????
LUCA BARELY HAD time to shut the door on Caroline before Alessandro
walked in. “What are you doing here?” he demanded, as if Luca were
infringing on his private getaway instead of the other way around.
Luca crossed his arms and squinted at his younger brother. “Nice to see
you too.” He took a moment to a-ssess him. “You look like shit.” He did.
Bags under his eyes, usually styled hair lying flat and lifeless, shoulders
sagging under some unseen weight.
“You don’t know, do you?” Alessandro grabbed Luca’s arm. “They
burned Tony’s.”
Shock froze Luca to the spot. Tony’s, the gym where they all trained
since they were kids. It had been more of a home to Luca and his brothers
than anywhere else. “What do you mean, burned?”
The front door opened again, and a woman walked in. Tall posture, dark
hair, commanding presence. Luca recognized her from parties and events
they were both required to attend. Lorna Bianchi, daughter of the only other
significant mafia Don in New York, and Giovanni’s fiancé. She didn’t
belong here. Especially not with Alessandro.
But her polite smile and neatly
clasped hands disregarded that fact. “What’s going on?”
Alessandro for his part looked positively fed up. His shoulders squared
as he took a step toward her. “I told you to wait in the car.” His tone was
threatening, certainly not a tone that should be taken with one’s futuresister-in-law.
Lorna didn’t seem fazed. “And when have I ever listened to you?” shedeadpanned.
Luca laughed. Half out of discomfort and half because Lorna’s nononsense attitude was funny.
Alessandro’s scandalized reaction to that made
him laugh more. It was always fun to see someone put Alessandro in his
place. His ego could flatten the Taj Mahal and the way Lorna seemed to
know that and tease him for it spoke of more than a brother/sister-in-law
relationship. Then again, they went to school together for a while so he
might be reading too much into it and projecting his own complicated
feelings for Caroline.
The door to the den opened and Luca stopped laughing. Caroline
stepped out, looking between Luca and Alessandro, scared out of her mind.
Luca glared at Caroline. He had tried not to threaten her before, tried to
make her comfortable. To be authoritative without threatening bodily harm.
But he clearly told her to wait in the den until he figured out what his
brother was doing here. She could have just killed herself. If Alessandro
decided to do Luca’s job for him, he couldn’t save her.
Alessandro exhaled a partial laugh. “Excuse me,” Luca could feel his
eyes boring into the side of his head. “What the fu-ck?” Alessandro had
every right to question this. It looked pretty bad. Caroline was supposed to
be dead.
Luca tried to impart the depth of the trouble Caroline had gotten herself
into throu-ghhis eyes, but she was a deer caught in headlights and she
couldn’t think throu-ghthe panic. She obviously recognized Alessandro and
had an inkling what his presence might mean for her. If she had stayed put
like Luca instructed, he could have taken care of this without Alessandro
even realizing she was still alive. But no, she had to go and sign her own
death warrant. He turned to his brother. “Can I talk to you outside?” He
could try to explain himself and he still didn’t know what Alessandro was
doing here with Giovanni’s fiancé.
He glanced at Lorna. “Alone.”
Alessandro grabbed his arm and pushed past Lorna to the door, sticking
an accusatory finger in her face. “Stay,” he growled. Lorna’s face told Luca
exactly how likely that was, and he might have laughed again if Carolinewasn’t looking at Lorna like she was an angel sent from heaven to save her.
Alarms went off in his head, but he had to believe that Lorna wouldn’t doanything regrettable.
Alessandro closed the door and Luca leaned against the porch railing.
“I’d like to know why you have Giovanni’s fiancé and what you’re doing
out here in the middle of nowhere with her.”
Alessandro narrowed his eyes. “I’d like to know why you kidnapped
that reporter instead of dealing with her.”
“Who said I’m not going to deal with her?” Luca countered. “Maybe
this is all part of my plan to bury our tracks so de-ep the bloodhounds will
dig to China before they find them.” Luca could bluff his way out of most
things. He bullshitted his way throu-ghschool with a 3.8 GPA, conned his
way out of having to do chores at home, and talked his way out of most
fisticuffs. But a brother can see throu-ghthe bullshit. Alessandro looked at
him for a long moment and Luca could tell he didn’t believe him. “What
happened to Tony’s? Is that why you’re here?”
Alessandro drew in on himself, his eyes unfocused like he was seeing
something other than the green woods around the cabin. “Yeah. Someone
burned Tony’s. They left a message, a threat. Dad took it pretty seriously.”
“Explain what you mean by burned.” There were different types of fire.
The type that melted and blacked a couple mats, the type that blew out the
light fixtures,
the type that ate a whole wall. Alessandro pulled out his
phone and showed Luca a series of pictures. Orange fire ripping a burning
gash in a black sky, flashing red lights and fire trucks spraying the
blackened skeleton of a building with white foam. Scattered bricks on the
ground with familiar tiny handprints and names in primary colors. There
was Giovanni’s little hand from when he won a junior MMA competition.
And Alessandro’s next to that. And on a brick turned on its side,
Luca’s
own little hand in proud yellow paint turned a sickly orange in the light of
the fire trucks. He only won the one competition, but he’d been so proud to
put his handprint on the wall of fame with his brothers’. It was gone. The
whole gym, a whole childhood of memories was reduced to floating ashes
and charred beams. Luca took a step back. “Holy shit.” He suddenly
understood why Alessandro looked like he hadn’t slept in a week. “Holy
shit,” he repeated.
Alessandro put his phone back in his pocket. “You know how Giovanni
is about Delilah.” Luca did know. Giovanni always had a crush on the
owner’s daughter. Luca had always done what he could to push them
together. Alessandro leaned over the porch railing. “He couldn’t deal with
Lorna until he made sure Delilah was safe. He’s tracking down the arsonist.
I’m keeping Lorna out of the way until we can deal with this threat.”
Luca suspected there was more to it than that, but he wouldn’t push. Hedidn’t have much room to talk. “So you two will be here for a while?”
Alessandro nodded. “Till the end of the week at least.”
Luca shoved his hands in his pockets and cursed the fates. “You know, I
brou-ght her here because I thought we’d be alone.”
Alessandro shrugged. “So move. There are other safe houses.”
“I can’t move her again without drugging her.” And he couldn’t drug
her again. He’d like her to trust him and that would never happen if he
drugged her again. Alessandro raised his eyebrows like ‘why should that
matter?’ He didn’t understand and Luca didn’t particularly want to make
him understand. “I was here first. You move.”
“No can do.” Alessandro smirked. “Lorna is approved to be here by her
father and ours.”
“Dammit.” Luca hit the rail with the flat of his palm. “You always have
to make things difficult, don’t you?”
“We can share the space. There’s enough room.” Alessandro didn’t
sound happy about it either and that was some comfort. If Luca was going
to be miserable, he wanted Alessandro to be miserable too.
“Yeah, if they share Tessa’s room.” Luca cli-cked his tongue. “But I’m
not sleeping with Caroline.” It was unthinkable. And she’d probably try to
kill him in his sleep. “And you know I’m not sharing a room with you.”
Luca wouldn’t share a room with either of the twins, but Alessandro was
worst. He didn’t even seem to notice the mess all around him, and it wasn’t
Luca’s job to clean up after a fully grown adult, but he couldn’t think
straight when there were piles of dirty clothes on the floor and a half-eaten
bag of chips scattered over the comforter.
“Fine.” Alessandro agreed.
“If they hate each other, Lorna will sleepwith me.”
Luca smirked at how easily his brother came to that conclusion. If hethought Giovanni actually cared for Lorna, he might have been more
concerned, but they would work this out between them. And Lorna
definitely wasn’t a pushover. She would do what she needed to do, and itwasn’t Luca’s place to step in
TBC