????MAFIA POSSESSION ????????
( HIS ADDICTION ????)
BY, ROYAL DIADEM ❣️
CHAPTER 33
Copy and have your life shortened ????
CAROLINE SAT in her usual corner of the coffee shop. The one with a good
view of the door, easy access to the bathroom, and a window because her
doctor said if she shut herself up in her office all day she was likely to be
vitamin D deficient and that could cause bigger health problems.
She didn’t
have her laptop today, but she did have a large cup of Columbian coffee
with almond milk and sugar and two pumps of vanilla and a tower of
whipped cream that had since melted into the creamy brown liquid at the
bottom of the cup. It had grown cold, but Caroline couldn’t find it in her to
care about the coffee.
She checked her phone for the fourth time in a minute. It was still 5:01.
Luca was still not here. She shouldn’t have expected him to show. Why
would he after all that happened? What made her think that he would
running back into her arms like a lost puppy after she shot his father? He
was mourning—or his family was—and he had responsibilities to them.
And to the mafia.
5:02. Caroline downed the last two swallows of her coffee and stood up
to leave. She’d waited long enough.
Luca wouldn’t be late; it wasn’t in his
nature. If he wasn’t here two minutes after the time she stated, she had to
accept the fact that he wasn’t coming. She picked up her keys and started to
walk away, but someone slid into the chair across from her. “Good
evening.”
Caroline’s head snapped up quick enough to give her whiplash at the
sound of that honey velvet voice. She fumbled with her keys and her emptycoffee cup as she sat back down. “I didn’t expect you to show.”
Luca Moretti folded his hands on the table and tilted his head to one
side, a smile softening his angular features. “I’ve been here for an hour.”
Caroline’s mouth fell open in protest, but he cut her off. “I wanted to make
sure you were really ready. I had to give you the chance to back out and
leave before time.”
She shut her mouth with a snap. He promised he wouldn’t hurt her,
wouldn’t force her. She adjusted herself in her seat. “Thank you.” He cared.
He didn’t want her to feel pressured, he wanted to make sure she meant it.
He slid a banana nut muffin across the table to her. “What did you tell
your co-workers?” he asked. “When you went back to work?”
Caroline accepted the muffin. Her favorite, of course. Her heart thudded
in her chest because he still knew her down to which kind of muffin she
liked best. “I told them I went on a much-needed vacation.”
“Oooh,” Luca leaned forward on his elbows. “Where to?” He looked
enamored and terribly interested in what she had to say. Like the cover
story she told her co-workers, so she didn’t have to admit to the fact that he
kidnapped her was the most riveting story he’d ever heard.
She let herself smile. “A cute little cabin in the woods. I needed some
nature therapy.” This was so different from the first time she met him here.
Then, the way his jaw tilted at a sharp slant and his eyes seemed to take in
every fiber of her being had scared her half to death. Now, it set butterflies
bubbling around in her stomach as he hung on her every word.
“Sounds romantic,” he flirted and pulled back the wrapper on his
blueberry muffin. Classic.
Simple. Perfectly Luca. He took his coffee with
sugar and he liked his eggs fried. He could be gentle as easy as he could be
rough, but he wasn’t cruel. He was perfect. The softest silk velvet covering
a sharp blade.
“Mhm,” she agreed. “Not at first, but It got there.” If she were to go
back in time and told herself she would fall in love with Luca Moretti, she
would never have believed it.
Luca straightened to his usual perfect posture with humor in his eyes.
“It was the unintentional voyeurism, wasn’t it?”
Caroline laughed. “Well, that didn’t exactly help matters.”
She clenched
her empty coffee cup and cringed. “Did you ever tell your brother that we
heard them?”
“No.” Luca shook his head. “I didn’t think that was an appropriate topicof conversation at a wedding or a funeral.” She laughed again, imagining that conversation and feeling her face heat up from secondhand
embarrassment. He took a small bite of his muffin. “So if you really did
write thriller screenplays, what would they be about?”
He remembered her lies from the first time they met.
Caroline shook her
head. “Probably some crime drama based on a true story since that’s where
my experience is.” She’d covered plenty of crime stories even apart from
her constant search for dirt on the Morettis. There were some pretty
interesting ones. If she had to, she might be able to make a story out of
them.
Luca hummed. “I would write a psychological thriller.” He took another
contemplative bite of his muffin.
“Why is that?” Caroline picked the top off her muffin in bite size
pinches. It was the best part of the muffin, anyway. “You have some ideas?”
He blinked impassively at her, but she could see the minute amusement
behind his mask of perfect calm. “Not really. I’m just trying to make
conversation. What do you say on a first date after you’ve already…”? He
trailed off and Caroline wasn’t sure how he meant to finish the thought.
After you’ve already kidnapped the person? After you’ve already fu-cked
the living daylights out of them?
After they shot your father and you let him
die? After everything she and Luca had been through?
Caroline reached out to touch his hand on the table. “What did you want
to be when you grew up?” she asked. “As a kid? Like a firefighter or an
astronaut?”
He wrapped his fingers around her hand, gentle and almost reverent.
But embarrassment turned his mouth and squinted his eyes. “I wanted to be
Superman.”
“That’s perfect.” She squeezed his hand with a wide smile. “A very
noble aspiration.” It suited him somehow. Superman helped people, beat the
bad guys. So did Luca in a roundabout way. Even if Luca would never
stand in a crowd wearing a spandex suit, he could quietly do what he
needed to save his family.
“What about you?” He asked.
“Me?” She sighed and shook her head. “I wanted to be a ballerina.” He
smiled one of his rare smiles and it warmed her heart. “But I had no balance
or coordination.” She could actually imagine Luca as a dancer. He had agrace about him that would probably transfer well to that. And he would bea joy to watch on a stage. The lights would catch the angles of his face just right. Even now he looked fantastic in black-on-black funeral attire.
“The
funeral was today?” Luca nodded slowly. She knew she should say she was
sorry for her loss, or sorry for shooting his father, but she couldn’t do it. She
wasn’t sorry, not really. “How was it?”
“I don’t want to talk about Bruno.” The tone of voice completely shut
down any further exploration of that line of conversation.
“Why not?” The reporter in her needed to know why, always and
forever. It wasn’t appropriate in this scenario and she cursed her brain for
the automatic reaction, but before she could take it back, he sighed.
“We’ve spent so much time focused on the past.” He met her eyes, and
her heart did a flip-flop in her chest. “The past is behind us, so let’s leave it
there.” A soft half-smile on his pretty mouth. “Only then can we move on.”
Caroline’s heart seeped a deep warmth through her whole body. It felt
right to sit with Luca, not as his captive or as someone trying to bring him
down, but in this friendly, casual way. She smiled softly. “Thank you.”
He matched her smile, fondness sparkling in his eyes. This felt like thebeginning of something. She could move toward something again instead of
away. The future glittered brightly on the horizon, just waiting for her toride off in the sunset.
TBC