Luca Vitiello by Cora Reilly

CHAPTER 25

Aria slept through most of the day, only waking a few times to talk to her siblings. I tried to visit her as often as possible, but I had to talk to my Captains and Dante on the phone. I wouldn’t go to New York for a meeting until I could take Aria with me into the city, and she was still too shaky.

Things began to calm down a bit when her family left for Chicago, and I’d ordered my Captains to wait with attacks on the Bratva until we had the perfect target. I didn’t want to lose more men with attacks in blind rage. We needed to hit them where it hurt.

After my last call, I made my way back to the master bedroom. Water was running in the bathroom so I sat down on the bed, waiting for Aria. When she finally emerged, she was fumbling with her nightgown, trying to slip the second strap on her shoulder, but with her injury it was impossible.

“Done with business?” she asked with a soft smile as I walked over to her. I led her toward the bed and gently pushed her down. Her eyes were clear and kind, not pain-filled and drug-hazed. My Aria.

“I’m fine,” Aria said firmly.

All the worry and fear I’d been feeling crashed down on me. I knelt before her and pressed my face into her stomach. “I could have lost you two days ago.”

Aria trembled. “But you didn’t.”

I met her soft gaze.

“Why did you do this? Why did you take a bullet for me?” If she’d died because of me, if I’d lost her, I’d have lost my mind. Even just thinking about it, reliving that moment when I thought she was dead, it ripped a huge black hole into my chest.

Aria’s eyes became even softer. “Do you really not know why?”

Her expression told me why. Everything seemed to stand still. I knew what I felt for the woman in front of me, had known it with absolute certainty the second I almost lost her, but even before then I’d known the nature of my feelings but had clung to my doubts. I loved Aria. And how could I not? She was lovable. She was kind and gracious and forgiving. She was pure light. She was someone who deserved to be loved.

I didn’t.

I knew what I was.

“I love you, Luca.”

I cupped her face, bringing our faces close but never close enough. I searched her eyes, trying to understand how she could love me, how she found something in me that deserved to be loved. “You love me,” I repeated. No one had ever said those words to me. No one should. “You shouldn’t love me, Aria. I’m not someone who should be loved. People fear me, they hate me, they respect me, they admire me, but they don’t love me. I’m a killer. I’m good at killing. Better probably than at anything else, and I don’t regret it. Fuck, sometimes I even enjoy it. That’s a man you want to love?”

Aria gave me that smile; the smile that burst like a ray of sunshine through my darkness, that warmed even my cold heart.

“It’s not a matter of want, Luca. It’s not like I could choose to stop loving you,” she whispered.

Few things in her life had been her choice. It was only fitting that even her feelings for me weren’t. She was as trapped in her love for me as she was trapped in this marriage. “And you hate that you love me. I remember you saying it before.”

Aria shook her head. “No. Not anymore. I know you aren’t a good man. I’ve always known it, and I don’t care. I know I should. I know I should lie awake at night hating myself for being okay with my husband being the boss of one of the most brutal and deadliest crime organizations in the States. But I don’t. What does that make me?” Aria shifted her head in my hold, glancing down at her hands in her lap with a small frown. “And I killed a man and I don’t feel sorry. Not one bit. I would do it again.” She met my gaze and her eyes were full of love. No hate, no regret, nothing but love. “What does that make me, Luca? I’m a killer like you.”

“You did what you had to. He deserved to die.” I wished I could have killed him, not just because I wanted each and every single Bratva fucker to suffer as much as possible but also because I didn’t want Aria to be burdened with death.

“There’s not one of us who doesn’t deserve death. We probably deserve it more than most,” Aria whispered.

“You are good, Aria. You are innocent. I forced you into this.” How could she compare herself to me? She didn’t know what I’d done, what I enjoyed doing. She had killed to protect someone she loved. I killed for many reasons, few of them noble or altruistic.

“You didn’t, Luca. I was born into this world. I chose to stay in this world. Being born into our world means being born with blood on your hands. With every breath we take, sin is engraved deeper into our skin.”

“You don’t have a choice. There’s no way to escape our world. You didn’t have a choice in marrying me either. If you’d let that bullet kill me, you would have at least escaped our marriage.”

She wouldn’t have been free because freedom didn’t exist in our world, but Matteo wouldn’t have forced her to marry again.

“There are few good things in our world, Luca, and if you find one, you cling to it with all your might. You are one of those good things in my life.”

My chest swelled with love. “I’m not good.”

“You’re not a good man, no. But you are good for me. I feel safe in your arms. I don’t know why, I don’t even know why I love you, but I do, and that won’t change.”

I had to close my eyes against the fierce emotion in her expression. “Love is a risk in our world, and a weakness a Capo can’t afford.” I’d believed in those words all my life. I should still believe in them if I wanted to be an invincible Capo.

“I know,” Aria whispered miserably.

I looked at her. Didn’t she know? Couldn’t she see? “But I don’t care, because loving you is the only pure thing in my life.”

Aria’s eyes filled with tears and incredulity. “You love me?”

“Yes, even if I shouldn’t. If my enemies knew how much you meant to me, they’d do anything to get their hands on you, to hurt me through you, to control me by threatening you. The Bratva will try again, and others will too. When I became a Made Man, I swore to put the Famiglia first, and I reinforced that same oath when I became a Capo dei Capi even though I knew I was lying. My first choice should always be the Famiglia.”

Aria watched me with parted lips as if she didn’t trust her ears.

“But you are my first choice, Aria. I’ll burn down the world if I have to. I’ll kill and maim and blackmail. I’ll do anything for you.” She couldn’t possibly fathom what I’d do for her, the length I’d go to protect her. The Russian fucker today had gotten a taste and anyone else who dared to insult or hurt her would end the same way. “Maybe love is a risk, but it’s a risk I’m willing to take and, as you said, it’s not a choice. I never thought I would, never thought I could love someone like that, but I fell in love with you. I fought it. It’s the first battle I didn’t mind losing.”

Aria wrapped her arms around me, her tears falling onto my neck. She twitched with a whimper when her shoulder bumped against me. I withdrew slowly, worried about hurting her. “You need to rest. Your body needs to heal.”

I gently pushed her down until she lay back, but she dug her fingers into my biceps. She peered up at me through her lashes. “I don’t want to rest. I want to make love to you.”

My eyes darted down to her beautiful legs then back to her pleading face. I wanted nothing more than to be as close to Aria as possible, but she was injured. “I’m going to hurt you. Your stitches could rip open.”

Aria caressed my chest then my stomach until her fingers reached the growing bulge in my pants. I stifled a groan when she began rubbing me lightly.

Her expression turned teasing. “He agrees with me.”

“He always does, but he’s not the voice of reason, believe me,” I muttered.

Aria laughed only to flinch a moment later.

She was in pain. “That’s what I mean.”

“Please. I want to make love to you. I’ve wanted this for a long time.” Her begging broke down my resolve piece by piece.

“I’ve always made love to you, Aria,” I admitted. The feelings I hadn’t understood in the beginning and fought later, they had been there when I’d taken Aria’s virginity. It was the first time I’d made love, and Aria would always be the only woman I’d make love to.

Aria rubbed me harder. “Don’t you want this?”

I almost laughed. “Of course I want it. We almost lost each other. I want nothing more than to be as close to you as possible.”

“Then make love to me. Slow and gentle.”

And my last wall crumbled as it always did with Aria. “Slow and gentle,” I agreed.

I knelt at the end of the bed and massaged Aria’s feet and calves, enjoying the feel of her soft skin. Aria parted her legs and my eyes took her up on the invitation. My cock jerked at the sight of her soaked panties. Groaning, I pressed a kiss to her ankle.

I trailed my fingers up her leg until I brushed over her crotch. She was so wet and hot. “You make slow and gentle really hard on me. If you weren’t hurt, I’d bury myself in you and make you scream my name.”

“If I wasn’t hurt, I’d want you to do it.”

I suckled Aria’s ankle. “Mine.” I kissed her calf. “Mine.” Then her knee. “Mine.” Her thigh. “Mine.” Until I finally reached her pussy. I dragged her panties down before I wedged myself between her thighs. I planted a kiss on her folds. “Mine.”

Aria moaned then whimpered in pain because she’d moved.

“I want you to relax completely. No tensing your muscles, or your shoulder will hurt,” I ordered as I brushed my lips along her crease.

“I always tense up when I come. And I really, really want to come.”

I’d make her come as often as she wanted, not just today but for the rest of our lives. “You will, but no tensing.”

Aria gave me a look that made it clear that wouldn’t work.

I began pleasuring her with my lips and tongue, keeping my ministrations light and gentle, guiding her slowly toward her release. Aria’s breathless moans and her body’s arousal spurred me on until it took everything not to dry hump the edge of the mattress. When Aria finally came, her body seemed to go even softer, her legs falling open as she surrendered to pleasure.

I got out of my clothes and positioned myself between Aria’s legs. I entered her slowly, watching her face as she moaned low and sweet.

“Mine,” I said when I was buried all the way inside her.

Aria held my gaze as I made love to her gently.

“Yours,” she whispered, her expression the greatest declaration of love I could imagine.

All my life I’d thought becoming Capo would be the biggest triumph of my life. Not the happiest day, because I hadn’t known true happiness. But now, as I met Aria’s loving gaze, I knew that she was my greatest victory. Only she brought happiness into days of blood and violence, only she could fill my dark world with light.

She was my light, my love…my life.

With the smile that always got me, she pressed her palm against my Famiglia tattoo, right over my heart. A cruel heart that only beat for her.

“Mine,” she said without doubt.

I held her gaze. “Always.”