Veiled Amor by V. Theia

THIRTY

“Three truths and a lie.” – Lucia

 

 

The best thing about living with Capone, besides living with Capone, was how tidy he was.

She’d never known a man to like things put away or who would pick towels up from the bathroom floor and not toss his clothes everywhere.

Lucia was messier.

He didn’t make a fuss about cleaning up after her in the kitchen. Whatever chaos she made while she tried to cook dinner, he came behind her, and the mess was gone a minute later.

“You’re good at that,” she remarked while she dried her hands on a dish towel, watching as he put a carton of milk away in the fridge. He cocked a brow and smirked a little. “It’s easy to toss milk away, amor.”

Smiling, she whipped him with the towel, then squealed when he threw out his arm and roped her in. “I mean, tidying up after me.”

“I enjoy being in here with you.” He shrugged as if it were no big deal. It was a huge deal to her, and she felt warmed by his words, “like it better that you made mama’s carnitas recipe.”

“It wasn’t quite like hers, I think she used magic in her spices.”

“It was perfect, amor.”

He was being nice, so she let him.

The slap on her ass startled Lucia out of her thoughts and she blinked up at his smiling yet sober face.

“We’ve eaten, cleaned up the kitchen. Are you going to keep avoiding what you want to tell me?”

Damn. He knew she’d been stalling.

“Does this goatee,” she gave it a little tug, “make you oh-so-wise, hm?”

Taking hold of her waist, Capone walked her backward until her knees encountered the edge of the couch, and he made her sit. “You’re stalling again, nena. Say what you have to say, then we can watch a movie, and I’ll make you my famous popcorn,” he offered with a sexy smirk.

She felt a little out of place, awkward in her limbs, so afraid to rock the idyllic boat they’d been in these past weeks. Did it matter if Capone didn’t have all the answers? He’d accepted their relationship, trusted in it, that’s all she’d wanted.

The truth was better. No secrets, she reminded herself.

Taking a deep breath, she curled a leg under her butt.

Another deep inhale. “I don’t know where to start…”

“Why you married Santiago?”

Oh, wow. Straight in at the deep end then, huh? Okay.

“Okay. Your brother worked for my father about a year previous, you remember?”

“Sí.” His jaw got tight. Lucia recalled listening to a yelled argument outside of the estate gates one day. Capone telling Santiago how dumb he was to work for Nicholas. That deep voice enthralled her, and from then on, Capone was on Lucia’s radar.

“He was low level, which meant he ran from A to B delivering to the sellers, but he was also always around the estate.”

“He caught your eye?”

“I wasn’t interested in dating Santiago, there was only ever one Mercado brother for me.” When Capone’s brow folded in, she went on. She had to tell this in chronological order.

“If he saw me by the pool, we’d talk a little, he’d boss me about sunscreen, said his mom always lectured him too. As I told the FED, I heard a lot of things I wasn’t meant to hear. One day I was outside dad’s office and Santiago was begging him not to tell anyone. The last thing you ever do to Nicholas is show him you’re weak. He pounced on Santiago for that and used it against him. Informing Santiago he would keep his secret, not tell your father, but he had to do something in return. He accepted without knowing what it was.” Santiago’s third mistake. “The favor was to marry me. Dad explained he wanted me unavailable for a few years. So that’s how I ended up with the same surname as you.”

After what felt like a week of silence, Capone spoke. “Did you dispute it?”

“Dispute it? I downright refused when dad told me what he had in mind. I wasn’t given a choice, Capone, it’s dad’s way, the end. He told me what I had to do and expected me to do it.”

“What a piece of fucking work. Are you sure you don’t want me to kill him, amor?”

Her smile wasn’t happy, but it was a smile of relief. “For what he did to your family, I should say yes. How can you let that revenge go?”

“Some things are worth letting go for.” He meant her and Lucia’s heart flooded with love.

“Are you sure?”

“Go on with what you need to tell me, nena.”

“I remember vividly catching your eye at the wedding and I so wanted you to stop it somehow,” she shared, “which was silly because you weren’t aware of me from any other girl.”

“That’s where you’re wrong,”

“Oh?”

“I was more than aware of you, Lucia. I nearly broke the bones in my hand from squeezing my fists together so I wouldn’t stop that wedding. You were eighteen, too young for me then, I thought you and my brother were in love. A whirlwind courtship. Mama was pleased because she thought it would settle his ass down, stop him from doing dumb shit.”

All she heard were the words saying he wanted to stop the wedding. Her heart raced. If only he had, things would be so different now.

History was weird. She could look back and regret what couldn’t be, or be grateful for what they had now. She chose the latter.

“I never understood why you’d want to keep in contact with me after everything that happened. But I hung off our calls like a lifeline, desperate for you to change the narrative, anything to suggest I wasn’t a family obligation.”

A twitch moved across Capone’s lips. It could be amusement or irritation, right now she wasn’t so sure.

“You know you were more to me than I allowed myself to have.”

So there was no more confusion between them, and he could discard his self-imposed guilt, she told him. “There was never anything physical between Santiago and me. Not a kiss, a hug or anything else. We didn’t share a bed. The villa my father gave us, he was hardly there at all. We weren’t enemies, but neither of us wanted that marriage, Gi.”

Capone pinned Lucia with his unmasked, moody eyes, a wealth of questions crossing through them.

“Why didn’t he tell me?”

“He had his reasons.”

“Why didn’t you tell me? All this time I’ve thought I did him dirty by sleeping with you, by wanting you.” There was no mistaking the agony in Capone’s voice, and she felt hers crack as she answered. “I tried to tell you, remember? You cut me down every time I attempted to talk about what happened. I was afraid you’d cut me out altogether, so I complied with your wishes.”

Dropping his head over his hands, she heard him suck air through his teeth and then he looked up and her sweet man was unrecognizable. His face and eyes were hard, so was his voice. A hard, tortured voice. And Lucia felt the pain of it. “All this goddamn time,” he was suddenly on his feet and Lucia watched him pace behind the couch, “I asked him at the wedding ‘are you happy, Santi?’ and he told me, ‘sí, brother.’ Why wouldn’t he tell me it was all a lie?”

“He probably was happy because he’d gained a higher position with my dad. I told him so many times he was doing the wrong thing, he insisted he had it handled. He talked about impressing you and your brothers, your father especially, he didn’t want to disappoint you.”

Blowing out air, Capone rubbed a hand around the back of his neck. It was obvious from the strain in his spine how frustrated he was. “Eight months,” he all-but growled, “you weren’t together.”

“We had no interest in each other, Santiago spent the wedding night with someone else.”

That appeared to bring fury to Capone because his voice darkened, “you were his wife, and he disrespected you that way?”

Lucia couldn’t catch on to what was really angering him. She unfurled her legs and watched him pacing. “What are you angry about, Gi? That you thought I was with him, or I wasn’t?”

“I don’t fucking know,” he snapped in Spanish. “You should have tried harder to tell me.”

“How? You wouldn’t listen when I tried to take the conversation there.”

“Easily. ‘Giancarlo, I wasn’t fucking your brother, it was a sham marriage’, that’s all you had to say. Do you know how much it’s fucked me up to picture him shaking your pussy with orgasms the way I do?”

Pain grabbed her throat, she frowned. “That’s not fair, you know you dictated every single conversation we had. I was scared to lose you if I pushed it.”

“I thought you loved him. I didn’t want to hear it. Couldn’t fucking take it.” Resting both hands on the back of the sofa, he leaned into it, head hanging low. “He was always running around with chicks, never the same one twice. Mama was over the moon when he came home and said he was getting married. She thought it would settle his wildness.” He recounted as Lucia listened. “Andrés said at the wedding that Santiago didn’t look like a man in love.” Capone’s married older brother. His other elder brother, Gael, had also been married, “he was too interested in getting wasted.”

She remembered and didn’t care. That day was long and horrible, and she didn’t want to think about it, because if she did, she’d recall Capone’s watchful gaze on her all day.

“You didn’t look happy.” He stated, raising his eyes to her.

She shrugged. “Happiness isn’t considered an important factor when my father wants something. And he wanted free labor from Santiago.”

Capone lowered his head again, cursed.

“The marriage was fake, Gi, but spending time with your family became everything to me. I loved your parents like they were mine. I didn’t intend to get close to them, I felt awful about lying, but you know how persuasive your mom was. And then I didn’t want to stay away from them. From you.” Those Sunday dinners at the Mercado house became Lucia’s everything, because she knew Giancarlo would walk through the door and make her world a million times better. It was dangerous being in love with her husband’s brother, seeing everything she longed for in another man.

“There’s more to tell you.”

He talked over her like he hadn’t even heard. “You were a shy girl,” he stated quietly, “if you weren’t fucking Santi, was there someone else before me?”

Oh.

Flutters started in her belly, butterflies dancing.

It wasn’t an important detail, but of course, Capone would latch onto something unsaid. Her breath stalled at the intense look he was sending her way.

She squeezed her eyes shut, “you were my first.”

The air became palpable.

Silence crackled.

And then.

“You were a virgin when we fucked? You were a fucking virgin when I took you the way I did, Lucia?”

Her eyes pinged open, surprised at his tone. He was angry with her?

“Did you hear me tell you to stop? That I didn’t want it? Or did you feel my nails scraping into your back because I couldn’t get you close enough? I wanted it all, Giancarlo. Exactly in the way you gave it to me, never misunderstand that again.”

Something like dread swelled in her belly, making it impossibly harder to breathe. Her heart stuttered until she placed a hand on her chest.

“There was no blood…”

“That’s a myth, there isn’t always bleeding the first time.”

“I fucked the virginity out of you and then put a baby in you, Lucia…” he was breathing like a running dragon. As unsure as Lucia felt this conversation was going, she tried to smile, and his frown became deeper. “I remember, I was there, Gi. Now you know how long I’ve loved you for.”

He swore again.

“What?”

“Tell me the rest.”

Hating the space between them, as often as she’d rehearsed this conversation, it went nothing like this. She stood and made her way across the room, her hand stroked his forearm.

“Please don’t be angry, Giancarlo.”

“He lied to my fucking face.”

She blinked. “Who?”

“Santi. I asked him outright the night before the wedding, do you love this girl? He told me sure, yes. It’s the only goddamn reason I didn’t stop it from going ahead. The only reason I stopped myself from doing a lot of fucking things since.”

“Gi…”

“Finish the rest.”

“Your brother idolized you, you know that. He wasn’t like you or your brothers, he tried too hard to fit in, to make your father proud.”

“He made papá sick with worry working for a drug dealer.”

She’d heard worse about her father, but she still flinched and took her hand back, wrapping it around her waist.

“What did your father have on him? What did he promise Santi to make him marry you?”

“He was scared to tell you. I told him it would be fine, but he wouldn’t listen. Working for my father would give him status, he said.”

“Instead, he’s in the family crypt.” Capone replied, cold as ice.

“My father.” She started, cognizant of how many bad sentences from her life started that exact way, “he caught Santiago having sex with someone on the estate. Begging Nicholas for anything only brings trouble, this meant Santiago was in dad’s pocket because he threatened to tell those he cared about.”

“Because he was getting his dick wet? Who was he fucking, the cook?”

Any other time she might have laughed. Touching the track of veins on the back of his right hand, he grasped her fingers, running his thumb over her knuckles.

“Remember, Nicholas is all about leverage. People are things to him. Santiago didn’t stand a chance.”

“You don’t need to tell me, nena. He tried to fuck over the biggest drug cartel Kingpin and got our family killed for it.” The words, though they were quiet, were spoken with bite.

Lucia winced, feeling his pain. “I think he was trying to fix what dad held over him, it went wrong.” And then she told him about his baby brother’s biggest secret he had never wanted his family to know, fearing they’d disown him. “He was gay, Giancarlo.”

That gorgeous face of his didn’t alter.

“Santiago was afraid to tell you and put himself in a situation that was impossible to get out of. He was in a relationship with one of dad’s guards, it didn’t last long, the guy disappeared, it spiraled from there with Santiago trying to diffuse the situation and to keep my father happy. He was miserable, Gi.”

“He was miserable? He was fucking miserable?” His deep tenor rumbled angrier. “He got our family killed because he was too much of a coward to tell us he was gay.”

“I’m not making excuses for him, just telling it how it was.”

“Julieta was only goddamn sixteen, never had a boyfriend and never will. She wanted to live in New York, did you know that?” He asked. Lucia nodded sadly. Capone’s baby sister had two topics of conversation and they’d been clothes and New York. She’d planned to be a fashion designer.

Raking his fingers through his hair, Capone paced over to the windows, looking out at the night sky. “I wouldn’t have cared about his sexuality.”

“I tried to tell him that too. You saw for yourself how it is for a Puerto Rican boy, things are expected of him from the community, the family.”

Whichever way Lucia looked at it, it sucked. She’d pleaded with him so many times to tell his family so Nicholas could no longer blackmail him.

“So many fucking lives he screwed up because he couldn’t accept his own truth.” Capone gritted quietly. “I’d shake that little shit if he were here now. Do you know the deal he was trying to make against your father?”

“No, not until after the fact. Dad made it a point to let me know what happened to men who crossed him.”

“He went to the Mexicans, trying to sell out Cole. By the time I knew about it, it was too late to do anything. I was coming back from a run to Colorado, Santi called me, said he’d fucked up and he needed to lie low. I told him that his priority was to take care of his wife.” Sliding his hands into his front pockets, Lucia stood behind him, a few feet separating them like a chasm. The stiffening of his spine was noticeable as he recounted the memory, all he had left of his baby brother were memories and she was finding out they weren’t all good. “I warned him to stay put, that I’d take care of his shit one last time. He insisted he had it in hand, it would get better. Santiago’s better never came.”

Lucia frowned, her bare toes digging into the thick carpet beneath her. He felt closed off, like an invisible wall had erected in the last hour.

When he turned around, she took a step forward, smiling a little, but the look on his face stopped Lucia in her tracks. Unrecognizable. No sense of love on his face. She’d known this conversation could go many ways, had been prepared for it. It didn’t stop the air from losing momentum in her lungs. “Gi, can we…”

“I need to get out of here for a while,” he stated. Stepping around her, he was already swinging into his leather jacket and grabbing his keys from the bowl.

“What? Where? It’s late.”

It was then his emotions showed when his eyes blazed and his mouth tightened as he told her, “I have to get out of here.”

She almost recoiled, hearing the coldness. “Get away from me, you mean?”

“You should have come to me so many fucking times, Lucia. You kept this from me for years.”

She understood finally why he’d maintained a distance between them, because the air, as thick as it felt, as fraught as it was, was crackling, bouncing sparks. It was their connection. It had always been this way. She felt the truth of it. Strange, but there it was. Their connection, even in anger, was palpable as a living being taking form.

And then he severed their gazes, turned his back. Quiet like a jaguar, he prowled down the hallway and closed the door silently. Lucia flinched as though he’d slammed it.

Because he’d left.

Leaving her alone.

Again.