Veiled Amor by V. Theia
SEVEN
“Biker on an airplane.” - Capone
Who the fuck could catch sleep on a plane?
Probably psychos and kids.
Not Capone, that was a fact.
No such luck for getting some sleep after Rider’s wedding when he was striding through the Louisiana airport with his guts on fire, knowing what he was walking toward.
Seeing her again.
No matter how much she might have changed, he knew Lucia was still going to be killer beautiful. At nineteen she was stunning, and maturity could have only made her better.
Capone wasn’t ready for it.
Hadn’t he avoided this shit forever?
Laying eyes on her was never in his plans, because it would mean being in Miami, and that was the last place he’d ever go back to.
Too many memories were clawing through the white meat of his brain. So fucked up on a normal day without adding in his anger, too, if he caught the sights and smells of his old home town.
If he were in Miami, he’d be compelled to hunt down Nicholas Cole and beat the ever-loving fuck out of the wolf until his insides spilled onto the floor.
He remembered why he couldn’t do that and chewed down on his teeth until his jaw ached. It was anyone’s guess if he could resist putting hands on her the moment he saw her. Not like he controlled himself the last time, for fuck’s sake.
The call with Lucia lasted only a few minutes. He was no more the wiser about why she’d fled. But Capone couldn’t say he wasn’t fucking thrilled she’d finally done it.
The cab dropped him off at a motel complex sometime later, his eyes cut to two slits, surveying the sleazy place.
Walking along the landing, he heard a loud TV coming from one room, rowdy sex from another, and a piercing argument from the room next to hers. By the time he thumped on her door, he was fit to burst with his anger barely simmering beneath his skin.
Not a second later, as if she’d been watching out for him, the door swung open.
And there she was.
Holy Mary Magdalene.
Capone wasn’t prepared for the invisible punch to the solar plexus.
“Gi…” she breathed, holding the doorframe as if it were the only thing holding her up.
That action alone put fire in his chest.
Her hair was longer, touching past her shoulders and brushing around her pixie shaped face. At twenty-six, she’d filled out into a curvier body, and his whole fucking mouth pooled with water.
The urge to ram her against the wall, smash her mouth under his, was a near-impossible urge to ignore. He refrained, only just.
“Gonna invite me into this fleapit?” He rasped thickly, putting bite into his tone because this shit wasn’t a walk down memory lane. Nor was it a friendly chit-chat over coffee. She wanted his help to keep her hidden from her Kingpin father.
How she’d managed for three weeks, he didn’t know. One thing he would lay money on was Nicholas Cole being furious over his asset flying her cage. He’d bet the fucker had men scouring the country. It wouldn’t be a surprise if they’d already found her and were playing a cat-and-mouse game to scare her into running back.
“Oh, yes. Please come in.” She stammered and widened the door for Capone to step through. He dropped his holdall bag on the floor, inspecting the orange and white room, clean at least with basic furniture. A double bed, armchair and a TV was sitting on top of a dresser.
When he turned, it was to find Lucia watching him and worrying her lip with the front of her teeth. “I didn’t think you’d get here so fast.”
As a driven man, from the time he prospected for the Florida Renegade Souls, nothing much fazed Capone.
He had a cast-iron stomach, could cause violence and mayhem, and not care about it afterward. He’d fought his battles with sheer will and his fists. And only two things in his life had rocked the world from underneath his feet.
His massacred family.
And this woman.
He’d stayed in Miami only long enough to settle the estate, knowing he couldn’t have his revenge on the man responsible without getting Lucia killed.
She’d pulled him back into her orbit. And whether she knew it, his fucking world was about to rock again under his feet.
Capone’s jaw ticked tightly, hands in the pockets of the denim jacket he wore. He’d left all his club insignia gear at home.
“I hope I didn’t cut into anything important,” she went on, nervous fingers crawling around her throat. She moved away and sat on the edge of the bed.
“I was at a friend’s wedding when you called.”
“Oh, no, Gi! I’m so sorry. I wouldn’t have—”
“It’s fine, not much for weddings, and they understood. Now you wanna explain to me why you’re here?”
“Seriously, I feel awful. I was impulsive and afraid. I should have waited to call you.”
“You haven’t picked up my call in three weeks.”
Her head reared up, and her foam green eyes widened. Lips slackened. “I wasn’t sure you’d still call after the first time I didn’t answer. I’ve kept my phone off in case dad has it monitored.”
Capone wouldn’t be surprised. He motioned with a hand. “Let’s see it.”
She moved, dug a hand into a purse, and their fingers brushed when she handed it over. Static electricity rushed up to his shoulder. After digging out the sim card, he stalked across to the tiny bathroom and dropped the card into the toilet bowl, flushing it away.
“We’ll get you a new phone in case there’s a hidden tracker app on the device. Is the Beemer out front yours?”
“I drove it, but it’s one of his,” she winced. “I thought he might have a way to track mine.”
Capone said, “I don’t have any of my equipment to check it over. I’ll have someone pick it up.”
“Do you think it’s bugged too?”
“Can’t rule it out. If I were as fucked up as Nicholas, I’d be bugging everything and everyone.”
“If that’s the case, he already knows I’m here. I told you, didn’t I? I got the feeling I was being watched.”
“He would have grabbed you already.”
She sighed big enough it lifted her whole chest in the white tank top. Capone yanked his betraying eyes away. He wasn’t here for a free peep show, nor to open old wounds. The fucked up shit they’d done together was years ago, and he was keeping it there. He already felt like he’d pissed enough on his younger brother’s grave.
“Thank you for coming, Giancarlo.” She said after a minute. He felt like she’d reached into his chest and squeezed his heart with her fingers. People looking at Lucia would see a beautiful woman wearing designer clothes and shoes and the fancy ride she went around town in. They wouldn’t notice how the smiles didn’t always reach her eyes.
He’d wanted to get her out of that compound for years, knowing more than most what Nicholas was capable of. But his hands had been tied. She’d forced the issue now, and what the fuck else could he do but help her?
Santiago fucked up by not taking care of her.
Capone would not make the same mistake.
It was going to kill him being this close.
Those goddamn weekly calls about did him in.
Some people were put on this earth to torment.
He might not be religious, but he believed in that.
She looked at him from her perch on the bed like he had all the answers.
And all Capone could think about was the last time he had her on a bed, how he’d defiled her from one end to the other and hungered for more, even after he’d woken and realized what they’d done.
Some pangs of hunger never left a man, no matter how much he filled his plate with other things.
Lucia Mercado, his fucking forbidden sister-in-law, would remain a gnawing ache in his gut, something he’d accepted a long time ago.
Didn’t mean he was a feral animal and would act on it.
He’d done that once, and look how it turned out.
By fucking his nastiness into a girl too young and too off-limits, he’d locked them both in this time machine. He should have cut her off years ago. Only his sense of responsibility wouldn’t allow it. Wouldn’t let her wolf of a father gobble her up.
Capone recalled the day he’d stormed into Nicholas’ home, intent on butchering the man in the same way he’d done to his family. With his hand clasped to his enemy's throat, Capone holding a gun to his head, he was stopped only by one sentence.
“There’s a bounty on Lucia’s head the moment I am dead.”
The ruthless bastardo had played his hand well, as if he could sense how Capone felt, knew how he’d bend for her safety. No decent man would ever threaten his daughter’s life that way. But Nicholas wasn’t decent. The man was a lobo. A wolf in Gucci clothing. And a fucking sly one at that who proved he would use his only child to save his fucking neck.
Capone had walked away to save her.
His only failure.
Unable to take her with him, though for a weak moment, he’d wanted to grab her up and take her wherever he landed. It was only in the last couple of years he’d thought about it when she’d let slip how her father wanted to barter her off again.
That word again rattled around his brain for weeks and months.
He’d never asked what she’d meant by it.
Again implied he’d tried it before.
When?
They might not have had the best friendship, pretty fucking dysfunctional by any standard, but they’d been in contact every single week. Not once had she brought it up.
Now he was replaying every conversation they’d ever had and coming up with more questions. Questions he should have asked a long time ago, instead of being a prick who avoided anything worth a damn.
Under his breath, he cursed and rubbed a hand on his clipped goatee before he strode to the armchair. Plopping his ass down, he spread his legs, resting both forearms on his thighs before cutting his gaze to her.
She looked nervous, chewing on her lower lip, hands agitated on her lap, almost as if selecting her words.
That was Capone’s doing, he realized.
He’d put them into a tight box a long time ago, dictating what asinine shit could be discussed. She’d tried many times to talk about that night, and he’d pushed it aside, telling her it was a mistake not worth talking about.
He was a piece of fucking shit.
Had he delved into her life and not recoiled from asking her personal questions for fear she was involved with a guy who he’d want to shoot between the eyebrows, he would have all the answers now.
No time like the fucking present to change his ways, he thought.
“You said you overheard Nicholas talking to a guy.”
“Yes. I’ve seen him at the house before. He’s from Texas, kind of slimy and rich.”
“And they were discussing you?”
“Yep.” She popped the last letter, making Capone notice the pinkness of her lips. “Dad was offering me up on a platter to sweeten the deal. Now it makes sense why he wanted me to host dinners when the guy came over. He was probably trotting me out like a show pony.” Any other time he would have grinned at the way she scrunched up her pert little nose in disgust. Capone was feeling anything but amused.
He was fucking furious beneath his calm exterior.
Did he need another reason to put Nicholas in a grave? No, but now he had two.
“I can’t go through that again, Gi. He doesn’t listen to what I want; he thinks it’s my duty as his obedient daughter to follow his directions, but making me marry someone again is all for his almighty profit.”
That word again.
He straightened, feeling something stir in his chest.
She would have told him had she been married a second time, wouldn’t she?
Despite sharing a surname and one illicit night, they were virtual strangers. A ten-minute generic call every week didn’t a friendship make, and now he regretted the wasted time.
“You keep saying again like he’s done this shit before. Explain.” He gruffed too harshly, and he saw her wince as if he’d put a hand on her.
Capone could blame his mood on the wedding earlier that day, but it had nothing to do with Rider’s nuptials and everything to do with the woman before him. She unsettled him.
“I thought maybe you’d guessed over the years when you wouldn’t let me talk about it.”
“What do you mean? Did Nicholas exchange you as part of a deal? We talk every week, Lucia. Why haven’t you told me?”
Some of her visible nerves disappeared when he watched her pretty eyes roll as she scoffed a noise. “You hardly would have stayed on the line had I mentioned something not on your approved list, Giancarlo. I knew the rules.”
Goddammit. He sighed, letting his head hang low before looking over. “I’m listening now. How bad has it been at home?”
“I’m not beaten or mistreated, if that’s what you’re asking. Compared to many, I’ve been spoiled.”
“But?”
“It’s not my life, Gi. It’s never been my life.”
“What kind of life has it been?”
“Suffocating.”
He shot up a brow. “That’s an interesting choice of word.”
“Yet it’s how I feel. This is a long line of times my father has dictated what I can do. When I think about it, he’s groomed me my entire life, from my clothes, what I eat and where I go, what schools and friends I chose. But it got worse…”
“Starting when?”
She breathed on a pause and then sucked the air out of him when she met his eyes and said, “when he didn’t give me a choice about marrying Santiago.”
His brother.
This shit circled right back to the beginning.
A while back, when Reaper had been in hell over Paige, he remembered telling the ghost how his heart was taken. Reaper asked if he had a girl. And he’d told him. “When you’re taken, you’re taken.”
The pain hurt his chest in fast zips.
“Now you’re going to explain every-fucking-thing about marrying my brother.”