Inferno (Blood for Blood #2) (28 page)

Dom and I were both shouting now. Luca tackled Nic at the knees and they went flying backwards, crashing against the wall. Nic slipped towards the ground and Luca seized his unsure footing, looping his arm around his neck and clamping him in a headlock.

They fell to the floor together. Luca flipped Nic over, pressing his knee against his brother’s back and pulling his
arm towards the ceiling behind him. Nic was wedged between Luca and the floor, his whole body twisted on itself. He was panting, his face turning red from the pain. Luca would snap the bone if he wasn’t careful.

‘
Basta
,’ he growled in Nic’s ear. ‘OK? Enough.’

Nic gurgled something. Luca had won, but he didn’t seem any happier about it than we were. He released his brother and Nic flopped across the floor, holding his arm gingerly.

Nic shot to his feet and tried to wrangle Luca’s neck. He mistimed and Luca swivelled, his face contorted with fury. He threw himself at Nic, knocking him to the ground again and landing on top of him, planting a leg on either side of his torso so Nic couldn’t get back up. They were screaming at each other in Italian and now Dom was getting involved too. He tried to pull Luca away, but he didn’t have the strength, and my attempts weren’t helping either. Felice remained as he had been all along – spectating.

Nic spat across the floor. Luca whipped out his switchblade, flicked it open and drove it into the wood beside Nic’s head. He pulled back, heaving, and I could see the shock coursing through Nic, the speechlessness slapped across his face. The knife glinted less than three inches from his head.

‘Enough.’ Luca’s teeth were bared. ‘You’ve had your show.’

He got to his feet, this time being careful not to turn his back on Nic again. The fighter in him disappeared almost immediately and he returned to his previous sense of calm, fixing his T-shirt and rolling his neck around until it cracked. He was beat – his shoulders sagging and his torso dipping more to one side. I could tell his wound was hurting but he would never admit it.

Nic got up. His cheeks were flaming red and he was panting hard. He didn’t look at me. He didn’t look at anyone. Without saying a word, he ducked, like a football player about to tackle, and charged full-force at Luca. He knocked him backwards and together their momentum surged, carrying them towards the window. We were all yelling then, but Nic was frenzied with anger, an animal buzzing for the kill. He kept running at Luca until, with his own twisted war cry and the mingling of our screams, he released him and Luca went crashing through the window. The glass shattered into a million pieces that rained over him as he slid backwards over the ledge.

I shrieked as we rushed towards him. Nic just stood there, peering out of the window at his brother, who was lying in a bed of glass shards stained with his own blood.

‘
Sei fuori di testa
,’ said Dom, turning on Nic. ‘What the hell were you thinking?’

Luca’s eyes unglazed as he sat up, taking in the trickles of blood along his bare arms. His face was cut up too, crimson dripping down his cheek and on to his neck. He pressed a hand against the wound in his side. I hoped it hadn’t reopened from all the fighting.

Felice came to stand between us, his hand clasped over his mouth as he watched Luca sway unsteadily to his feet. He shook his head, tutting loudly. ‘My window,’ he sighed. ‘That was Venetian glass.’

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

THE LOOK

L
uca climbed back through the window. I balked at his casual return, studying all the thin lines of blood that were streaking his body. He didn’t look at Nic again and Nic didn’t apologize to him. He was too busy arguing with Dom.

Luca shrugged off my concern and pushed by us.

‘Hey!’ I called after him.

‘I’ll go get cleaned up.’

‘You’re hurt,’ I said to the back of his retreating head. ‘You need to go to the hospital.’

He swatted his hand in the air as he disappeared into the hall. ‘I’m fine.’

Like hell he was.

I left the room and followed him up the marble staircase,
trying to decipher the feelings that were lurching inside me. There was worry – sure, his face was bleeding and his arms were cut up. There was anger, too, at Nic, because he had been a royal asshole for targeting Luca’s wound and then for throwing him through that window. But there were other things that I couldn’t place and they swirled inside me, filling me with anxiety. I wondered at the eagerness of my steps on the floor, desperate not to lose Luca as he climbed higher and higher with no regard for my shadow.

I kept staring at him, at the way he clutched his side, at the weariness in his slow steps. He had started to pick the glass out of his arms, breaking apart his skin and removing the shards without so much as a flinch. He was many things to his brothers – a constant, protective presence, wise and focused, and loyal. He was so important to the family and yet, wounded, he retracted into himself.

It wasn’t right.

He had opted to leave Nic without verbal or physical retaliation, both of which I knew he was capable of. The thought made me want to scream at someone. Why was no one coming to see if he was OK? Why did he feel it was perfectly acceptable to walk this off and to endure it by himself when any sane person would go to the emergency room to get the glass out of their skin?

He disappeared into a room on the third floor. I lingered beside the stairs, wondering what to do. He wouldn’t want me to follow him in there. But this wasn’t about letting him save face, this was about making sure he didn’t need stitches, that all the bleeding had stopped and that he was going to recover just fine. This was about showing him the care he
deserved and not leaving him to suffer it in some unnecessary stoic silence.

I knocked on his door.

He opened it hesitantly. He was using a cloth to dab at the blood on his face. He paused with it pressed against his jaw as his eyes widened. ‘Sophie?’

I didn’t wait for him to stand back and allow my entry. I barged inside and, without stopping to notice the size of his room or the bed or the colours on the walls or the closet space or anything else that might have mattered to me at another time, I turned to face him, running my words together before he could kick me out. ‘I know you said you’re fine and I’m sure you are but I’m not just going to wait downstairs when I’ve just seen you go through a freaking window. It’s not right that you should be up here alone and I don’t care if you tell me to leave but I had to see for myself that you really were OK and that you didn’t feel … you didn’t feel … what? Why are you looking at me like that?’

‘Like what?’

His gaze was so penetrating it was like he was trying to pick apart the threads of my soul. I realized then why the blue in his eyes seemed so striking, why they stood out in a room of twenty Falcones and why they seemed bluer than any other pair of eyes I’d ever seen. There was a thin ring of black around the irises, a dark perimeter caging in all that bright cerulean so it wouldn’t spill over. ‘You’re just … you’re staring at me,’ I said in a voice much quieter than I meant it to be.

A muscle feathered in his jaw. He swallowed. ‘I’ll stare at
you if I want to.’

Why did I feel so hot all of a sudden? It was like my lungs weren’t filling up properly any more. ‘Did you get all the glass out?’ I asked, changing the subject.

Luca dropped the cloth so I could see the scrape just below his cheek. It wasn’t deep but it was still bleeding a little. ‘I don’t know,’ he said softly. ‘I can’t see.’

I rose to my tiptoes, and without really thinking or meaning to, I moved closer to him, teetering unsteadily as I tried to examine the wound. His aftershave rolled over me and I inhaled the scent.

‘Well?’ he asked, his voice suddenly husky. ‘Will I live?’

‘I’m not sure. Let me take a closer look.’ I bit back my smile and craned my neck but swayed on my toes, falling into him. I pressed my palms against his chest to steady myself and his hands shot up, covering mine. I could feel the unsteady thump of his heartbeat beneath my fingertips.

I stared at our hands – my paleness beneath his smooth olive tan – his fingers dwarfing mine. My whole body faltered. I could sense him watching me, waiting for me to look into his eyes.

I couldn’t step away from him. In fact, the closeness of him wasn’t nearly enough. Slowly I raised my gaze. Luca’s smile tugged softly at his lips.

‘Maybe I am looking at you,’ he whispered. ‘Maybe I always have been.’

And then he kissed me.

It was slow and gentle at first, our breathing unsteady, as he combed his fingers through my hair, pulling me closer. My lips parted, and I felt his tongue brush against mine,
searching, wanting more. Desire made us braver, fiercer, and I fell into him as our kiss deepened. In that moment, with the warmth of his lips on mine and his heartbeat hammering against my fingertips, it felt like coming home.

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

THE INTERRUPTION

A
knock on the door shocked us apart. We jumped away from each other, eyes wide, and panting.

What the hell were we doing?

This was weird. This was so weird.

But it hadn’t
felt
weird.

Nic charged into the room. ‘Luca, what the hell is taking you—’ He almost toppled me over. ‘Sophie … there you are … What are you doing in here?’ he asked, surprise warping his voice.

‘Me?’ I said, hearing the high-pitched squeal in my words.
Oh, just betraying you
. ‘I was checking the damage
you
did.’ I cleared my throat, wondering if my cheeks were still red, if my lips were swollen. ‘He’s OK, no thanks to you.’

‘It’s fine,’ said Luca. He was scrubbing a hand through his
hair, trying to tame the unkempt strands. It was hard not to blanch at how
un
composed he sounded now, how flighty his breathing still was. ‘She took the glass out.’

‘Right,’ said Nic, eyes narrowed. ‘Sorry about that.’

There was a very long, very deep silence, during which time I imagined Nic barging in five seconds earlier and decapitating Luca. What was I doing? What was I feeling? Everything. My whole body was pulsing with every possible emotion all at once, and it was making me forget myself, and the danger my family and I were still in.

Stupid. I was being stupid.

‘Don’t worry about it,’ said Luca. He flicked his gaze to me. It was unreadable.

It had been less than a minute since we were gasping between deep, lingering kisses, and now it felt like he barely knew who I was. Did he regret it? Did I? Was he freaking out too?

‘Let’s go,’ said Nic, standing between Luca and me, so that his brother left the room ahead of us. ‘Everyone’s waiting downstairs.’ He looked at me when he said, ‘You’re going to be fine. We won’t make you and your mother face the Marinos alone. You don’t have to look so worried.’

‘Worried’ was a colossal understatement.

I had just kissed Nic’s
brother
.

I was going to hell.

I pressed a trembling hand to my heart. I was swirling in a pit of my own foolishness and trying to keep my mind from replaying the kiss that had swept me out of my world and made me forget my name.

Holy crap.

I had kissed Luca Falcone.

Luca Falcone had kissed
me
.

What …?

We were on the second floor. When had we come down the stairs? Luca was still in front of us, his shoulders sloping away from me as he walked down another flight. ‘Where’s Valentino?’ he asked over his shoulder.

‘In his office,’ said Nic, with a shrug. ‘Something urgent came up.’

Luca nodded without turning around, his feet falling quick and light on the steps as he hurried away from us. When we got to the bottom of the stairs, the foyer was swarming with mafiosi. I stalled with my hand clutched tightly to the banister. Old men with gnarled faces and engraved walking sticks milled beside younger counterparts with severe eyebrows and pursed lips. The level of attractiveness was definitely unnatural. There was an abundance of enviable olive skin and luscious dark hair.

And all this for little old me.

Before my life got sucky and dangerous, I barely answered my mother’s calls and I rarely checked my voicemails. The Falcones, on the other hand, seemed to be entirely reachable. They had come at once. Now they stood shaking hands and greeting one another in the foyer as the sound of their laughter echoed around them. It was hard to listen to what was being said – what greetings and stories were being exchanged – because most of the Falcones, especially the older ones, spoke in Italian. No one noticed me as I stood at the foot of the stairs. This was power and family rolled into one, and the strength of their bond seemed to fill the
mansion up, reminding me of just how alone and vulnerable my mother and I truly were.