Total pages in book: 136
Estimated words: 128209 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 641(@200wpm)___ 513(@250wpm)___ 427(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 128209 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 641(@200wpm)___ 513(@250wpm)___ 427(@300wpm)
I nodded. “Leave.”
“I’ll take a room in a hotel close by. Call me if you need me.”
Gianna started honking, driving me insane, but I wouldn’t let her out of the car. I didn’t want her anywhere near Luca when he was in that kind of mood.
With a deep breath, I returned to the mansion. Luca still held the knife in his right hand but in his left hand he held his iPad, that agonized look lingering on his face.
“Luca?” I ventured. He didn’t react. I moved closer. He had opened the photos on the iPad as if seeing them in a bigger format would make them less real.
“You had a lot of shit thrown your way today. Perhaps you should try to calm down before you act on your anger.”
Luca put down the iPad on the living room table and went to the liquor cabinet. If he didn’t drop that fucking knife soon, I might consider getting my own out. He grabbed a bottle of whisky, opened it with his teeth, spit out the screw cap and took a deep swig. Alcohol wouldn’t make him any less dangerous.
“Leave,” he rasped.
“Luca, you love Aria.”
Luca staggered toward me, and I had to fight the urge to draw a weapon. “Love!” He glared. “You might be okay with Gianna fucking around behind your back, but I can’t…I can’t fucking bear the thought of Aria…” His voice broke and fury contorted his face. Gianna hadn’t fucked around, but it was futile to argue with Luca, and I definitely wouldn’t let him ignite my own anger.
“Leave!” he roared. “Go to your wife and let me handle my own!”
I nodded, and took a step back. “Luca, some things can’t be undone,” I repeated what Romero had told me.
Luca turned his back to me, shoulders shaking with anger and worse—heartbreak. The former he could handle, but the latter he’d never had to deal with before.
But I couldn’t interfere, not without risking a fight with Luca, and today one of us would die. I might be willing to die for Gianna and even for Luca, but not for Aria, not when she might have cheated on my brother. I backed away, my chest fucking tight. I wasn’t sure if I’d see Luca again, not the Luca I knew, because if he hurt Aria, he wouldn’t recover. I wasn’t sure he would recover either way.
Gianna clutched my shirt when I slipped behind the wheel. “Matteo, you bastard, let me go to Luca!”
“No,” I hissed. Luca hardly tolerated Gianna on the best of days, and today was the worst I’d ever seen him—and I had been with him at every bad and worse moment in his life.
“Then let me call Aria. I need to warn her. Luca has lost his mind. He will kill her if he thinks she cheated on him. He’s a possessive asshole.”
Luca wouldn’t kill Aria because he was a possessive asshole. He’d kill her because she’d made him love and trust her, and had fucking betrayed him, had broken his fucking heart. I started the car but Gianna shoved my arm. “Matteo, damn it!”
“They will have to settle this.”
“Settle this? The only way Luca will settle this is with his fucking knife. Matteo, I swear, if you let your brother hurt Aria, we’re done.”
Tears shone in her eyes but I wouldn’t interfere. “For me to stop Luca, I’d have to disable him and for me to succeed, I’d have to kill him. And that’s not something you can ask of me, Gianna. Not when your sister brought this on herself. She knows Luca better than anyone.”
“She didn’t cheat on him, Matteo,” Gianna whispered desperately. “She would never do it. She loves Luca. And he’s going to destroy everything.”
“No,” I growled. “Aria destroyed everything. She broke Luca’s trust. She should have known better. Luca isn’t someone who ever loved or trusted anyone like he does Aria. She shouldn’t have gone behind his back.”
Gianna shook her head. “She didn’t cheat. She didn’t. He must realize that.” She closed her eyes and let out a sob that tore at my heart. Gianna wasn’t a crier, and I’d never heard a sound like that from her.
“Luca loves Aria more than his own life,” I told her. “He will put his own life down before he kills her.”
With anyone else, those words would have been a lie, but Aria might be the only one who could break my brother’s heart and come out unscathed in the end.
ARIA
Would Luca be happy when I told him about the baby? He didn’t want kids yet but I hoped he’d come to terms with my pregnancy. The most difficult part would be to keep it a secret from Lily and Gianna until I could tell Luca. I wasn’t sure when he would be done with business in New York and when he’d return to the Hamptons.