I look up at Giovanni, then at my mother. Finally, my urgent eyes fall on the man at the window across the room and a hardness fills me inside knowing that he has it. And I would put money on the fact that he is not planning on giving it back. Ever.
Just before I go to speak, Leonardo turns around and squares his shoulders. Cracking his neck, he glares at all of us in the room over the rim of his glass as he raises it to his lips. “What notebook?”
So this is how he is going to play it?
Calmly, Giovanni takes a step forward and sets his glass down on the coffee table. “The one that inspired your trip here, Boy. The one that you promised to hand over, as long as I told you the truth.”
I watch as Leo grinds his teeth together before taking another sip off his glass. When he lowers it, a darkness fills his eyes that pierces its way straight through my soul. “Changed my mind.” With a thud he sets his glass down on a nearby table. “If you’ll excuse me.”
He turns to leave, but my stubborn heart is not ready to let him have the last word. “Leo!” I shout. Stopping in the doorway, I am not surprised when he doesn’t turn around and immediately try and talk myself into keeping the strength to confront him that I only felt moments before and is now slipping away. “You have something that belongs to me,” I whisper calmly before sternly stating, “and I’m not letting you leave here without giving it back.”
My words carry more than most in the room know as they come weighted with things not included in the notebook. The secrets, the promises, the words unspoken that we declared the night before. I take a timid step towards him and watch as his stance stiffens the closer I get. A smart woman wouldn’t press a man like Leo. But I wasn’t raised to cower away either.
“Give me what’s mine, and I’ll forget all about the stint in Rome,” I say calmly talking about the kidnapping as I take my final step towards him.
Before I can blink, he spins around and pins me to the wall. His forearm is pressed against my shoulders, holding me in place angrily, I hear the click of his switch blade before he raises it to my neck.
I hear my mother’s cry right before Giovanni shouts for help. But I am too fixated on his eyes. The ones that are telling me right now that no matter what he is struggling with, the realization of just who I am and who I belong to, he could never do it. Never bring himself to harm me. No matter what he has been taught.
His breath is hot on my face as he leans in further. My heart beats match his own, but it is not out of fear. Something else entirely, which is mixing around us both and causing hysteria to set in. The only way we’ll ever feel grounded is only by staying together. His eyes tell me he feels it too as he leans in closer.
“Forget?” He whispers, as he hovers his lips above my own in a way that shouldn’t feel seductive but absolutely does. My thighs shake moments before I hear him drop the knife to the floor. Desire pools between my legs as his hands raise and he takes my face angrily in his large palms.
“You forgot one thing,Amore,” He grates out, as soldiers crowd the room on the other side, guns drawn straight at him and ready to fire if given the command. “The mafia never forgets. And in case you need to be reminded, you’re one of us now, Maria. Better start acting like it.”
His stare is heated with more than anger as he holds me still. I see the boy I knew behind his stare and the man I fell apart for last night. He is teetering on the edge. Needing control as he feels powerless. I feel the weakness in him. See his body want only to comply. Disobey him and almost everything he has ever known.
“Are you offering to show me how things are done, Leonardo,” I suggest, knowing damn well he isn’t. But one side of his lip quirks up in a delicious grin, grabs a hold of my heart and promises to never give it back.
Out of the corner of my eye I see Giovanni wave off the soldiers, but my mother’s stance still stays guarded as she takes in what is happening in front of her. “There are many things I canteachyou,Maria.” He hisses, as the final soldier leaves and all my protection goes with him. Leo’s hands lower down my arms before strongly grabbing my wrists. “But I try not to make a habit out of befriending the enemy.”
Grabbing me off the wall, he holds my hands hostage as he spins me around and begins to back out of the room. My mother and Giovanni’s blank stares are all that I see as he forces me to walk backward with him towards the front door.
“You don’t want to do this,” I hear Giovanni yell. “You are starting a war that should’ve ended long before you were even born, Boy! You have no idea the kind of power that Vincent holds. The Lombardi’s won’t be able to stop it.”
“I’m willing to tempt it,” I hear Leo say. “He hasn’t been successful yet, doubt he will be able to beat him now.”
As I take a step backwards, my mind scrambles to try and understand why in the midst of all of this, I feel more at peace in his hold than if I were to stay with my mother and Giovanni. Why I know going with him is the safest place in the world I could ever be.
It’s as if he feels it too, because his hot mouth comes up to my ear and he whispers softly, only for me to hear. “Remember! Nobody gets to you, no onetouchesyou, except through my dead body. This time don’t fuckingforget!”
Pulling me quickly behind him, I hear Giovanni’s yell and my mother’s scream for help moments before I am hauled outside. But they’re too late. Once again, I’ve disappeared into the unknown only to be held at the mercy of my captor.
Chapter 15
Leonardo
Coming back to the yacht, I make my way angrily to the lounge with Maria’s hand tightly held in my own. She’s not getting that notebook, and hell if I am letting her out of my fucking sight after the shit I just learned. Pushing through the door, I fling her a little too harshly at the couch and watch as she falls onto it with a thud. My heart wars with my mind knowing I didn’t intend to hurt her, but hell if I can let her see that right now. Not when I still don’t know what I am supposed to do with the truth.
Now that she knows too, and there is no way in hell either of us can change the past, no matter how hard we might want to try, who knows where the fuck that leaves us.
I fucking loved her with all my damn heart when I was a little boy. I mourned her after she was taken, for years, wondering what I could have done differently. I wanted to go find her. Search everywhere and bring her back to me.
It was her face that kept me going when my parents went missing. It was her smile that warmed me on dark nights when I had nothing and no one. It was the thought of her I made love to when I grew up and took another woman into my bed, only wanting it to be her instead.
And without a fucking clue, it was her life that I swore to end when I took the oath into the Lombardi family.
Heated with feelings flying at me way too fast to grasp even one, I pace back and forth in front of her and try and figure out what the fuck I am supposed to do now. Now that I know the pact I made to myself, before anything else, was to always find her. Keep her safe. Protect her. Much like I promised to effortlessly again when she, by some fucking miracle, came walking back into my life.
