Page 39 of Three to Fall

I folded my arms across my chest, waiting for some sort of explanation.

“You know my sister is married to one of those guys? My baby sister, I should add.” The bitterness in Luca’s tone filled the kitchen like a frost had just rolled in. “Their wedding was last weekend, and I had to sit there in the front row and watch it.” He shook his head. “She’s barely ten years older than your kid now.”

“That’s horrible,” Kara whispered. “Fifteen is still a child.”

Luca nodded. “It was. It is. My sister cried through the entire ceremony. But my father determined she was available, and Lorenzo made the highest bid.” He swore softly beneath his breath. “You know my father didn’t even react to Isabella’s tears. He just sat there, completely unmoved, even when she begged him to stop it. And when Lorenzo got pissed off and backhanded her to stop her crying, my dad put a gun to my head because I dared to reach for mine.”

All I could see in my head was an image of a slightly older Hayley Jade, dressed in all white, crying while a priest bound her in holy matrimony with a man old enough to be her grandfather.

“I think I’m going to be sick,” I muttered.

But Kara held Luca’s gaze. “My world wasn’t so different to yours. My marriage was arranged and not one I ever wanted. Nobody stood up for me either.”

I couldn’t stand hearing any of it. Didn’t want to think about the horrors that child had suffered for the past week at her husband’s hands.

Anger swelled inside me rapidly. I stared at Luca, unable to understand him. “What are you doing, man? Is this really the life you want for yourself? For other people?”

Luca lifted his head wearily. “What exactly do you expect me to do? I tried—”

Oh, he was a piece of work. “You tried? Is that seriously how you’re sleeping at night, knowing that old man is raping your sister? Could you look her in the eye and tell her you truly did everything you could to save her?”

Luca stared at me. “You and I aren’t all that different, you know. Once upon a time, you were just as involved in this world as I am.”

Except we were different, and we both knew it. “I was a twenty-five-year-old kid with no money, no prospects, and no direction. I was desperate. But that still doesn’t excuse what I did to Kara, and to the other women we held all those years ago. I made mistakes. I owned them. And I grew the fuck up. I made a choice to get out. Don’t kid yourself into thinking you can’t do the same if you wanted to. You have a choice to make. And it’s yours.”

Luca pulled back his shoulders, buttoning his suit jacket, but his eyes still showed the raw vulnerability of his true feelings. “Choices like that are a luxury, Chaos. Not one all of us get to make.” The guards came back over his eyes, darkening them as he built his walls up around himself once more. “Get our meals out. We’ll eat and then we’ll be gone. I won’t bring them back here. This place is yours.”

Kara watched him walk away. “What did he mean by that?”

I didn’t know but there was one thing I did. That nothing Luca said or did was ever as it seemed. “Probably nothing good.”

10

KARA

Sinners was packed with bodies from one end of the restaurant to the other. Music played loudly, people danced in any spot they could find, and kids ran about underfoot, completely getting in the way, but everyone indulged their energy, smiling at them as they zoomed by or even adding to the chaos by charging around after them.

We’d sung “Happy Birthday” and cut cakes. Drinks flowed. Hayden’s waitstaff wandered around with overloaded trays of finger foods, trying to palm them off onto anyone who’d take one, even though all our stomachs had been filled hours ago. Hayden had even managed to get out of the kitchen, ditching his chef blacks for jeans and a T-shirt and leaving the kitchen cleanup to his staff.

Everyone was having a good time.

Except for me.

The clock on the wall counted down the minutes and then the hours to the time I’d need to leave to catch my bus, each second becoming one I dreaded.

Rebel wandered over sometime around eleven with a hand rubbing across the swell of her baby-number-five belly. “I’mbeat,” she admitted. “I’m too old for partying all night anymore.” She groaned when she looked at the clock. “Is it seriously only eleven? I’m pathetic.”

I smiled at her. “You’re growing a baby. That takes a lot of energy. Not to mention chasing around after four kids under five.”

“This is why I volunteered to have all the kids tonight. I’m ready to ditch. Do you mind?”

I shook my head. “Of course not. All that’s left now is the drinking part, and you can’t do that anyway.”

“I swear, between being pregnant and breastfeeding, I haven’t had a drink in five years. Forever the designated driver.”

She sighed, but I knew she didn’t really mind. I wouldn’t have picked her as the type to love being a mother. But my sister was one of the best ones I’d ever seen. Her kids were lucky to have her.

As was Hayley Jade.

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