Page 185 of Kissing the Villain

It was his fault, but I knew better than to talk back. I wasn’t Luca. I would never challenge my father the way my older brother did.

“I’m sorry, Father.”

He tightened his hold on my throat, and I gasped for air.

“Dad,” Luca said from behind him.

I had never been more thankful to hear my brother’s voice.

“Stay out of this, Luca,” he boomed. “This is between Marcello and me.”

Luca hated me until my mother died. He treated me like I was another responsibility for most of my life. But after mymom was gone, he often stepped in front of me, defending me against my father’s attacks. I could handle the pain. It was something we had grown accustomed to over the years.

My brother moved toward us with a purpose, dressed in a navy blue Brioni suit and brown wingtips. For someone in high school, Luca already looked like a man, like the leader of our family’s company.

“What did Marcello do?” Luca said.

My dad spun around, pointed his finger at the paint on his clothes, then waved his hand at the mess on the floor. “Marcello was about to accept his punishment.”

“Dad,” Luca groaned. “Not today, of all days. Can’t this wait until tomorrow?”

“Don’t challenge me, son.” He gritted his teeth, nostrils flared. “Your brother disobeyed my orders, and he will deal with the consequences of his actions.”

Luca stripped off his suit jacket and handed it to me. He held my father’s gaze as he unbuttoned his white Oxford. “Then let me take it. Let this be an example for Marcello not to do it again.”

He was right. Every time Luca accepted the punishments on my behalf, I never repeated the same mistake. I didn’t want him to suffer for my actions.

“Marcello, you should go,” Luca said as he stripped off his shirt.

His chest and back were scarred beyond repair, much worse than mine.

“No,” my father said with a bite to his tone. “He has to watch. That’s his punishment.”

I took Luca’s shirt from his hand and sighed.

We should have been celebrating the life of the greatest woman ever. Instead, my father was only proving how much he was fucking up our lives. He’d adopted Bastian and Damian,who were probably snapping the necks of rabbits in the backyard. They were just as fucked up as my father and Luca. The four of them were like peas in a pod. I was the one who didn’t fit into the equation.

As my father stripped off his Fendi belt, Luca knelt on the floor. I wanted to be as fearless as he was. Luca looked up at me, his eyes never leaving mine, as the belt cracked open his skin. He balled his hands into fists and clenched his jaw. Not even a single sound escaped his mouth as if he had trained himself not to feel the lashes.

My stomach ached as he tore open old scars, making new ones. And by the time my father was satisfied, a proud smile tugging at the corners of his mouth, I wanted to punch him in his smug fucking face. I would have run from him if he weren’t one of the most powerful men in the world. I would have stolen enough cash to leave this stupid town and never return.

But I would never leave Luca. I owed him for enduring most of my punishments. Whatever deal he had made with his mother was unbreakable in his mind, so I vowed never to step out of line after that day. For Luca, I promised never to cross my father. It was the least I owed him for coming to my rescue.

My father rubbed his hand over his face, storming from the room. I handed Luca his shirt. He winced as the fabric molded to his back, clinging to his open cuts.

“I’ll do whatever he wants,” I said. “You won’t have to take another punishment for me.”

Luca yanked his suit jacket out of my hand and slipped it on without a word. He stared at me for a long, hard moment, his lips parting. Then he closed his mouth and ran a hand through his black hair. A moment of silence passed between us before he spoke.

“There will come a day when I need something from you,” Luca said in a hushed tone. “Something you won’t want to give me, but you will do it anyway.”

“Like what?”

He shrugged. “You’ll know when the day comes.”

After that day, my father had the staff cover the furniture and easels with tarps. Then they locked the door and threw away the key. No one had entered the room again until Luca brought Alex to the house to see my mother’s fresco. She was the first person to enter the room in nearly ten years.

My eyes snapped open from the nightmare, my heart racing. I thought about Luca and what he had done for me so many times over the years. When Carl Wellington offered Alex a choice between us, I understood what Luca had meant that day in my mother’s studio.

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