Page 8 of Saint Of Envy
“Yes, everything is fine,” he says with a tight smile. “Are you okay? I know you’ve been through a lot, and I’m sure it’s difficult having everything up in the air right now. I promise that we’ll get you settled as soon as possible.”
“Settled?” I ask, not even sure what that means for me anymore. I sigh and sit down beside him as Luc hands me his glass to take a sip, but I decline. “Do you remember the conversation that we had while we stood in the corner of that gala years ago? The one that made me giggle and garnered the attention of everyone around us.”
“I do,” he says with a small chuckle. “There were at least two other men standing close enough for me to hear their remarks when they looked over and saw you smiling so widely. Honestly, I wanted to punch their lights out for thinking such salacious thoughts about how delicious you looked in your dress.”
“You never told me that!” I laugh. “Well, I was thinking more about what you said that made me giggle. We had been talking about my love of photography, and you suggested I take a series of candid mafia photos—a sort of visual exposé. I responded that photographing the mafia would likely anger them, and you joked I could use the photos for their obituaries if they dared to harm me.”
Luciano laughs again and nods as he remembers the conversation vividly. “That should have been your first clue that I didn’t want anyone else touching you.”
I can feel the heat rise to my cheeks when I think back to that night. I knew I felt a burning attraction to him, but I was still uncertain if Luc felt the same way about me. After all, he was older, in a position of authority as a consigliere, and could have had any woman he chose. It didn’t seem plausible that he and I would ever have the chance to be anything more than friends, and yet—here we are.
“It’s been a long time since you and I have had the chance to sit and talk,” I muse as he refills his glass. “When you climbed into my window, there wasn’t much talking that night, and then after the incident at the church in Italy and on the plane ride home, well, there wasn’t much talking then either. I’ve missed our friendship.”
“So have I.” Luc leans forward to kiss me and, as much as I want to, I feel like maybe we should slow things down a little.Everything has been a crazy, passion-fueled, adrenaline rush since he climbed through my window, and I want to make sure that it isn’t just a forbidden lust that is behind our feelings.
“I think maybe we should take things slow now,” I suggest as I let my lips brush against his. “Get to know each other again in the midst of all this chaos.”
For a second, I worry about upsetting or angering Luc with my idea. But he isn’t at all opposed to it. Instead, he smiles and takes my hand in his.
“I agree,” he says as he leans back against the couch. “So, tell me, have you been using that old camera at all?”
I had almost forgotten about the things that I left behind in Leonardo’s estate when I ran from the cathedral. The camera that Luc gave me is still there, although it might not be there much longer now that I’m gone. I wouldn’t put it past Leonardo to destroy my things in a fit of rage over my betrayal and the fact that I made him look like a fool without power over me in front of an audience of his peers.
“Sometimes,” I say wistfully. “Mostly, I just looked through the lens.”
Luc cocks his head to one side as if trying to understand why I would look through a camera without actually using it. So, I let him in on one of the little secrets that kept me from wanting to jump out of the window of Leonardo’s estate in order to escape my fate.
“Sometimes,” I say thoughtfully as I recount the memory. “I would take off the lens cap and stand at the window, looking through the camera lens at the world outside. I’d use myimagination to add things to the images that I could see through the camera.”
“What kinds of things would you add?” he asks, genuinely interested in my thoughts again, as he always seems to be, even from the first moment we met.
I hesitate to tell him I would often picture him on the other side of that camera lens. “Just people that I would rather be with and places that I would rather be in,” I say, leaving the interpretation vague for now.
“Well, I’m glad that you had the camera to keep you company when I wasn’t there to do it myself,” he says, surprising me with how tender his remark is.
I want him with every fiber of my being, but a part of me knows that this flame might burn too hot, and I don’t want to risk it burning out. Many things hinder Luc and me from being together, primarily my betrothal to a family rival.
“You know, I used to wish secretly that you were at every gathering that I had to attend,” I admit. “I would scan the guests, looking for your face or the shape of your profile amidst the conversations being had.”
Luc’s eyes light up as if we’re both feeling the excitement of that long-lasting forbidden romance that started years ago.
“I would always spot you as soon as I walked inside any venue that we were both at,” he says. “I could pick you out from the crowd a mile away—those endless dark eyes and the way your hair falls in waves against your shoulders. Sometimes, your father would show you off, and it was all I could do to keep myself from intervening and whisking you away. Especiallywhen I saw other men looking at you. There was more than one night that I left those events, wishing I had broken a few necks.”
“I wish you would have—whisked me away, not broken anyone’s neck,” I clarify.
Luc laughs lightly and tightens his grasp on my hand. The emotionally charged conversation about what began as our friendship—a mutually shared experience in a sea of mafia settings that we both felt frequently averse to, and progressed to deepening, secret desires about the forbidden romance we both knew we shouldn’t entertain ideas about.
“My father would have locked me in my room forever if he knew I was having secret fantasies about an older man,” I tease.
“And yet now he wants to marry you off to one,” he grimaces. “And a bad one, at that. Valentina, why is he?—”
Before he can ask me about my father’s questionable judgment and before I have to wrestle again with the conflicted way that I feel about it, I interrupt him.
“So, if we’re supposed to keep a distance from each other and act like we didn’t just sleep with each other before I ran away from my arranged marriage to your rival, does that mean that I’m going to have to stay in this hotel alone?”
“Not necessarily,” Luc says, quickly forgetting about the question he was getting ready to ask me. “I’ll just let everyone know that I’ll be staying here with you in order to protect you. There’s more than one bedroom inside this suite, so Alonzo and Gabriel and the others will assume that I’m simply keeping you under my protection.”
“Are you sure about that?” I ask. Isla hinted, I’ve noticed that Vincent is aware his cousin has been watching me from afar. I doubt they’re the only ones who can see the way Luc and I seem drawn to each other any time we’re near.
