Page 7 of The Secrets We Keep

The very casinos that would have gone belly up if Luca hadn’t taken over their day-to-day operations a few years ago. His father had done his best to squander whatever money he’d gotten from his secret deal with Giuseppe for Carina’s hand, blowing it on booze and women and ignoring the businesses that had always put food on their table.

Luca suspected it was Lorenzo’s way of dealing with the death of his wife. She’d wasted away from the cancer until she was an empty shell. His father’s downward spiral was the only sign Luca had that Lorenzo might have been even remotely upset at his wife’s passing. And all of it got worse when Matteo stormed out two weeks after the funeral. Two years after that, Carina was married.

Things had been bad in the Palermo territory for a while. Until Luca and Dom took over and did their best to right the ship and get profits back up. They’d put in the hard work and the grueling hours and endured the late-night fights with their father to get the territory and the casinos back on their feet.

Matteo sweeping back in with his grand plans to conquer Sicily after their father put a bullet in his brain was all well and good. It was no less than what they deserved. But they were all tiring of his cloak-and-dagger bullshit.

As much as they all wanted to unseat Gallo so they could then go after Antonetti and be a force—the only force—to be reckoned with on this island, it was impossible to trust the brother who’d been gone for so long. Especially when Matteo refused to share more than one or two steps ahead in his plan or name any of his mysterious contacts or divulge exactly how he’d managed to make so much money in such a short amount of time.

Matteo wanted their blind faith, but sometimes it was impossible to tell if their goals aligned, and patience was thinning.

Movement out of the corner of his eye caught his attention. He looked up, expecting to see Matteo making his way back over from his phone call, but it was a woman instead. Thick ash-blond hair hung to her waist. She had it pulled forward over her shoulders, but there was no hiding her perfect hourglass figure.

Her eyes were an intense shade of blue somewhere between turquoise and sapphire, and she had a kissable top-heavy mouth. She accepted the menu from the waiter, and the smile she gave the guy made every thought of Matteo’s assistant and the way Luca had been trying to get into her pants for months slide right out of his head.

There was something so familiar about her, but he couldn’t quite place it. He’d never been with a blonde before. At least not one who looked like that.

He tried not to stare, but every time his eyes left her, they found a way to wander back in her direction again. Noticing the way she drew her bottom lip between her teeth while she read the menu, the delicate pink polish on her fingernails, her long, elegant fingers twirling a strand of hair.

He had to know her name. He couldn’t leave here without it or her number.

The waiter returned to take her order, and he watched her mouth move, mesmerized. What the hell was it about her? She was like a song lyric he couldn’t quite place, insistently nudging at the back of his mind without taking hold.

“Excuse me,” she called when the waiter moved away to put in her order. “Can you tell me where the bathroom is?”

The realization slammed into him, punching his heart into his throat. Her voice. He’d know it anywhere, even after all this time. His stomach clenched as he watched her sling her bag over her shoulder and skirt around her table toward the direction the waiter indicated. It couldn’t be her. He had to be mistaken.

He watched until she disappeared around the corner, trying to convince himself he had it wrong. It couldn’t have been her voice. It was impossible. She was a brunette with hazel eyes. He’d watched them…

Shoving away from the table, he stalked toward the bathrooms but stopped short of pushing into the ladies’ room. She’d have to come back out eventually. He reclined against the wall opposite the door and waited, hands tucked into his pockets to keep himself from fidgeting. Or punching a hole in the wall.

This was a mistake. She couldn’t be here right now. Whoever this woman was, she’d walk out that door and see him and have no reaction. Because it wasn’t her.

The door opened, and he jerked his head up, but an older woman stepped out. He forced himself to return her polite smile, then went back to staring intently at the door, barely able to breathe for the tightness in his chest.

He saw the swing of her blond hair before the door fully opened. When her eyes locked on his across the narrow hallway, they instantly went wide, her mouth falling open. Her fingers gripped the strap of her purse against her chest, and he thought he saw them tremble.

How? Why? It wasn’t… He couldn’t…

He pushed away from the wall, and she stumbled back into the bathroom. But she wouldn’t get away from him so easily this time.

His hand shot out to grip her throat, and he shoved her into the wall so hard she squeaked. Her eyes were shining with unshed tears, but they never left his.

“What the fuck are you doing here?” he growled. “You’re supposed to be dead.”

“Luca.”

That one word from her lips nearly brought him to his knees, so he tightened his grip on her throat instead. “I watched them bury you. I stood at the back of the cemetery, and I watched them lower your body into the fucking ground.”

She reached up to wrap her fingers around his wrist, squeezing until he loosened his hold. “It’s a long story.”

“I’ll fucking bet.”

He stepped closer, inhaling her sweet honeysuckle scent. She might not look like he remembered, but she smelled exactly like he remembered, sounded like he remembered, felt like he remembered. He let go of her throat and pressed his body against hers, trapping her against the wall with his hands on either side of her head.

She didn’t move when he dropped his face to the crook of her neck and breathed her in, but she tilted her head for him like she used to do to give his lips better access to her body. He jerked back at the sight of the long white scar running the length of her throat from the bottom of her jaw to the curve of her shoulder, where it disappeared under her shirt.

Gripping her chin roughly in his hand, he jerked her head to the side to study it. Too jagged to be a knife wound. It looked more like she’d scraped it across broken glass. But the last time they’d been together, he’d seen every inch of her naked body, and not a single centimeter had been marred by scars.

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