Chapter 16 - Under His Skin
The glass shattered in an explosion of red and crystal.
Dante stumbled backward with a roar of agony, blood pouring down his nose and cheek. Chaos erupted in the Plaza ballroom. Guns were drawn on both sides, the deafening sound of dozens of safety catches clicking off filling the massive space.
"Shoot them!" Don Bellini shrieked, ducking behind a pillar.
"Hold your fire!" Luca’s voice boomed like thunder, louder than the panic. He stood atop the table, holding a jagged, bloody shard of the heavy crystal glass, his eyes wide and completely unhinged. "Whoever shoots first violates the Commission peace! Try it, Bellini! Give me an excuse to slaughter every single one of you in this room!"
Dante spat a mouthful of blood onto the floor, clutching his ruined nose. He glared at Luca through eyes filled with murderous insanity.
"This isn't over, Moretti," Dante choked out, waving his guards back. "The peace ends at sundown. Be ready."
"I was born ready, you midwestern pig," Luca spat back. "Take your trash and get out of my city."
Ten minutes later, the Moretti convoy was speeding back toward the fortified sanctuary of Long Island.
Inside the back of the Maybach, the silence was suffocating. Luca sat rigidly, his knuckles raw and dripping with blood where the glass had cut his own hand during the strike. His chest rose and fell in heavy, violent heaves, his emerald eyes burning into the dark window glass.
Luna sat quietly beside him. She reached into her small evening purse, pulled out a clean silk handkerchief, and gently took his wounded right hand into her lap.
Luca flinched slightly, but didn't pull away.
With tender, methodical care, Luna began picking out tiny slivers of crystal embedded in his skin, dabbing away the blood.
"You lost your temper," she whispered softly.
"He looked at you," Luca growled, his voice vibrating with a primal, possessive fury. "He spoke to you like you were meat. I should have shoved that entire glass down his throat."
"He was baiting you, Luca," she said, looking up into his tortured eyes. "He wanted you to break the peace in front of the Commission so the other families would have an excuse to unite against you."
"I don't give a damn about the Commission!" Luca turned to her violently, his uninjured hand reaching out to grab her face, his fingers burying themselves in her intricate hair. "Do you understand me, Luna? I don't give a damn about the ports, the money, or the Five Families! When he said those words, when he said he would take you... I felt a madness I haven't felt since I was sixteen years old."
His thumb brushed against her bottom lip, trembling slightly.
"You are my weakness," he breathed, the confession sounding like a death sentence ripped from his chest. "Everyone knows it now. They will use you to destroy me."
Luna leaned her face into his bloody hand, kissing his palm.
"Then teach me not to be a weakness," she said, her dark eyes locking onto his with fierce determination. "Teach me how to shoot. Teach me how to kill. If I am going to wear your emerald, Luca, don't keep me in a gilded cage. Turn me into a weapon."
Luca stared at her, his breath catching.
The vulnerability, the sheer, intoxicating devotion in her gaze broke whatever remaining restraint he had left. With a muffled groan, Luca pulled her across the leather seat and into his lap, crushing his mouth down onto hers.
The kiss was desperate, tasting of copper and salt and raw, untamed hunger. Luna wrapped her arms around his broad shoulders, clinging to him as the car swerved through the rain-slicked streets. He kissed her not as a master kissing a maid, nor as a Don kissing a trophy, but as a drowning man clawing for air.
When he finally broke the kiss, resting his forehead against her neck, his voice was thick and dark.
May you like
"Tonight," Luca promised against her skin. "I will teach you everything I know. And God help the man who tries to lay a hand on my Donna."
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