10. Sal

It takeseverything in me to not continue.

Gia is so gorgeous. She's naked for me. She's panting. I know how she feels when she comes.

I want to push inside of her so badly and fuck her senseless. Use the cord that I have lying around somewhere to tie her into a beautiful package, for me to unwrap one piece at a time.

But I can see she's not ready for it yet.

There are levels to what I do. Ways to introduce people.

Gia's had an appetizer.

I want to know if she's ready to order a meal.

I give her a blanket and pull the curtains, settling into the couch next to her. Now that she's wrapped in my arms, I don't want anyone to see her.

We cuddle under the blanket for a while, while I listen to her heartbeat change from frantic to steady again. The feel of her around me, the way she fell apart when she came?

I'm never going to forget that. I'm going to do it again, at some point.

But not yet.

After a very long time, Gia stirs slightly. I look down at her and watch her blink up at me.

"Sal…" she whispers.

I gently press a kiss to her forehead. "Meet me in the kitchen when you're ready. The bedroom down the hall should have extra clothes, and the shower is new."

I walk away.

The house is quiet, so I can hear the sounds of Gia getting up. The floor squeaks slightly, something that I'll have to remember as I continue to improve on the house.

I'd be lying to myself if I said I hadn't pictured Gia in this house since the moment I bought it.

Hell.

I'd pictured her here when I was looking at the fucking pictures.

Having her here, and having done what we just did, puts my wishful thinking into a whole new perspective.

For so long, I've convinced myself that I can't have her. That she doesn't want me, and that even if she did, I would have to hide myself from her, never being who I truly am around her.

Now that the possibility to have both exists…

Shit.

I turn. I need something to occupy my time, so I don't end up just aimlessly pacing and thinking about things that I can't have.

I open the cabinets.

I can definitely cook something. Cooking will help me keep my mind off of Gia.

At least, I hope so.

* * *

When she joinsme in the kitchen, I've got a pretty decent carbonara going. The pantry is stocked, the freezer has all the things I need, and I'm halfway through plating when I hear that floor squeak.

Gia pads into the room and settles, perching on one of the barstools at the kitchen bar.

She doesn't say anything.

I hand her a chilled vodka soda and continue plating. She sips the drink, then nods. "Carbonara?"

"Yep."

"I didn't know you could cook."

"You seem to know very little about me these days, Gia."

"I know. It's really annoying."

I smile at her.

She arches one of those perfect eyebrows. "You think it's funny?"

"I'm a little entertained."

"By me?"

Always, Gia. "That I managed to sneak some things by your incredibly extensive spy network."

"I know. I think I figured out how that happened, though," she says, sipping the vodka.

"You did?"

She nods.

I slide the pasta in front of her, coming to sit in the next seat. I hand her a fork, taking one of my own.

I wait until she takes a bite. I'm more than a little nervous to see what her reaction is.

She twirls a small amount of the spaghetti up, delicately wrapping her lips around it. When she pulls it back, I adjust myself slightly.

Gia is the most gorgeous creature I've ever seen.

I don't know how I've lived this long without her. The fact that I willingly separated from her seems not only stupid of me, but inconceivable.

She closes her eyes and moans. "Oh my god. Sal. You made this from what? Thin air?"

"Nonperishable goods in the cabinets and the freezer," I say dully.

It's the least sexy answer on the face of the planet, and I immediately regret saying it.

Gia laughs. "Wow. You tell that to all your girlfriends?"

"Are you my girlfriend?"

Her cheeks flame a bright, brilliant red. "That's not… I didn't mean…"

"Relax, Gia. I'm just joking."

The word doesn't work for us. Gia will never be just a girlfriend. She's more than that in every way.

I always suspected it.

But after what we did in the living room?

It feels more and more true every day.

"It's not a very funny joke," she mutters.

"I guess a sense of humor wasn't something you found out about me."

"No. Unfortunately, you're criminally slow. Such a shame."

I roll my eyes. "Ouch, Gia."

"Oh whatever. You like it."

I do. "So, tell me," I say, taking a bite of my own carbonara. "How do you figure you've missed so many things about me?"

She eyes me over her glass of vodka. "You hid in my shadow."

I smirk at her. "What?"

"You're so close to me. I never thought to dig into any of your stuff, because you follow me around like… a baby chick or something."

"Are you calling me a baby chick, Gia?"

"No," she muses. "I guess you're like one of those… what's the bird who takes other birds' nests?"

"A cuckoo?"

"Yeah. That. You cuckooed me into thinking you were just Caterina's older brother and the youngest of all the De Luca brothers. But you're not really just that, are you Sal?"

"I don't know what you mean."

She laughs.

I love it when Gia laughs.

"I think I got it. Since we announced the whole marriage between Elio and Caterina, you've been basically just following me around all the time, and you think that keeps you safe from my scrutiny."

Damn it.

She's pretty much correct.

I fly under the radar compared to my brothers.

Marco is… Marco. He's the heir of the De Luca family, and he's the one who ran everything until his disappearance.

Dino is… a bull in a China shop on a good day, a wrecking ball on a bad one.

Both Marco and Dino are pretty even in terms of their ability to fly off the handle at a moment's notice.

When we go out together, it's pretty much a guarantee that one of them is going to get into a fight.

Which is why no one ever seems to notice me in the background. They don't notice that I move all the things that I know will piss either one of them off out of the way.

I stay close to them too.

I wink at Gia. "Okay. You got it."

She laughs. "I knew it! And you figured out that you could do that because Marco and Dino are basically juggernauts, yes?"

"Yes, actually."

"So, if people were constantly looking at something louder and more annoying, then they'd never look at you?"

"Yes."

"And you knew I never would because I assumed pretty much the same thing?"

"I figured the fact you found me attractive helped."

Gia rolls her eyes. "You never knew I found you attractive."

I study her. "The first time I saw you, at Caterina and Elio's first engagement party, your pupils got big like saucers."

"It was night."

"Not at the incredibly well-lit party it wasn't."

"Fine," Gia huffs. "I feel like you took some kind of online course in FBI-level body language. But fine. I did always think you were the hot one."

I want to beam at her. "It wasn't an online course. Criminal justice at Rutgers."

Gia barks a laugh. "Seriously?"

"Yes."

"You. The third son of a prominent mafia family. You took criminal justice?"

"I needed to know," I say quietly. "I needed to make sure that no one would ever take members of my family away in handcuffs ever again. I needed to know how they thought. What they looked for. So that no De Luca went to jail. Ever again."

Gia stills, her fork halfway to her mouth.

Slowly, she puts it back down. "That's really why you did it, isn't it?"

I nod.

"Sal. I'm so sorry."

I shake my head. "It was a long time ago."

But I can still see my uncles and my grandfather, the handcuffs holding them back, the shocked look on their faces.

I can still see my aunts and my grandmother after, wailing and holding onto each other.

No one died. That day.

My grandfather died in jail. Heart attack.

One of my uncles got out. Marco lets him live on one of the farms in upstate New York, some old piece of land that the family's held onto forever.

No one asks him to do anything more challenging than that.

Gia sighs. "I know. I live in mortal terror that Elio will go to jail. Or… worse."

The ghost of our past flashes between us.

"I'm going to find out, you know. Who killed our parents."

"Of that, I have no doubt."

My phone pings then, and I pull it up. It's a CNN article that Elio sent me. I open it, and nearly snort my pasta through my nose.

"What?"

"Look," I say, passing the phone to her.

Gia reads for a moment, then her eyes widen. "Holy shit. They really do think we're dead."

"According to Interpol, and now CNN, yes."

She hands the phone back to me and I look down at the article again.

Two bodies, a man and a woman, are believed to be Gianna Rossi and Salvatore De Luca. Both were caught on CCTV entering the restaurant in Amsterdam and were present for the blast.

There were no survivors, and the culprits have been named as domestic terrorists. Any information should be directed to… I look up.

Gia's staring at me in shock. "Holy shit. Did Elio put the bodies there?"

I shake my head. "No. I don't think so. That would be unusually… thorough of him."

The real word that I meant to say lingers in the air.

Not thorough.

Brutal.

Elio doesn't always have the stomach for the hard stuff. Not since he found out about Luna, anyway.

In some ways it makes sense. It's hard to show up as a family man one minute, and then turn around and order two bodies to be placed in a burning building the next.

"Whose bodies are they?"

I shake my head. "I have no idea, cara mia," I murmur.

We both still.

The endearment just kind of… slipped out. I didn't mean to say it, not exactly.

It's something I've thought for a very, very long time.

"I don't like how Interpol is involved," Gia murmurs.

Fine. We're not going to address the endearment. That works for me too.

"Me neither. It's just too…"

"Close?"

I nod. "Too close."

"How many people know about this place?"

"No one. I just bought it recently."

"How recently?"

Recently enough that I pictured you when I looked at the listing.

"Recently enough that it's not going to bounce to any official ledgers until about a month from now."

"So, if someone managed to find us here…"

"Impossible unless we had a tail."

Even then, there are security cameras like crazy, and they all have a feed to my phone. I had turned it on while Gia was down the hall showering.

"Odds that we have a tail?"

I look at the article. "If Interpol is involved…"

"Cops?"

"Interpol has some good ones."

"But you're a step ahead, right? Mister criminology degree?"

"No degree. Just classes."

"Do you want one?"

I glance at Gia. "What?"

"The degree."

"I…"

I'm not sure. It's never been an option for me. Marco has a business degree, but it wasn't something anyone offered to me.

"I don't know."

Gia sighs, pushing away her mostly empty plate.

"Okay. This was unfairly good. I haven't had carbonara that delicious in a long time, and now I'm stuffed. It's late. I'm tired. Let's go to bed."

"Let's?"

She studies me over the rim of her glass. "You have a problem with that?"

I want to ask her the context. We slept in a bed together after Belarus.

But I didn't make her come before then.

I shake my head. "No. I don't"

"Good."

We go through the motions quietly. Brushing teeth. Brushing hair. Gia braids her wild mane into two twin braids that arch down the back of her head, and I desperately want to run my hands over them and feel the softness of them under my fingers.

When we get into the bed, I keep my distance from Gia.

Until she sighs and grabs me, tugging me close.

I wrap myself around her. The top of her head tickles my lips, and I press them gently there, giving her a small kiss.

She doesn't say anything.

I count my heartbeats quickly. I make it the whole way to twenty, then Gia rustles.

"I needed this."

I pull her closer. "Why?"

Gia's fingernails skate over my arm. "You held me like this after Belarus."

"I did."

"I needed it then too."

"Did you?"

She sighs. "Don't make me beg, Sal."

"I have no idea what you're begging for. But if you want to beg…"

She laughs and smacks my arm lightly, cutting me off. "Don't."

"Okay."

We're quiet for another minute.

"I should have been born before Elio."

She says the words like they're rusty. Like somehow, it's the first time she's said them out loud.

"What does that mean?" I say finally.

"I want it more than he does."

I press another gentle kiss to her hair. "That is definitely true."

"I'm better at it than he is."

"You're magnificent, Gia."

"I'm smarter. I'm better informed. I do everything that he does, but I do it faster and better. And still, he's the one who gets to run the family. All because he's a boy. And he was born first."

I know exactly how she feels.

Marco is… Marco. He's my oldest brother, and he's always looked out for me. I have nothing bad to say about him, exactly.

Except that he's a terrible choice to lead our family in this world.

Marco is hot-headed. He's got a temper on him that will set fire to the world if he's not keeping it under control.

But more than that, he's so devoted to us that he can't see straight.

He'd lead the family straight into the Atlantic and sink us, if he thought it would keep all of us happy.

It makes him terrible as a leader of this family.

More than once, I've wished that I had Marco's place. I've even considered asking him for it, to tell him to step down.

Now, it's kind of a moot point.

Marco is missing.

Elio has taken over all of the dock industry, as well as all of the other stuff as well.

We've effectively been absorbed into Rossi Industries.

Ironic, I guess. Marco fought so hard to keep the De Luca family name alive and well in the world of organized crime.

Now it's basically gone.

I'm certain that it could be revived, but I don't see the point.

"I know how you feel," I whisper.

"Do you?"

I consider that. I don't know how it feels to be her, specifically.

But I know how it feels to be consistently overlooked.

"No, Gia. But I do know that you're right. You would be an excellent head of the family. You deserve it."

She tucks herself against me. "We have to find Marco. If I do, then Elio might see that I'm better than he is."

That makes me pause.

I have no doubt that Elio knows how effective Gia is. He'd be stupid not to, and he's definitely not stupid.

But I also don't think he's willing to give up on the Rossi empire either.

"We'll find him, Gia," I whisper.

She tucks herself close again, and I pull her near.

I don't think either of us sleep for a long time. But after Gia does, I listen to the beat of her heart.

I did hold her close like this after Belarus.

I don't know why Gia let me. But I knew what I needed.

I couldn't sleep without her in my arms. I couldn't sleep without knowing that she was safe. Whole. And close.

Unfortunately, I think I'm in that place again. But this time, I don't know that I can ever sleep without Gia nearby again.

Now that she's in my arms, I never want to let her go.