Chapter 8 - The Weight of an Honest Heart
The heavy glass doors clicked shut, leaving the sunlit conservatory in absolute, echoing silence.
Outside, the autumn wind whipped a shower of golden maple leaves against the glass, but inside, the air was warm, smelling of lemon trees, fresh earth, and clean cedar.
Luca stood three feet from my chair.
He looked down at me, his tall, imposing frame casting a long shadow across the flagstones. For eleven months, I had forced myself to look at the floor whenever he entered a room, terrified of the dangerous, magnetic gravity that seemed to pull the breath straight out of my lungs.
Now, I looked directly into his storm-gray eyes, refusing to flinch.
“You haven't packed your things, Emily,” Luca murmured, taking a slow step closer.
My throat tightened. “Mrs. Carter told me my contract with the domestic agency was canceled on Monday morning.”
“It was,” Luca said, stopping right beside my chair. He reached down, his large, warm hand covering mine where it rested on the glass table. His thumb began to trace slow, deliberate circles over the back of my knuckles. “I terminated the agency’s contract with this estate entirely. I have no interest in employing an agency that sends women into dangerous rooms for twenty dollars an hour.”
“Then... I should collect my coat,” I whispered, my voice trembling despite my best efforts to keep it steady. “My father is waiting for me in Bridgeport.”
“Your father is currently sitting on the sun porch of a private four-bedroom brownstone in Lincoln Park,” Luca replied smoothly, a tiny, devastating smirk touching the corner of his lips. “Tended to by a private nurse from Northwestern Memorial, reviewing the deed that was transferred into his name at noon today.”
My breath stopped entirely. The world seemed to tilt on its axis.
“You bought my father a house?” I gasped, rising to my feet so quickly my knee bumped the wrought-iron table. “Luca... no. That’s impossible. That’s hundreds of thousands of dollars! I cannot accept charity from a man like you!”
“It isn't charity, Emily,” Luca said fiercely.
He didn't back away. He stepped into my space, his chest inches from mine, his hands coming up to gently, possessively cup the sides of my face.
His calloused palms were warm against my skin, his fingers tangling into the loose brown hair at my temples, tilting my face upward until there was nowhere left to look except into the blazing, unyielding fire of his eyes.
“You took a blow to the mouth for a blind man you didn't know,” Luca whispered, his voice rough and thick with a raw, terrifying vulnerability. “You walked into a dining room filled with thirty wolves with your dress soaked in blood, and you looked at the most feared man in this city and told him the truth when everyone else was lying.”
His thumb reached down, softly, reverently tracing the small, pale scar on my lower lip.
“My family has spent forty years surrounded by people who smile with their teeth and hide daggers behind their backs,” Luca breathed, his face descending until his breath mingled with mine in the warm air. “Vanessa was my peer. She was wealthy, she had pedigree, she was born into the syndicate... and she was an empty shell of poison and greed.”
His gray eyes darkened, searching mine with a hunger that made my pulse race like a runaway train.
“You are the only real thing that has entered this house since my mother took her last breath, Emily,” Luca whispered against my lips. “I don't want you to clean my floors. I don't want you to serve my champagne. I want you to sit at the head of my table.”
“Luca...” I choked out, a hot tear spilling over my lashes, tracking down my cheek. “I'm just a working-class girl from Bridgeport. Your world... it’s full of blood. It’s full of violence. I don't know how to survive among wolves.”
“You don't have to survive them, Emily,” Luca murmured, his arms wrapping around my waist, pulling me firmly against the rock-solid wall of his chest, holding me as if I were the only precious thing left on earth.
“Because as long as I have breath in my body... the wolves will answer to you.”
He leaned down and kissed me.
The kiss was slow, deep, and devastatingly gentle. It tasted of rain, sweet tea, and an ancient, unbreakable promise that wiped away eleven months of fear, poverty, and loneliness in a single heartbeat. My hands found their way up to his broad shoulders, my fingers gripping the soft cashmere of his sweater, anchoring myself against the magnificent, terrifying reality of the man who held me.
When he finally pulled back, resting his forehead against mine, his breathing was ragged, his hands steady against my lower back.
“Stay with me, Emily,” he whispered into the quiet room. “Not as an employee. As mine.”
May you like
I looked into his eyes, saw my own reflection shining in the gray depths, and smiled through my tears.
“Yes,” I breathed. “Yes, Luca.”
