Our apologies.
Deciding that I didn’t want to talk about Beverly anymore, I asked, “So, what else?”
I felt his chin drop on the top of my head and his sigh was deep and telling. “We need to talk about your job, Remy.” I knew it. “You’re expected to be at work tomorrow, and we need to…figure something out before then.”
“I thought that was a closed topic,” I said a bit snidely. I hadn’t completely forgotten or forgiven how he threatened my parents.
“Remy, do you want to talk, or do you want to argue? I’ll accommodate you either way,” he chided.
I lurched out from his embraced and turned to face him on the couch. “Luca, you threatened my parents,” I reminded him. “You stood in the kitchen telling me I had to quit my job, and if I didn’t, you would kill my parents to keep me in line. What the fuck?”
His brows rose. “What your mouth, Remy,” he bit out. “When we’re fighting, and tempers are high, I can overlook the lack of respect. But when we’re not fighting, when tempers aren’t flared, I expect better.”
I reared back.
What he for real?
“I will not censor myself around you, Luca,” I told him. “I will not be afraid to speak my mind.” Luca surprised me when his face lit up with a genuine smile. Almost as if he had been hoping for that response.
He cocked his head. “Very well,” he grinned. “You may curse until your heart’s content, but you may not curse me. Understood?”
“What’s the difference?”
“You may ask me ‘what the fuck’, but you may not tell me to go fuck myself,” he said. “That’s the difference.”
“Okay,” I agreed because I could see the difference. Besides, I didn’t want a marriage like that anyway. I didn’t want for us to lose ourselves in such anger that we lost respect for each other. We already did that when he fucked me over the couch. It’s not something I wanted to repeat.
I pulled my legs underneath my ass and sank into the backrest. “So…about my job…”
“You can’t have routine scheduled visits, Remy,” he said, making my heart drop and my eyes water. “You can’t have predictability. It’s too dangerous.” I could feel the tears fall, but I was too…touched to speak. “Emilio goes with you every-fucking-where, but you’ll also have an extra guard that will do a sweep of each home before you show up. You’ll have a new list for him every morning of your scheduled day.” Luca leaned forward and gripped my chin in his fingers. “Non-negotiable, Remy.”
“Luca…” I choked out.
“I want your fucking word, Remy,” he said, in immediate acceptance of being able to curse while in conversation mode. “I want your fucking word that you let your safety be the priority. The second you break your word, you’re done. Understood?”
I nodded and then threw myself in his arms. “Thank you, thank you, thank you,” I cried in his neck. “Thank you, Luca.” His arms were like steel around my body. “I promise.”
He pushed me back so he could look at me. “Remy, the first time someone even attempts to approach you who shouldn’t, you’ll have to quit,” he added. “I need your word on this. I need you to understand the glaring risk I am taking by allowing you this.” His hands cradled my face. “I cannot lose you, Remy.”
The desperation in his voice, hit me somewhere deep. It opened my eyes to the different layers of Luca I hadn’t seen yet.
He was serious about me.
Suddenly, everything shifted.
Suddenly, I knew what Frankie and Robbie meant when they talked about compromises.
I reached up and wrapped my hands around his wrist, keeping his hands on my face. “I’ll make you a deal,” I said. “Give me one year. If nothing bad happens, give me one year and I will quit willingly.”
His eyes narrowed. “Why?”
“I hadn’t really given children a thought before because I was single, but if we’re going to get married, I want to start a family soon. So, give me a year to ease out of my caseload, and then we’ll get pregnant and I’ll stay home.”
Luca groaned, “Baby…”
“But,” I jumped in, “I want to create a community program or something that will partner with the schools in Morgan City where I can still check on my kids. We can…video chat or something, or once a month I’ll host a…I don’t know, but I still want to work with kids in some way.” I realized I was rambling, so I finished with, “I don’t have a plan yet.”
Luca pressed his lips to mine. “I love you, Remy.”
Yeah.
He did.
Chapter 25
Luca~
The barn looked pretty much the same as it had a week ago. The only difference was Sensio’s mutilated body lying in the middle of the floor.
Or what was left of it.
After Gio had blown his brains out, Sensio had been taken back to the funhouse where me, Ciro, Phoenix, Sal, and even Leo had toyed with him for days. In the meantime, Sal had cleaned up the mess that was Giovanni Benetti’s body, and we had left it to Leo to tell our mother her husband was dead. Leo had stayed with her through the night as she cried her sorrow, and the next morning Sal and I met with her to offer our condolences. She hadn’t been the best mother, but she was still our mother, and we went through the motions with her.
We buried Giovanni the next morning, closed casket, with the deliberate rumor that he died of a heart attack. The only people who knew the truth were the people at the barn, and none of them would speak a word of it.
They knew the repercussions.
No one wanted any one-on-one quality time with Ciro.
Remy had also gone to work that next morning-making me lose my fucking mind in the process-but Emilio had gone with her and Phoenix had assigned one of his guys as her
