Page 41 of Mine Again (Mafia Bride #2)
Chapter Forty
Luca
I sa’s brown eyes land on my face.
I hold my breath.
This isn’t how I imagined our reunion. Not even close.
She doesn’t blink. Doesn’t move. It’s like her brain is trying to verify what her eyes are telling her. Like she’s running internal diagnostics.
Then her gaze locks with mine, and I see it. A full-system override.
Shock. Disbelief. Hope that burns so raw it looks like pain.
The emotions hit her in sequence, almost too fast to track.
Her lips part. It’s like I can feel the stutter in her pulse from here.
She takes a step forward, her body moving toward me before her mind can process what that means.
Then her expression shatters.
Her eyes glaze, her brows pull tight, and her mouth trembles.
She sways, unsteady, and I know what’s coming.
The shift is subtle at first. A flicker in her balance. Muscles failing to recalibrate.
A second later, her knees buckle, and I move.
Fast.
I’m across the room before her body hits the floor .
She falls into me like she was meant to. Like her body still remembers where it belongs.
“Isa,” I breathe, steadying her.
Her skin is warm. Too warm.
Her breath is shallow and unsteady. Damn, I wish I didn’t have to drug her to get her here. But I can’t deny that I love how her head rests against my chest like it used to, like the past five years never happened.
I press one hand to the small of her back, the other under her knees, and lift her. She weighs nothing and everything at once.
She’s still out, but her lashes twitch. Her lips part, as if she were mid-sentence with me in a dream.
I carry her to the bed and lower her gently onto the sheets, sitting down next to her. A strand of hair falls across her cheek, and I brush it back.
God, look at her.
She’s so damn beautiful. Much more so than through the surveillance footage or the cold glow of a monitor.
She’s finally here. Back in my arms. In my bed.
And still mine. Forever now.
I let my fingertips trace the line of her jaw. Her cheekbone. I find every freckle and recommit it to memory. Every inch of her is familiar and new at the same time.
The face I’ve studied for years. The skin I’ve ached to touch. The only girl who’s ever had my heart.
But she’s no longer a girl. She’s all woman now.
Her body tells the story.
Defined muscles in her thighs and arms from the workouts her father insisted on and the archery she never gave up, even after I was gone.
There’s a softness in some places, strength in others. The shape of her waist, the slope of her hip. All of it changed, refined, matured.
But it’s more than that.
My eyes catch something new. A thin, pale scar on the inside of her lower arm, barely visible unless you’re this close .
It wasn’t there before. I would have noticed.
I notice everything.
What happened here?
I brush my thumb across it lightly, then scan the rest of her in quiet search for more.
There’s another mark too, fainter, along her ribs. It disappears beneath the edge of the sheet. Something the world doesn’t see. But it’s mine to see now.
These are the details no camera could ever capture. No lens sharp enough to catch the stories written into her skin.
The girl I left behind didn’t have these scars. But this woman does.
And I want to know every one of them and why they’re there.
My hand stills over her arm, fingers curled slightly. Possessive. Anchoring.
Whatever she faced while I was gone, she faced alone.
Never again.
Because I will never let her go.
I watch her closely as she begins to stir.
At first, it’s a twitch of her fingers. A subtle crease between her brows. She’s coming back online one flicker at a time. Her lashes flutter, and her eyes blink open slowly, unfocused.
I brace for it. For what, I’m not exactly sure.
For panic, accusations? Is she going to scream?
Or worse, is she going to look at me like I’m a stranger or the villain in her story?
But my little butterfly just stares.
Her gaze drags across my face like she’s seeing a ghost. Like her brain is trying to map this moment against a thousand broken memories that no longer make sense.
Her lips part, but there’s no sound. Just breath. Shaky and shallow.
“Luca?”
My name. From her lips.
It hits me in the chest like a code finally cracked.
Everything inside me quiets .
How long have I waited to hear her say my name again?
How many nights did I lie awake, replaying it in my mind, terrified I would forget?
I hold her gaze. My pulse hammers in my ears, but I don’t move. I don’t speak.
“You’re not dead.”
The words come out low, disbelieving, like her brain hasn’t caught up to her mouth.
I don’t respond. I stay still and keep watching her.
Curious. Waiting. Preparing.
I’ve seen this before. The flicker behind her eyes when emotion coils too tight and too fast to contain.
My Isa has a temper. Not the kind she shows in front of her family. She’s always the perfect daughter, composed and dignified, especially when her father was still breathing down her neck.
But with me?
She let it out sometimes. The sharpness. The fire.
And I welcomed it. Because I took it for what it was; her feeling safe with me to let me see and have all of her.
Do I still have that trust?
Is that part of us still alive?
Suddenly I want nothing more than for her to explode.
Her breathing quickens. Her chest rises and falls in uneven waves. I watch her hands curl into fists, then unclench. Her jaw tenses.
Before I can react, she slams her palms against my chest and shoves me with enough force to send me off the bed, landing hard on the floor.
“You’re not dead,” she yells. Fierce. Real. And I revel in it.
I smile.
There she is. My Isa. The one who never hid her fire from me.
And if there’s still heat, there’s still something to burn.
She jumps out of bed, completely naked, not noticing or caring. Her hair is a mess, her skin flushed, and her body still shows the marks of my possession of her from last night .
She starts pacing. A live wire. Every step tight with emotion.
I push off the floor, rising to my feet without taking my eyes off her.
She passes the doorway to the walk-in closet and pauses. When she realizes what it is, she steps back and disappears inside.
I wait.
When she reemerges, she’s tugging one of my long-sleeved sweatshirts over her head. It drowns her, hanging low on her thighs, sleeves too long. She doesn’t meet my eyes, and paces, barefoot and furious.
After her fifth seething circle of the room, she stops in front of me.
“You promised to come back for me,” she hisses, her brown eyes blazing.
“And I did,” I reply softly.
Her nostrils flare. Her fists clench at her sides.
“After five years?” She all but yells. “Where the hell have you been all this time?”
She takes a step closer. I don’t move.
“When you stopped sending me birthday chocolates after only two years, I thought you were dead. Dead , Luca. Because the man I loved would never have abandoned me like that.”
Her voice cracks completely now, full of betrayal.
“I never abandoned you.”
“You did,” she fires back.
She throws her hands up and tilts her head back like she’s searching the ceiling for control.
She doesn’t find it.
When she looks at me again, her eyes shine. A single tear slides down her cheek.
Fuck.
I feel it in my gut. Like a blade, it slices at me.
Her tears were always my undoing. Still are.
“Do you have any idea how much I’ve grieved for you?”
I hold her gaze, unblinking. My chest pulls tight.
I do .
I watched her grieve me. Watched her fall apart in the dark while I kept my distance. It ripped me in two.
“It was for your safety,” I say, trying to stay calm. “I couldn’t—”
“Couldn’t?” she snaps, jabbing a finger hard into my chest.
“Couldn’t?” she repeats louder. “Bull. Shit.” Each syllable is a slap.
She drags in air like she’s starving for it.
“The Luca I loved would have found a way.”
Loved.
Past tense.
The word punches the air from my lungs.
Not happening, farfalla .
I am your past, your present, and your future.
Me.
Nobody else.
My anger breaks free before I can cage it again.
“And the Isa I knew,” I shoot back, my voice low and clipped, “would have kept her promise to wait.”