Page 19 of Veiled Amor

“Can’t rule it out. If I were as fucked up as Nicholas, I’d be bugging everything and everyone.”

“If that’s the case, he already knows I’m here. I told you, didn’t I? I got the feeling I was being watched.”

“He would have grabbed you already.”

She sighed big enough it lifted her whole chest in the white tank top. Capone yanked his betraying eyes away. He wasn’t here for a free peep show, nor to open old wounds. The fucked up shit they’d done together was years ago, and he was keeping it there. He already felt like he’d pissed enough on his younger brother’s grave.

“Thank you for coming, Giancarlo.” She said after a minute. He felt like she’d reached into his chest and squeezed his heart with her fingers. People looking at Lucia would see a beautiful woman wearing designer clothes and shoes and the fancy ride she went around town in. They wouldn’t notice how the smiles didn’t always reach her eyes.

He’d wanted to get her out of that compound for years, knowing more than most what Nicholas was capable of. But his hands had been tied. She’d forced the issue now, and what the fuck else could he do but help her?

Santiago fucked up by not taking care of her.

Capone would not make the same mistake.

It was going to kill him being this close.

Those goddamn weekly calls about did him in.

Some people were put on this earth to torment.

He might not be religious, but he believed in that.

She looked at him from her perch on the bed like he had all the answers.

And all Capone could think about was the last time he had her on a bed, how he’d defiled her from one end to the other and hungered for more, even after he’d woken and realized what they’d done.

Some pangs of hunger never left a man, no matter how much he filled his plate with other things.

Lucia Mercado, his fucking forbidden sister-in-law, would remain a gnawing ache in his gut, something he’d accepted a long time ago.

Didn’t mean he was a feral animal and would act on it.

He’d done that once, and look how it turned out.

By fucking his nastiness into a girl too young and too off-limits, he’d locked them both in this time machine.He should have cut her off years ago. Only his sense of responsibility wouldn’t allow it. Wouldn’t let her wolf of a father gobble her up.

Capone recalled the day he’d stormed into Nicholas’ home, intent on butchering the man in the same way he’d done to his family. With his hand clasped to his enemy's throat, Capone holding a gun to his head, he was stopped only by one sentence.

“There’s a bounty on Lucia’s head the moment I am dead.”

The ruthlessbastardohad played his hand well, as if he could sense how Capone felt, knew how he’d bend for her safety. No decent man would ever threaten his daughter’s life that way. But Nicholas wasn’t decent. The man was alobo. Awolfin Gucci clothing. And a fucking sly one at that who proved he would use his only child to save his fucking neck.

Capone had walked away to save her.

His only failure.

Unable to take her with him, though for a weak moment, he’d wanted to grab her up and take her wherever he landed. It was only in the last couple of years he’d thought about it when she’d let slip how her father wanted to barter her off again.

That wordagainrattled around his brain for weeks and months.

He’d never asked what she’d meant by it.

Againimplied he’d tried it before.

When?

They might not have had the best friendship, pretty fucking dysfunctional by any standard, but they’d been in contact every single week. Not once had she brought it up.