Page 133 of Promised to the Don of Naples
Forty years as the Morettis' consigliere, and he was on the other side the whole time.
"Figlio di puttana," Matteo murmured.
"He's already paid," Luca said, low.
Raffaele folded the map.
"Tomorrow at four in the morning," he said.
Matteo stood. Before he left, he squeezed my shoulder. He didn't say anything.
The door closed, and it was just the two of us.
"Tomorrow could go wrong, bella mia."
Luca said it with his back to me, taking off his jacket, loosening his tie. The window behind him showed the gulf of Salerno, dark, with the lights of the boats sitting still on the water.
"I know," I said.
"It could go very wrong."
"I know, Luca."
He came to me and took the ring from the inside pocket of his jacket—Lucia's emerald, the one I'd left in Posillipo in the rush of the escape to Capri.
"You forgot it."
"I know."
He took my right hand and put the ring back on the ring finger.
"Don't forget it again," he murmured.
I looked at him a little longer than I needed to. The white shirt half open, the hair mussed from a whole day bent over a map, the scar on his eyebrow.
Only his black eyes, which that night were different—more open, in a way I'd never seen. As if the man who feared nothing had finally found something he was afraid of losing.
It was me.
That man was going to destroy me, I thought. And tomorrow I could destroy him just by existing on the wrong side of a bullet.
I pulled him by the shirt, and he came slowly.
His mouth found mine with no hurry at all. It wasn't the kiss from his room after the attack, with blood and adrenaline. It wasn't the brutal kiss from the fight in Positano.
It was a kiss with time inside it—time and fear, the two mixed together, as if he were saving the taste of my mouth for something.
His fingers moved up the nape of my neck, into my hair, and held it. His other hand moved down my back, found the zipper of the dress, and opened it slowly, tooth by tooth, in no hurry.
The dress fell to the floor of the room. I stood in a white slip in the lamplight. He took a step back—just one—to look at me. His black eyes moved down from my face to my neck, from my neck to my chest, from my chest to my belly.
And they stopped there, on my belly.
I held my breath.
But he didn't say anything, just kissed me again, and this time his mouth moved down—along my chin, my neck, my collarbone, the top of my chest over the silk.
I slid my fingers into his hair, felt my knees go weak.
