Page 124 of Forsaking All Others

My throat burned as I set to work searching through his files, looking for any hint of what his intentions had been in booking those bogus commercial flights to Sicily, when these unknown enemies from my homeland might have abducted him that day.

Instead, I found emails from Luca, hidden in a file in his inbox labeled Gemini.

Suddenly, the tattoo of that zodiac symbol on Dario’s and Luca’s shoulders made absolute sense.

My heart lodged in my throat as I pored through the emails and landed on this one.

D,

You can’t keep me from her.

I know you hate my “loss of control” when I play your part as her husband, but I do not care to help myself. She is our wife. I would spend every night with her if I knew you wouldn’t ban me from taking your place.

You should be careful. If you take your life for granted, someone might be all too willing to take it from you. Watch your back, fratello.

L

I blinked at the screen and thought of Lando’s hissed warning that Luca had always been jealous of the role Dario was assigned.

If Luca really wanted me the way he seemed to, and last night was perfect evidence of that, what lengths would he go to in order to see Dario out of the picture?

Would he hand over his own twin to the enemy for the shot of a real life instead of haunting us like a ghost?

Even if he hadn’t gone that far, would he take advantage of Dario’s absence now? Proclaiming to want to find him while secretly waiting it out until they killed his brother and Luca could take over?

Coldness seeped through my body like an icy flash flood.

“Hungry?”

My head snapped up as I stared at Luca in the doorway leaning against the frame with his arms crossed, his powerful body arranged in a loose pose that should have been casual but wasn’t.

Because there was nothing casual about Luca Ferretti.

It was hard to speak around my heart lodged in my throat, but I managed what I hoped was a passable smile and nodded.

“Starving. I was just going to search out breakfast, but my phone is dead, and I wanted to check my emails,” I explained.

He stared at me for a beat too long and then pulled my cell out of the pocket of his dark-gray sweatpants. “I charged it for you before I went to sleep. You can check them while I make you something.”

“Chef makes breakfast,” I pointed out redundantly even as I quickly closed the files on the computer and put it to sleep before making my way to Luca.

He paused to pet Cerberus, his big man-killing hand gentle as he ran it between the dog’s silken ears. The sight of it made something tighten in my throat.

“I had her leave fresh granita and brioche. I’ll warm the bread and make you coffee. The extent of my culinary skills,” he said with a flash of teeth that on someone else might have been a grin.

I laughed lightly and let him lead me to the kitchen with a firm hand on my back, shivering under the touch in a way I hoped meant he thought I was aroused instead of the true terror that was rolling through me.

“Do you ever worry about getting caught as Lo Spettro?” I asked, unable to curb my curiosity enough to be entirely careful.

My fake husband didn’t so much as blink at the question. “I am very good at what I do. No one has ever come close.”

“Not even Interpol or the FBI?”

He laughed, a smug, dark melody. “Hardly. A few have tried very hard to find me. The most recent was a person calling themselves ‘the Oracle.’” He scoffed lightly. “They were tenacious but easily thwarted. I’ve been trained my entire life not to exist, Fiammetta. You don’t need to worry.”

Only the Oracle had found him, because I had.

I just didn’t know what to do with the information. The idea of trusting him seemed like the most foolish decision I could ever make even as something elemental in me seemed magnetized to him.