Chapter Thirty Three

Background color
Font
Font size
Line height

Luca

When I opened my eyes, Charlotte was sound asleep on my chest, her tangled hair dancing with each breath I took, tickling my nose and face.

The sensation was about to make me sneeze, but I couldn't bear the thought of disturbing her. I felt more content than I had in years and for the first time since she'd been here, she was sleeping peacefully.

Everything about this moment was perfect, and I wanted to soak every bit in. To memorize the sleep indentations on her rosy cheeks, the way her manicured fingers intertwined with mine, her right leg draped over my body and her left peeking out from the covers just a bit. Most importantly, my ring sitting on her left hand.

"Ah, Choo!" Damn it.

My sneeze caused her to stir, lifting her head up and looking at me with her sleepy eyes. An angelic smile tugged at the corner of her lips.

"Good morning." I smiled.

"Good morning." She echoed, tilting her face toward me. "Were you watching me sleep?"

"Don't look at me like that." I smirked. "You're my wife. I get to do things like that."

Charlotte rolled her eyes dramatically. "Pretend wife."

"I wish you'd stop using that word." I chuckled.

"But it's th—" She started to protest, but I cut her off with a rough kiss.

Our bedroom door burst open, and Layla appeared. "Good morning!" She announced, barging right in.

I jerked away from Charlotte as if I'd been shot, as she tried to cover up her naked body.

"Good morning, sweetheart." Charlotte tried to act like nothing was out of the ordinary, ignoring the intense blush on her cheeks.

"You know, Angel, you're supposed to knock if the door is closed. It's called privacy." I arched my eyebrow at Layla as she scrunched her nose up, looking at me like I was speaking a different language.

"Mommy, can we make Christmas cookies with grandma Carmen?" Layla climbed up and perched herself on the bottom of our bed. Charlotte clung tightly to the sheets, keeping them over her body.

"Uh, sure, sweetie." Charlotte said, trying to sound excited. Her introduction to my mother hadn't been the warmest, but I was hoping I could iron that out today.

Layla eyed Charlotte suspiciously. "Mama, are you wearing clothes?"

I bit my lip to stifle my laughter. Perceptive little thing, she was. Having learned my lesson the hard way, I was going to keep quiet on this one and defer to her.

"Of course I am, sweetie." Charlotte propped herself up carefully. "Why don't you go pick out what you want to wear today and then we can..."

"Did you and daddy get laid?" She interrupted in the most innocent voice possible. Charlotte's hand shot up and covered her mouth.

"What... what did you just say?" I stuttered, in shock that those words came out of my baby girl's mouth. "Actually, don't repeat it." I held my hand up to stop her. "Where did you hear that?"

"Uncle Carlo said that my mommy and daddy needed to get laid and then they would love each other again." She announced proudly.

"Uncle Carlo needs to learn to mind his own business." I grumbled. That motherfucker.

"Layla, those are grown-up words, okay? Uncle Carlo shouldn't have said that." Charlotte narrowed her eyes at me, letting me know she was expecting me to deal with this.

"But do you love each other again?" Her face filled with confusion.

Charlotte shot me a nervous glance. We hadn't had time to discuss what we were going to tell Layla, but now our hands were forced.

"Sweetie, come here." I reached out for her and scooped her into my arms. "Mommy and I... We've always loved each other. Sometimes things happen and people who love each other can't always be together, and that's what happened to your mom and I. But we're working on it, because we do love each other, and because we love you so very much."

Layla's face lit up. "Are you going to get married? Can I wear a big pink dress?" She clapped her hands together in excitement.

Charlotte's eyes got big, and she giggled a bit. "Why don't we just start with the fact that we love each other, and we'll talk about the rest later?"

"We can live with that, can't we, munchkin?"

Layla nodded, already on to something else, and jumping off the bed.

Before rolling out of bed myself, I swept a kiss across Charlotte's cheek. "I've got to go have a little chat with uncle Carlo. I'll meet you girls in the kitchen in a few minutes."

"Be nice." She warned.

I nodded my head as if I was listening.

What the fuck had he been thinking? She's three for Christ's sake. Thank God she didn't ask too many more questions. That was certainly not the way I envisioned having the sex talk with my daughter. In fact, I wasn't envisioning at all. That would be her mother's territory. Either way, it would not happen at three.

The door to my office was closed, but I could hear the voices of everyone on the inside. Angelo had set the meeting up to get us all on the same page about things coming up and make sure we had our ducks in a row.

I was spending a lot of time out of the office lately, and it was important for us to keep things running smoothly while I got things sorted out with Charlotte and Layla. The Mafia world couldn't know about them yet. The second word got out that Layla was my daughter, there would be a giant target on both of their backs, and we weren't equipped to handle that yet. More men, tighter security, safeguards on safeguards on safeguards. I had to have a lot of things in place before I would be comfortable letting the world know about my family.

Charlotte was never very good at laying low though, so the next few weeks would be interesting. She'd just have to deal with the extra security with them. I wasn't taking any chances, even if she was a pain in my ass about the whole thing.

I threw the door open, but everyone continued on with their conversations like they had completely forgotten who was in charge around here. It irritated the shit out of me and I was already pissed enough about Carlo's blabber mouth. He was seated on the edge of my desk, laughing about something with Angelo. I stalked straight towards him and sucker punched him right in the gut.

That sure shut everybody up.

"What the fuck, man?" He reeled back, doubling over and backing away from me as fast as he could. It's a good thing he did because if he was still within swinging distance, I may have hit him again.

"The next time you have a conversation about my sex life with Charlotte, I would appreciate it if you would be sure our 3-year-old daughter isn't around." I let out a menacing growl.

Carlo's face turned ghost white. "Shit Luca, I had no idea... I was just telling Angelo that..." Carlo sputtered, trying desperately to dig his way out of this one.

"I know what you were telling, Angelo." I spat, cutting him off abruptly. "Because it came out of Layla's mouth this morning, and you can imagine how well her mother took that." I arched an eyebrow. "So from now on, everybody better watch their fucking language with Layla around, because I'll be the one in trouble if you don't, and we all know I can't afford much more of that with Charlotte right now. Are we clear?"

"Yeah, boss. Got it." Carlo nodded his head rapidly.

"That goes for everyone."

All of them nodded in agreement, and I found my spot behind my desk. "Let's get this show on the road."

Angelo slid a folder towards me. "There was a problem with the drop yesterday." He said plainly. By the look on everyone else's face, it was clear I was the last to know. I clenched my jaw and opened the file as Angelo continued. Now certainly wasn't the time for slip-ups like this.

"Holden's shipment was hijacked. Stopped our truck in the middle of the road, shot both drivers, and got away with five million in weapons and ammo."

"How is that even possible? Why wasn't there security on the truck? Tracking number? Something?" I hissed. Five million dollars worth of product just vanished, and these numbskulls had waited until now to tell me.

"We're working on the tracking number, but things have been off lately. We're doing the best we can, but..." Carlo chimed in.

"The best you can fucking do is lose five million dollars in product?"

"Well, you haven't exactly been around, Luca." Angelo narrowed his eyes at me. "We're running short and having to prioritize people elsewhere. We've run a thousand shipments with him and never had a problem, so we moved them somewhere else."

"Now, this is my fault?" I slammed my fist on the desk. I was doing the best I could as well. While I was trying to put my family back together, I couldn't be involved in every single daily aspect of the business, but that was why I kept the men I did. I trusted them to handle the day-to-day jobs, and usually they were top-notch, but if we didn't figure out what happened soon, heads would roll.

"It's nobody's fucking fault." Seth barked. Angelo and I both retreated to our corners like wounded puppies. "Things were tight on our end. It's that damn delinquent Chinese account. It's pretty convenient that they order regularly from us for six months and the second we start fishing around their finances and see Silvano is involved, they disappear. My money is on them."

My blood ran cold at the mention of Silvano. I wanted that guy dead years ago, and he would've been if he hadn't fallen off the face of the earth. He virtually vanished after the Miami incident, aside from this latest problem. If he was sniffing around again, it was only a matter of time before he found out Charlotte was back. And if he knew that, he'd come back with a vengeance. He was blacklisted after news of what he did got out. No one would work with him, and I hadn't even heard his name up until a few weeks ago.

"Do we have guys working on that?" I clenched my jaw, slowing my breathing. I had to keep a hold of myself here. If I let my emotions get the best of me and acted irrationally, somebody would wind up hurt.

"We are on it." Marco nodded rapidly. "I have a couple of guys tracking the owner of the account down, and we'll go from there."

For now, that would have to do. "And what about Holden?"

"We are processing a new shipment for him right now. He should have it by the end of the day." Carlo explained, careful not to get too close to me.

"We think the breach had to come from their side, but it would have been someone who knew we didn't have security on the shipment." Angelo hesitated. "Nothing is falling through the cracks on this, but we need to tread lightly until we know what we're dealing with."

"You think he knows she's back." I said flatly. I didn't need to specify Charlotte and Silvano for everyone in the room to know who I was talking about.

"Chances of that are pretty slim, but regardless, she's in danger when he's still out there. Finding him needs to be our top priority." Gabe said.

I rubbed my temples, feeling a raging headache coming on. My hed and my heart were being ripped in two directions. I wanted to focus on fixing things with Charlotte like I'd promised, but I also should be the one running point here.

I needed to find Silvano and make him pay for everything he'd done to Charlotte. But I couldn't exactly do that and be here working things out with her and as a father to Layla. Things were finally on the mend with us, and I was certain that if Silvano was back in the picture, that wouldn't be the case. If he started after her again, or after Layla... I couldn;t even fathom the ramifications of that.

"What do you want to do, boss?" Carlo asked.

What I wanted to do and what I had to do were two very different things. "Christmas is in three days. I don't want Charlotte to know that anything is out of the ordinary. Get the shipment to Holden, and we'll lie low for a little while."

Carlo and Marco looked at me like I was speaking a foreign language.

"Luca, the longer we sit on this, the better chance he has of figuring it out." Marco protested.

"Well, I'm not about to jump into the middle of this without a plan. I want him dead more than anyone, but if we go in there blind and reckless, and he'll slaughter us." I defended, frustrated I was having to back up my decisions with them. They didn't have to agree with it, but they sure as hell had to back me up.

"So we are just going to wait until he makes the first move?" Gabe echoed Marco's disdain.

"We're going to get through the holidays and see where we are. We don't even know for sure if Silvano is involved with this."

"Since when do you even like the holidays?" Angelo chided, folding his arms over his chest.

"I don't." I grumbled. "But Charlotte does, so we're all going to put on a happy face and celebrate."

"You are so fucking whipped." Angelo smirked smugly.

"Just get back to work." I narrowed my eyes at him as they all started to file out of my office. I didn't need his commentary right now, I had enough shit on my mind. All I was focused on was keeping Charlotte happy and if that meant I had to be whipped for a few weeks then so be it.

"I have something else to tell you that you're not going to like." Angelo said, eyeing me carefully.

I rolled my eyes. "Of course. And what would that be?"

"Claire is on her way over. The article is almost done, but she has a few key pieces she needs to clarify. I told her you were busy so you wouldn't have much time to meet." He said it quickly, as if that would ease the blow. The look on his face told me he knew I wasn't going to be happy about this.

I covered my eyes with my hand. Fucking Fantastic. I knew how important the article was for our public appearance, but Charlotte would lose her mind if I let Claire back in this house again. "Can't she do that over the phone?"

"No." Angelo shook his head. "Look, all you have to do it keep your pants on this time and everything will be just fine." He smirked, chuckling to himself.

"You're an asshole, you know that?"

"I know how much you hate this. Just humor me, okay? I promise this will be the last time you have to see her."

"Yeah, tell that to my girlfriend." I sighed, already envisioning the fight that would ensue. Charlotte wasn't going to take this lightly.

"Don't you mean your wife?" He smirked again. He was really getting on my nerves this morning.

"How the fuck do you know about that?" I snarled.

"I had a nice chat with your mother this morning." Angelo chuckled. "Why the fuck wasn't I invited to the wedding?"

"Look, I just didn't want my mother to have a heart attack. She hasn't been here in years and I figured telling her I had a child with a woman I wasn't married to probably wasn't my best course of action."

"Probably a wise idea. But this is just a sham, right?" He arched an eyebrow at me. "The marriage?"

"It is until I can convince Charlotte otherwise. Which was actually going really well until you dropped the Claire bomb on me."

"You need to relax. Everything with Claire is going to be fine. I put the ground rules in place, and she knows if she tries anything like that again, it'll be the end of her career. A woman like that is too greedy to risk it. Not even you and your irresistible charm can deter her." He teased. Charm or manipulation... sometimes it was hard to tell the difference. "By the way, what exactly did Layla hear Carlo say?"

I bit my lip, chuckling as I remembered what had happened this morning. "She heard him tell you that if Charlotte and I got laid, we would love each other again."

Angelo burst into a fit of laughter, throwing his head back in enjoyment. "Can't say I disagree there. It worked, didn't it?"

I just chuckled, shaking my head. He didn't need to know the details.

"You did, didn't you?" He pressed, grinning like a fool.

"Would you knock it off?" I said, not able to hold my smile in.

"All I can say is thank God." He arched his eyebrows. "I don't know how much more of the moody, brooding Luca we could take around here."

"Shut the fuck up." I chided, laughing. Although I didn't entirely disagree with him.


You are reading the story above: TeenFic.Net