Romero had locked Lily in his Jeep, and gave me a worried look. “Aria wouldn’t cheat,” he said.

“You sure about that?” I muttered.

“You have to calm him down before he does something that can’t be undone,” Romero said.

I nodded. “Leave.”

“I’ll take a room in a hotel close by. Call me if you need me.”

Gianna started honking, driving me insane, but I wouldn’t let her out of the car. I didn’t want her anywhere near Luca when he was in that kind of mood.

With a deep breath, I returned to the mansion. Luca still held the knife in his right hand but in his left hand he held his iPad, that agonized look lingering on his face.

“Luca?” I ventured. He didn’t react. I moved closer. He had opened the photos on the iPad as if seeing them in a bigger format would make them less real.

“You had a lot of shit thrown your way today. Perhaps you should try to calm down before you act on your anger.”

Luca put down the iPad on the living room table and went to the liquor cabinet. If he didn’t drop that fucking knife soon, I might consider getting my own out. He grabbed a bottle of whisky, opened it with his teeth, spit out the screw cap and took a deep swig. Alcohol wouldn’t make him any less dangerous.

“Leave,” he rasped.

“Luca, you love Aria.”

Luca staggered toward me, and I had to fight the urge to draw a weapon. “Love!” He glared. “You might be okay with Gianna fucking around behind your back, but I can’t…I can’t fucking bear the thought of Aria…” His voice broke and fury contorted his face. Gianna hadn’t fucked around, but it was futile to argue with Luca, and I definitely wouldn’t let him ignite my own anger.

“Leave!” he roared. “Go to your wife and let me handle my own!”

I nodded, and took a step back. “Luca, some things can’t be undone,” I repeated what Romero had told me.

Luca turned his back to me, shoulders shaking with anger and worse—heartbreak. The former he could handle, but the latter he’d never had to deal with before.

But I couldn’t interfere, not without risking a fight with Luca, and today one of us would die. I might be willing to die for Gianna and even for Luca, but not for Aria, not when she might have cheated on my brother. I backed away, my chest fucking tight. I wasn’t sure if I’d see Luca again, not the Luca I knew, because if he hurt Aria, he wouldn’t recover. I wasn’t sure he would recover either way.

Gianna clutched my shirt when I slipped behind the wheel. “Matteo, you bastard, let me go to Luca!”

“No,” I hissed. Luca hardly tolerated Gianna on the best of days, and today was the worst I’d ever seen him—and I had been with him at every bad and worse moment in his life.

“Then let me call Aria. I need to warn her. Luca has lost his mind. He will kill her if he thinks she cheated on him. He’s a possessive asshole.”

Luca wouldn’t kill Aria because he was a possessive asshole. He’d kill her because she’d made him love and trust her, and had fucking betrayed him, had broken his fucking heart. I started the car but Gianna shoved my arm. “Matteo, damn it!”

“They will have to settle this.”

“Settle this? The only way Luca will settle this is with his fucking knife. Matteo, I swear, if you let your brother hurt Aria, we’re done.”

Tears shone in her eyes but I wouldn’t interfere. “For me to stop Luca, I’d have to disable him and for me to succeed, I’d have to kill him. And that’s not something you can ask of me, Gianna. Not when your sister brought this on herself. She knows Luca better than anyone.”

“She didn’t cheat on him, Matteo,” Gianna whispered desperately. “She would never do it. She loves Luca. And he’s going to destroy everything.”

“No,” I growled. “Aria destroyed everything. She broke Luca’s trust. She should have known better. Luca isn’t someone who ever loved or trusted anyone like he does Aria. She shouldn’t have gone behind his back.”

Gianna shook her head. “She didn’t cheat. She didn’t. He must realize that.” She closed her eyes and let out a sob that tore at my heart. Gianna wasn’t a crier, and I’d never heard a sound like that from her.

“Luca loves Aria more than his own life,” I told her. “He will put his own life down before he kills her.”

With anyone else, those words would have been a lie, but Aria might be the only one who could break my brother’s heart and come out unscathed in the end.

ARIA

Would Luca be happy when I told him about the baby? He didn’t want kids yet but I hoped he’d come to terms with my pregnancy. The most difficult part would be to keep it a secret from Lily and Gianna until I could tell Luca. I wasn’t sure when he would be done with business in New York and when he’d return to the Hamptons.

There weren’t any guards around the perimeter when the taxi driver dropped me off at the gates. I entered the code in the keypad at the gates, then slipped in, confused. I’d thought I would have to sneak in, but there wasn’t anyone around. The mansion, too, was oddly quiet when I stepped inside and the curtains in the living area were closed, stopping the early morning light from spilling in. Everyone must have left, but why?

Worry settled in the pit of my stomach.

“Lily?” I called. “Gianna?”

“They aren’t here,” came a low growl from the back.

Luca.

He was sitting in the dark on the couch. I felt for the light switch and bathed us in the soft glow. “Luca?”

My eyes took in the Christmas tree on the floor, its baubles smashed to pieces, and next to it Luca’s broken mobile. What happened here?

Had there been another Bratva attack?

My eyes found Luca hunched over on the couch, dressed in a white shirt with the sleeves rolled up. His elbows were propped up on his strong thighs and he was staring down at something. He didn’t look up at me.

I approached him slowly, worried about his strange behavior. His shoulders were heaving with his breaths as if he’d run several miles. I stopped beside him and followed his gaze down to the black screen of his iPad.

“An associate from the press contacted me with photos that were supposed to make headline,” he said in a cold voice.

That voice wasn’t one he usually used for me.

“Photos?”

Luca touched his iPad and it flickered to life.

I sucked in a deep breath.

The screen showed a photo taken through the windows of the restaurant I’d chosen for my meeting with Val. But Val wasn’t in it.

It showed me with Dante’s hands on my shoulders. He was close behind me, his face tilted toward me, mouth close to my ear as if he was whispering secrets into it when all he’d done was warn me not to run.

The next photo was of Dante and me leaving the restaurant together, hand in hand. My face was lowered, so Luca didn’t see how tense I’d been in that moment.

Luca clicked the next photo.

A photo of me in a car with Dante, and it looked as if he had his hand between my legs—and not because he’d reached for the purse.