The Deep End

Chapter 18

•Luca•

Polina refused to wake up after she passed out in Enzo's bed. She ended up sleeping straight through lunch and dinner and was still out cold when Enzo and I woke up the following morning.

It wasn't the first time I'd ever slept in his bed but it was the first he had ever allowed someone outside of our relationship in it. He was slowly changing, becoming the man he'd kept hidden from the world. I'm not sure if he even realizes it. It could be part of his plans with the way his mind works, he's always one step ahead of everyone else no matter the occasion.

I exit the closet, buttoning my jeans as I go. Enzo's already dressed in a wrinkle free suit, looking like a GQ model with his tie pinched between his fingers as he adjusts it. His amber gaze lands on my bare torso, taking in my muscled abdomen with heated eyes. He's always had an insatiable appetite when it came to sex, something I've never complained about. My lips curl into a grin as I tug a t-shirt I snagged from his closet over my head.

Polina makes a noise in her sleep taking our attention away from one another. She wiggles under the blanket for a minute before settling with a content sigh. Her blonde hair is splayed across the pillow in an array of tangles due to her falling asleep with it wet. A pale foot sticks out from the edge of the blanket and her arms are tucked under her cheek.

I look at Enzo to see him studying her sleeping form just as I had been. We both have quickly become enamored with her, it's dangerous. Her life is fragile and we're surrounded by a community of people that would put a bullet between her eyes without a second thought. It's terrifying. I worry about her well-being when we aren't here. I know she wants out, she misses her sisters and the thought of her escaping and being spotted by someone in the family keeps me on edge most days. She's smart but I know she would do almost anything to get to her sisters including putting her own life at risk.

I wonder how she will act when she wakes up. Will she keep her distance? Avoid eye contact? Run away and hide in the basement like she did after the first kiss we shared? Or will she embrace us whenever she feels the urge? Will she want to see where things can go between the three of us, will she want to take things further? I hope she will. She fits us so well and I'm not sure how Enzo would react if she didn't.

Merda, I'm not sure how I would react for that matter.

I enjoy the meals we share together, all the conversations we've had. She'll ask about my Mom, inquire about how she's doing even though the answer is usually the same. It makes me happy that she cares for a woman that she's never even met, one of the most important people in my life.

I was never able to protect my Mom from my Father. Knowing that was a heavy weight on my shoulders for years. He was a large man and I had been thin and weak until around the time I turned twenty. I would try to block her from him when I was a teen but he would knock me out of the way as if I was nothing but a minuscule pest compared to him. It always made me feel worse listening to her screams and the sound of flesh on flesh but being unable to do anything about it, until Enzo.

Lorenzo DeLuca had intrigued me since I was a child. He was bullied right after his Uncle Lorenzo had passed due to his namesake being blasted as a traitor to the family. Kids would call him traitor Junior and he quickly became an outcast. It only took about a year for him to change. He started putting his bullies in their place with a devious smile on his face. He was constantly fighting, his knuckles were always busted up.

He became Riot and from then on everyone knew he wasn't one to be messed with but it wasn't until his first kill for the family that people really became afraid of him. I wasn't though, I saw something familiar in his eyes when I looked at him. Something in his amber gaze called to me and I couldn't resist the allure. I was fifteen when we had our first kiss and only a few months after that we started messing around. We never questioned our attraction to one another, never thought of it as experimenting because we knew exactly what the connection we shared was. Still to this day it's unlike any other bond I've ever had with another person.