Luca
My eyes shoot open at the first crack of dawn.
I’m grateful right now that waking up early is one of my habits.
Though I was just in the deepest sleep I’ve had in a long time — courtesy of the world’s hottest boss, Stephanie — I was not prepared to bring someone home last night.
Yeah, I’ve fantasized about fucking her, and now that’s it’s happened, I’ve learned my fantasies weren’t up to snuff about just how fucking sexy she would be, but I didn’t think it would be happening this soon.
I slide out of bed, careful not to wake her.
I’ve got a lot of work to do.
A lot of guys, before they bring a woman home for the first time, they do what I call the ‘bachelor clean-up’. It’s where you do everything you can to make it look like you don’t live in a total dive. You want her to be thinking about how well you’re treating her, about the nice things you’re saying, and not worrying whether that three-foot high pile of dishes in the sink is home to a cockroach nest.
While Stephanie’s sleeping, I do the same thing.
Only, instead of cleaning up a mess, I’m cleaning up my image.
There are things about me she can’t know about. Questions she can’t ask, because I can’t answer them, because if I tell her the truth, I know she’ll leave. Thankfully, a lot of those questionable things are in boxes shoved away in a back room because, even though I’ve been living in this place for months, I haven’t unpacked because why do all the work for what I know is going to be a lost cause.
I’m glad she didn’t take a look around my place when we got in last night. Otherwise, she would’ve seen the Sig Sauer and the Glock that I’ve got sitting on my coffee table as a reminder to myself that I need to clean them.
Like anyone will tell you, gun maintenance is a vital element in gun safety. And in making sure you don’t suffer an irritating misfire when you’re about to plant a slug in the back of someone’s skull.
The pistols go in the back of the cabinet beneath my sink, hidden behind a bucket, some glass cleaner, and beneath some old rags. I take the combat knife I have sitting on my kitchen counter and stow it down there, too. I could probably explain the knife — a lot of guys have them and she works in a goddamn hardware store — but I can’t explain the bloodstains in the paracord-grip on the handle, or the sixteen tiny tickmarks on the side of the blade; one for each time this knife’s seen blood.
Yeah, none of this is first date conversation stuff.
It’s a part of my past that she’ll never have to find out about.
Across the loft, she starts to stir, and I get busy doing kitchen stuff. Making coffee, looking like I’m going to throw breakfast together, that sort of thing.
Then she starts snoring. It’s not a loud snore. But that quiet, contented half-snores that some women do when they’re deep in sleep.
It’s cute as all hell.
For once, she looks relaxed and at peace. The fear and fire that usually pushes her at the gym and at her job is gone.
I take a second and just take in the look of her.
She deserves the best. From life, and from me.
She can’t find out about my past. She doesn’t deserve that kind of pain in her life.
Having her in my life, seeing her smile, seeing her happy, being the kind of man she deserves. Maybe this is what I need. An extra bit of reason, of meaning, that tells me that building a new life isn’t just some empty bit of bullshit.
Once I’m sure she’s still deep in sleep, I throw on last nights clothes and sneak out. Outside, even though the sun’s just up, I can smell the bakery across the street. The air is redolent with the scent of butter, yeast, flour, and other aromas that make my stomach growl.
I don’t normally eat this kind of thing — I keep to a decent diet to stay in shape for my job — but, hell, I’m Italian and I can’t say that living next to a place that makes cornettos and ciambellos that are even better than my nonnas — though I’d never tell her that — didn’t factor into my decision to live here.
The baker, Sal, and his wife Victoria, are bustling about the place when I walk in. Sal’s running back and forth from the oven to the counter, pulling pastries out and putting pastries in, his brown apron stretched over his big gut and practically dyed white with floured handprints. It matches what gray hair’s left on his head.
Victoria’s fussing with the espresso machine with one hand, blasting steam all over the place as she tests it out, and drinking from a takeaway cup of coffee with the other.
“Luca, good morning. It’s been way too long, I was starting to think you’d left the neighborhood,” she says as soon as she sees me.
“I’d have to be dead to give up coming here, you know that,” I reply.
“What’ll you have, Luca?” Sal calls out from the other side of the bakery while he pounds on a big ball of dough. “Got some albicocca crostata due to come out of the oven in a couple minutes. And some strawberry Viennoiserie, too. First strawberries of the season. They are so sweet, it’s almost unbelievable.”
My stomach is rumbling at me. Sex always leaves me hungry the next morning.
“I’ll take two of each. And a good few zeppole and cornettos, too.”
Victoria’s ears practically perk up at my order. “Two of each?”
I nod, and grin. “And two coffees, too.”
She laughs and starts in on my order.
“Luca, is there something we should know?”
“Just that it’s a very good morning, Victoria,” I reply.
“You lucky dog, I remember what those first lucky mornings were like,” Sal says, handing me a bag loaded with piping-hot pastries.
Victoria shoots him a look that makes the room feel twenty degrees colder. “And what about now, Salvatore Maranzano?”
“Of course, now every day is great. There’s nothing like being married, let me tell you,” he says, then gives me a wink when Victoria’s not looking.
She rolls her eyes anyway. “Treat this one right, Luca,” she says, handing me a cardboard carrier with two coffees in it. “Who knows what kind of trouble you men would get into without women around to keep you in line.”
“Oh, the world would be a terrible place, that’s for sure,” Sal pipes in. He sounds sarcastic, but even so, he wraps his wife in a big, floury hug and the two of them are grinning like high schoolers in the first weeks of a romance.
“Don’t worry, Victoria,” I say, and then I pay and I get back to my apartment before Stephanie’s even opened her eyes.
I set the coffee and pastries down on the coffee table and take a second before I wake her up.
When I moved out here to Arroyo Falls, I didn’t think I’d last. Hell, I knew I wouldn’t last. I loved what I did, and there’s a part of me that’s still got those same dark impulses, a part of me that’d have no problems picking up my guns again and really putting them to work.
This all seemed like a fool’s errand. I’d give it a shot, I made a promise to my brother that I’d try and if there’s one person I can’t disappoint, it’s him, but all along I knew I’d end up slipping eventually.
I know myself. I can be a real fucking asshole when it comes down to it.
But now?
It’s still going to be a war. And there will always be a dark corner that urges me to settle my problems with a few ounces of hot lead. That wants to feel the weight of a pistol in my hand and answer life’s challenges with the click of a trigger.
But now I’ve got someone to fight for.
Her.
“Wake up, bella,” I whisper.
She stirs and opens her eyes and looks up at me with this sleepy smile.
“Good morning,” she says.
She’s beautiful.
She’s worth it.