Lucca (Made Men #4)(47)
Lucca slowly stood, having reached his limit. He had been generous enough to speak to Amo man-to-man instead of underboss to soldier. That time, however, was over.
Coming out from behind his desk, he got face-to-face with Amo. “You need to remember who you are talking to.” His voice was dark, forceful, and commanding. “Leave, and if anyone asks why you came here, you came to talk to me about your position at work. Someone finding out she’s here will only put her life at risk.”
Amo didn’t make a move to leave.
“The only reason I’m still giving you the option to walk out of here alive is because I know you care about her enough not to risk her safety. I would have killed you the second you got here, but I need Chloe to want to look at me for the rest of her life,” he threatened.
“You think you’re going to get her to fall in love with you?” Amo went to the door, agreeing to leave, but clearly not giving up on her. Then, deciding to part with final words, he delivered his final blow. “You are a psychopath who’s incapable of love or ever being loved. She belongs with me, and you know it; that’s why you took her. You will never love her the way I do. You just want to fuck her.”
Before Amo could even open the door, Lucca struck out, shoving him against the door swiftly while pulling a blade from his pocket and holding it to Amo’s throat. It was a blur for Amo, but a calculated move for Lucca, showcasing the difference in the positions they held in the family, and why he was the underboss, while Amo was only a soldier.
Seething with the rage he felt on Chloe’s behalf, Lucca pressed the knife bitterly against Amo’s throat, spewing, “You looked at her every goddamn day at school for three and a half years, and not once did you ever give her the fucking time of day. You claim to love her, but where the fuck were you!” he yelled, digging the edge of the blade in deeper, his harsh words lashing at Amo like a thousand whips. “When she and Elle were bullied, when Elle was taking beatings to keep her from being touched, when she was called a freak, where were you, Amo? How could you pass her in the halls with those scars and not do something? Not protect her?”
Amo’s face fell at each harsh question. His anger slowly dissolved into pain as everything Lucca said hit him like a ton of bricks, making him feel like the trash he was.
Taking the same cynical tone Amo had just given him, Lucca continued, “Let’s be honest; she wasn’t going to spread her legs for you, so there was no need to, was there? You were too busy calling her a freak with the rest of them.”
A paling Amo quickly realized Lucca had found out his deepest, darkest secret.
He wanted to leave now, but he couldn’t with Lucca pinning him, forcing him to listen to what he had to say, forcing him to face the truth and accusations of those words.
“You had to be told to look in her fucking direction and give her your precious time. I didn’t,” Lucca growled, never letting up on the knife. “It took me one look to fall in love with her. One look to want to know everything and anything about her. One look to feel protective of her, like my life depended on it. One look to want to kill whoever gave her those scars.”
Blood now trickled down Amo’s throat.
“If you’re meant for her, then how have you slept without finding out who did those things to her, who made her the way she is now?” Lucca stared Amo down, his eyes boring into the weak soldier’s. “I bet you didn’t even know those scars were given to her; that she wasn’t actually in a car crash. You didn’t even know that she suffers from insomnia because she’s too afraid to sleep in fear of the nightmares. Admit you didn’t even know!” Lucca roared.
Ashamed, Amo shook his head. He was slowly beginning to break down. The strong Amo he had been moments ago had vanished before Lucca’s eyes.
Resisting the darkness that wanted to slide the blade into Amo’s neck was unimaginable, but Lucca was doing it. Besides, this feels so much better.
“There is so much you don’t know about her because you were too focused on lying to her, pretending to be someone you’re not, afraid of scaring her away. You have done nothing but hinder her because you think she’s weak when, in reality, she’s stronger than anyone I have ever seen.”
Pain then entered Lucca’s voice that also showed through his blue-green eyes, something he had never shown a man before, let alone one of his soldiers. “You will never know the love I feel for her. How beautiful it is. How painful it can be. What it felt like when I first looked at her. And what it felt like when I thought I might lose her before I could even save her. You will never know true love until you experience true fear. And you will never feel those toward her, as I am the only one for her. She. Is. Mine.”
Amo was almost there. Almost a broken human being. Lucca could stop now and show mercy, but he wanted Amo’s punishment to last a lifetime. A sentence he deserved for letting Chloe walk through hell even for one day.
“If Elle hadn’t seen us that night, I don’t want to think where Chloe would be now, or how she would have ended up, because you sure as fuck wouldn’t have protected her. You, Nero, and even Vincent are pieces of shit for letting them go through that hell.”
Lucca didn’t hold back on him, and he didn’t feel an ounce of guilt over it. His soldier deserved it after trying to do the same to him. The only difference was Amo was blinded by infatuation, mistaking it for love, whereas Lucca recognized the pureness of what he felt for Chloe.