The Marriage Debt (De Vos Mafia #2)(67)

He quickly flicks the bunny to the edge, out of the water. It’s soaked and crying, and he holds it close while looking at its paw. He rips off the wire and doesn’t stop looking while brushing down its fur like he’s searching for something.

“There. It’s fine,” he says.

My eyes fill with tears as he turns to face me. Maybe he isn’t such an asshole after all. “Thank you.”

His face suddenly turns sour. “I didn’t do it for you.”

Whatever. I take it back. He is an asshole.

Still, I can’t stop the grin from spreading. “Fine. As long as the bunny is safe.”

I try to take the bunny from him, but he steps away.

Goddammit. Of course this is all just another way to taunt me. “Luca … C’mon. Let me have it.”

A vicious smirk spreads on his lips. “No.”

Rage bubbles up to the surface. “I found it first.”

He only clutches the bunny closer. “And I saved it.”

What?

After all my effort, he now tries to make this about him?

He’s only using this against me.

“Luca …” I growl. “Give. Me. The. Bunny.”

“No.” He picks up the stick again and holds it out to me like he wants to strike me with it. “Finders keepers. It’s my bunny now.”

My jaw drops as nothing short of pure rage fills my body. “Luca!”

The stupid grin on his face is the one thing that always stops me from turning a blind eye. “Come and get it.”



Present



* * *



I’m flabbergasted at the sight of two soft, wobbly ears sticking out above a cottony pillow.

Is that … a bunny?

Without thinking, I hop toward it and grab it as it’s just about to open its eyes. The scraggy, old-looking bunny isn’t skittish at all, but meek as I hold it in my arms and look at it.

It doesn’t look like any random bunny Luca picked up from a store.

It looks exactly like the bunny I remember from years ago.

The one that I tried to help get out of the water while Luca snatched it away from me.

I immediately check its paw, and sure enough, there’s the scar from the wire.

That same bunny is still here, living in this closet filled with toys and a playhouse all for him.

All this time … Luca took care of it. Fed it. Played with it. Gave it love and affection.

While I thought he only took it to torment me and eventually had … killed it.

I cuddle the bunny close and take in its smell. It reminds me of all those years ago, back when we were stupid kids doing stupid things. If only I knew back then what I know now …

What kind of a man was hiding behind the monster he’d so viciously crafted.

I turn around to face Luca. He stands there with his hands in his pockets, watching me unravel.

My lips quiver. “Why?”

His voice is just as unwavering as his gaze. “You know why.”

I shake my head.

It can’t be true. It just can’t.

He can’t have done this for me.

“But you said you didn’t save this bunny for me,” I say, my voice getting more unhinged with each word that slips off my lips.

His stance grows rigid. “Sometimes, I lie.”

Sometimes, I lie.

The words strike me like the lightning that struck the night Liam died.

He’s said that before.

Way back when … the night he snuck into my room to claim my first kiss.

My first orgasm.

My first everything.

And threatened me not to tell anyone.

I always thought it was all a lie to get into my pants, to claim me before anyone else, because Luca was vicious, and I couldn’t picture him as anything other than that same vicious monster.

But I was wrong.

So wrong.

Tears well up in my eyes as my whole body trembles. “You said that too when you climbed through my window. When you—”

“Stole your first kiss,” he says, stepping closer.

I shake my head. “All those things you said that night were lies.”

“Were they, bunny?”

Bunny.

The name he calls me … All because of this little creature he saved for me.

Suddenly, I become hyperaware of every speck of rain hitting the windows around us. Because the sound is the only thing keeping me here in the present instead of digging inside my memories to unlock the truth hidden beneath his lies.

But I can’t escape the one thing that threads the past and present together.

Luca.

With his dark, wavy hair, those penetrative, hooded eyes, and that killer body of his … It’s even more impossible than ever to look away.

“No,” I say, but the word is barely audible as my throat feels clamped up.

It can’t be true. It just can’t …

“Yes,” he says, approaching me slowly. “It’s all true, even if I tried to deny it, over and over.”

He can’t be …

“I’ve been in love with you since we first met.”

I step back, but I can barely keep my footing as I stumble against the pen. I quickly put the bunny down and step out of the pen as my body veers farther and farther away from Luca and the danger surrounding him.