Frisk Me(73)

It was the fact that he’d needed protection in the first place.

For nearly two years, Luc had thought it had all been in his head.

He’d thought the battle was isolated to his own messed-up brain as he tried to convince himself that he had to stop blaming himself for Shayna. That it wasn’t his fault that Mike was dead.

But if his dad had felt it necessary to “call in a couple favors” to keep the media off the story…

It meant there was something to hide.

And so even though Luc wanted to rail at his brother, and his dad…hell, he wanted to holler at his entire family for treating him like the baby.

But he couldn’t.

Because they weren’t the problem.

Luc was.

He stared down at his hands and took a deep breath. “What would you have done differently?”

Anthony lifted an eyebrow. “Well, for starters, I would have told you about Dad’s master plan if it meant you’d do less sulking.”

“No, I mean on that day,” Luc clarified. “When Mike died. What would you have done if you were me?”

Anthony sighed. “Luca. Don’t. Not this again.”

“Tell me,” Luc snapped. “I need to know.”

Still, his brother resisted, his expression tense and angry. “You think you’re the only cop with regrets? You think you’re the only cop that hasn’t looked at dozens of decisions he’s made in his career and wondered what-if?”

“Well not everybody’s regrets involve two deaths,” Luc shot back.

“Yeah, but some of them do, Luca. Some of them involve a hell of a lot more deaths. It’s the name of the game. It’s a shitty reality, but it is reality. People die, Luc. Kids die. Cops die. It always happens on somebody’s watch, and I hate like hell that it was yours, but it happened. You’ve got to deal.”

“I should have moved in earlier,” Luc said, barely hearing his brother’s rant. “I knew we’d found our guy. I knew she was in that house. If only I’d gone around the back, trusted my gut…”

His brother’s hand found his shoulder, and that somehow made everything more real. Anthony wasn’t exactly an affectionate guy.

“We’ve already been over this,” Anthony said quietly. “You trusted the system. You did what you were supposed to do, Luc. And you know as well as I do that it could have just as easily gone the other way. You could have broken orders, gone barging in the back door. Maybe Mike would be alive. Maybe you’d save the girl…but maybe not.”

Luc opened his mouth, but Anthony pressed on. “There’s always going to be a what-if, if you let there be. The best any of us can do is learn from the shitty stuff and try to apply it to next time.”

Luc knew all of this, of course. He’d heard it before.

He just didn’t know how to start believing it.





CHAPTER THIRTY



Luca.”

“Ma,” Luc said, letting himself be pulled into a long hug by his mother, even as he gave an exasperated sigh. “Were you waiting by the door?”

Her eyes went wide and innocent as she pulled back from the hug. “What? I was just coming down the stairs and saw you and Anthony coming up the walk…”

Luc lifted an eyebrow. “And yet you let Anthony scoot by.”

She waved her hand. “That boy’s never let me hug him.”

Luc waited. “And?”

His mother sighed. “And I wanted to talk to you. See you.”

Anthony glanced down the hall in the direction of the kitchen. “Dad told you?”

His mother’s warm hand found his arm. “Come talk to me.”

Saying no wasn’t an option.

Luc knew he was biased, but Maria Moretti was pretty much the gold standard of mothers.

Short and pleasantly plump, with salt and pepper dark hair and generous laugh lines, she looked every bit the part of the “understanding matriarch.”

Growing up, she’d been the type of mother who Luc’s friends confided in, even when they were at odds with their own parents.

But that was not Maria Moretti’s real feat; the real accomplishment was that Luc’s mother had always gotten her own children to confide in her.

Granted, the pignoli she always had on hand at the exact right moment likely helped—if spilling your guts about the C– on your English exam meant getting another of the delicious almond, pine-nut cookie, then you spilled your guts.

Same went for fessing up on who really broke that Venetian vase, and whether you and Marisa Perkins were really “studying.”

As Luc let his mother lead him into the tiny sitting room off the foyer, he realized not much had changed. She was still the kind of mom you talked to. About the important things.

But the important thing his mother wanted to talk about wasn’t what he expected.

“So, where is Ava?” she asked, curling up on the ancient leather love seat, pulling her legs beneath her.

If Luc hadn’t already been sitting in what Vincent had once dubbed the “interrogation” chair, he might have stumbled at the unexpected question.

“Ava?”

His mother gave him a knowing smile.

“What the hell does Ava have to do with the shit storm that got unleashed last weekend?” Luc asked, referring to the disastrous Father’s Day drinking session that had ended with him storming out of the bar like a sulky child.