Surrender barresi book 3, p.1
Surrender (Barresi Book 3), page 1
Surrender by Lux Miller
© 2018, 2019 Lux Miller
All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher, except as permitted by U.S. copyright law. For permissions contact:
luxmillerauthor@gmail.com
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental. The medical procedures performed in this book are fictionalized and should not be attempted on any living being. Please note that this book contains situations that may be triggering for some and situations that are not appropriate for readers under eighteen years of age.
ONE
A cold shiver slides down my back as I walk into the Orleans Parish Prison for the first and what I hope is the last time. It’s been almost three weeks since Luca’s arrest. Dante and I have just now been able to secure the funds to pay his bond. In a dirty move, the chief of police had Luca’s accounts frozen and his American Express charge card wasn’t too keen on accepting a fifty thousand dollar charge from his girlfriend. Despite repeated calls to the Orleans Parish prison to speak to Luca whenever possible, it came down to Dante and I getting creative to secure Luca’s release.
I feel like a fraud to the art community for my part in it. I burned the midnight oil and churned out dozens of paintings for a charity event held at the Windsor Court Hotel. Thousands of Luca’s contacts came out for the event, and we raised more than enough to secure his bail. We raised it under the guise of an enormous donation to the children’s wing at Oschner Hospital. We plan to complete the donation as soon as Luca is out of prison and able to access his accounts. Everything will end up where it’s supposed to go, but it just feels shady.
I guess underhanded dealings is something I need to get used to. I am dating a mob underboss, after all. A dangerous man who protects his men and his money, in that order. Considering his grandfather will die before he’s paroled, it’s a safe bet to assume that Luca will be the next boss of the New Orleans mafia. It’s really just a matter of time, unless something drastic happens to change the entire dynamic of la famiglia.
The lighting is harsh inside the reception area of the Orleans Parish Prison, and I can feel all eyes on me the moment I walk inside. I’m in the company of Dante, and he commands the room almost instantly. By default, the nosy little biddies behind the thick plate glass of the reception area take one look at him, then slide their eyes over to me. Word has made it through the grapevine that Luca Barresi is involved with a petite, blonde woman with bronzed skin. Considering I just walked in with Luca’s brother, it’s not difficult to put two and two together.
Dante stops short of the reception counter and bows his head at me. I step up to the counter and drop the bank bag loaded with hundred dollar bills onto its smooth surface. The woman behind the counter widens her eyes, and her gaze drops immediately to the overfilled bag. “Name?”
I clear my throat and stammer nervously, “Mine? Or his?”
She looks up at me like I’m stupid and cocks her head to the side. “It’s a good thing you’re pretty, sweetheart. Prisoner’s name, number, and the purpose and method of your payment.”
I feel anger flare up inside my gut, but I hold my tongue and keep the attitude dammed up. I push the bag through the tiny half-moon opening at the bottom of the glass and reply, “Luca Barresi. Number 64200341. Method of payment is cash and purpose is paying the bond on his bail.”
The woman’s face shoots up sharply from the bag, her mouth dropping open slightly. “Come again? You’re paying Luca Barresi’s bail… in cash?”
I shrug. “Well, technically, I’m paying his bond since his bail is set at half a million dollars. It’s a good thing you’re tenured, sweetheart.”
The womans frowns and snatches the bag, counting it carefully. I watch her with eagle eyes to make sure that she counts every single one of the five hundred one-hundred-dollar bills that are stuffed into the bag. When she finishes counting everything out, she looks up at me. Her face is expressionless as she radioes to someone. What exactly she says, I can’t hear, because she keeps her voice lowered.
She sets the bag aside and pushes a stack of paperwork through the opening. Her voice is as expressionless as her face as I take the papers from her and bow my head slightly. “Please fill these out completely. Thank you, ma’am.”
I grab the clipboard containing the paperwork and hold it against my chest as I turn away from the window. I walk over to where Dante is seated, his back to the wall and his gaze focused squarely on the door. He inclines his head at me with a smirk. “Pissing off the little, old lady who has to release Luca?”
I shrug, narrowing my eyes at him. “She was a bitch, first. Besides, all the money is there. She can’t deny him bail since the proper amount for his bond is accounted for. As far as Orleans Parish Prison is concerned, Luca Barresi has bonded out on the bail they set. Which, I must admit is surprisingly low for what he’s being charged with.”
Dante shrugs. “Technically, he’s being charged with the disappearance of Andre. Being charged in someone’s disappearance is usually a bring in and question type offense. People don’t usually see cuffs until a body has been found, which we know hasn’t happened. And it won’t. Ever. I suspect the only reason he was arrested at all was to make a statement.”
I plop down into the chair beside him and start filling out the mountain of paperwork. Groaning, I complain out loud, “Don’t they already have all of this information? I don’t even know his exact date of birth. I can guess at the rest… is his first name even really Luca?”
Dante chuckles and holds his hand out for the clipboard. I hand it over, and he begins scratching answers down on the papers. I peek over his shoulder, because I’m genuinely curious about some of the answers. I reach over Dante and point at the name line, then look at him with one eyebrow raised.
He shrugs. “Don’t look at me like that. I didn’t name him. Our father was a very proper Italian man when it came to naming his children.”
I shake my head with a laugh. “But Lucario Anton? His name sounds like a shadow man.”
Dante nods with another chuckle. “Kinda appropriate if you ask me.”
I narrow my eyes at him and tilt my head to the side. “Truth… Hmmm, Dante…?”
He rolls his eyes at my sing song voice and goes back to filling out the paperwork, pretending that he can’t hear me as I nag him incessantly. “Come on, Dante… tell me…”
He shakes his head without lifting his eyes from the paperwork. “Nope.”
I frown and cross my arms over my chest, narrowing my eyes into daggers as I stare him down. He shifts uncomfortably, but still doesn’t give up the goods. “Yanno Emily, if looks could kill… you’d be in some serious trouble seeing as we’re sitting in a prison. What’s it to you, anyway?”
I cut my eyes away from him with a grunt, but then it dawns on me that I could find the answer easily if I wanted to… I just have to fall back on skills I haven’t utilized in months. Before he knows what hits him, I’m holding his wallet in my hands, reading off his personal information, “Dante Lorenzo Barresi… ladies and gentlemen, we have a new winner…”
Dante scowls and snatches his wallet from me. “Give me that, you nosy little…”
I cut Dante off as something on the paperwork catches my attention. “Wait, seriously? Electronic monitoring device number? How the fuck am I supposed to know that? Hang on… is that an ankle bracelet? He has an ankle bracelet?!?”
Dante shrugs and glances up as the loud buzz of the door unlocking breaks the relative silence of the reception area. “I guess he does now…”
He nods his head at the door. I follow his gaze, and my eyes widen as big as saucers. I scramble out of the chair, and though I nearly faceplant to the linoleum floor, I’m across the room in seconds. I leap at the figure clothed in prison-orange and wrap my arms around his neck and my legs around his waist. “Luca!”
He chuckles as his heart thunders in his chest against me. “Well, hello there beautiful.”
My breathing is staggered as I bring my hands to his face, my thumbs brushing across his strong cheekbones. Everything about him screams darkness, except his eyes. They’re stone gray, but they’re layered with a deep blue beneath the grey that sets my heart aflutter. It’s only been a few weeks, but he looks so different than the day he was arrested.
I don’t know if he wasn’t afforded a razor, but his typically well-groomed beard has grown wild. Thick, black hair covers his jawline from ear to ear, and it migrates up onto his cheeks and down to his neck. His thick lips have nearly disappeared beneath a heavy mustache, and I can’t say I’m entirely disappointed to see a grungier look. Despite our audience, I press my lips to his. He groans deep in his chest in response to my forwardness.
The sound of someone clearing their throat very loudly captures my attention. I jerk back from the impromptu kiss and turn to look at a very perturbed guard. He’s leaning against the doorframe with his arms crossed. He glances at us pointedly, and I let go of Luca, sliding down his body slowly until my feet hit the ground. I try not to let my embarrassment show, but I’m almost certain my face looks like a tomato. The guard rolls his eyes and pulls out a set of keys, jingling them in his hand. “Should I take off the handcuffs, or would the two of you like for me to leave them
I frown at the guard, but Luca chuckles and steps between us with his back to the guard, so that my line of sight is focused squarely on the most garish orange color I’ve ever seen. He leans over me and places one kiss to the top of my head, and I can feel all eyes trained on me once again. I step against him and bury my face into his chest. My heart skips a beat as familiar, strong arms wrap around my body.
My muscles tense at first, but I can’t stop myself from melting into his embrace, despite our audience. He slides both hands onto my ass, and I shake my head as I roll my eyes. “Yeah, I missed you too, Luca.”
He smirks and tugs me tightly against him. He rests his chin on top of my head and murmurs, “I never realized how much I needed you, until I didn’t have you. I was a fool for taking you for granted. The last three weeks have been hell. I haven’t slept more than an hour or two a night. The miserable cots they call beds in this place are hard and distinctly lacking you.”
I nod slightly and just stand there, breathing in the scent of soap and man. It’s not Luca’s normal smell, but it’s refreshingly clean, despite the slightly musty odor that hangs in the air. It isn’t coming from Luca, but my guess is that when you put thousands of men together in one building, it isn’t going to smell like flowers and sunshine.
“I love you too, Lucario Anton Barresi.”
He tenses and glances over me to look at Dante, who waves around the clipboard. “They expected her to handle the mountain of paperwork.” Luca’s expression is unamused, but Dante isn’t bothered by his brother’s sour face. He ignores him and goes back to filling out the papers. “You’re welcome, by the way…”
Luca grumbles something that sounds like a thank you as the guard unchains his feet, but I don’t know who he’s talking to until he looks pointedly at Dante. “Any other secrets of mine that you felt pertinent to share?”
Dante shrugs as he flips another page and continues writing. “Just the one where you like to sacrifice feral cats on the full moon so you can drink their blood to keep you immortal. She was bound to find out eventually, anyway. Especially once the two of you...talk...”
Luca groans softly and slides his hand under my chin, tipping my face up to his. “Please call me Luca. Nobody calls me Lucario, except my mother when I’m in trouble.”
I giggle softly and nod. “Ah yes, trouble names. The fastest way to make a child cringe in horror is to holler out their trouble name. I knew growing up that anytime I heard Emily Kailani, I’d better double my speed of moving and be prepared to grovel at my mom’s feet. She was the disciplinarian, while my dad was the fun dad… at least in Hawaii… before the sickness took my mom. Then, I didn’t know who he was anymore. It’s like the dad I knew and loved died with my mom, and his death five years later was just a formality.”
Luca nods, smiling down at me sadly. It’s a tender moment of understanding, meant only for me. It almost instantly erases the knot of tension that has been balled up in my belly since we walked into the building. The relief is short-lived, though, as Dante walks up to us and thrusts the clipboard into Luca’s hands. “Here, you finish filling this out. I can answer most of them, but I’ve no idea what you weigh. Why the fuck do they need to know what you weigh on release paperwork? To make sure they fed you while you were wasting away behind bars like a proper criminal?” He nods at the papers knowingly, then walks back over to where he was sitting and flops down again.
Luca rolls his eyes at Dante’s theatrics, but he does start to scribble on the papers. I stand on my tiptoes to peer over his shoulder, and it’s funny to see the three different handwritings scattered across the page.
Mine is frilly and calculated cursive that takes up all of the answer lines where I’ve written. There’s very little of mine on the page, though, because I don’t know most of the answers. In fact, I was doing good just to get the address right. Despite dating the man for months now, I don’t know any of Luca’s personal details.
Dante’s is loopy, but impressively clear for a man. There’s far more of his on the page. In fact, well-over half the page is dotted with the masculine cursive. He’s answered the majority of the questions like name, date of birth, and race.
Luca’s handwriting surprises me, though. His is print, tiny, and slanted as he fills in the blanks. It looks like a doctor took a calligraphy course, and Luca landed somewhere in the middle of the two extremes.
I’m reading the information one line at a time until I reach the ‘Marital Status’ line. I have to reread it three times to comprehend the surprising word that I find written there in Luca’s handwriting. In anyone else’s hand, I would chalk it up to misinformation, but Luca just wrote it on there.
I know better than to yell out the personal information of any mobster in a prison, but this is my boyfriend we’re talking about. It takes every ounce of willpower in my body not to scream at the top of my lungs when I see the one word you never want to see anywhere in relation to the man that you’re dating: MARRIED.
TWO
I gasp in surprise, and Luca cringes as he finishes scratching in the last answer on the page. He drops the hand holding the clipboard and rests his wrist against his thigh as he turns to me. The look on his face is pleading, but if he expects me to let this go, he’s lost his damn mind. I hoarsely whisper under my breath, “You’re married?!?”
Luca slides his hand possessively onto the small of my back and pushes me away from the guard who’s still standing near us. I don’t think the guard heard me, but he’s watching us carefully, his entire body stiff with his hand poised over his gun. This man obviously trusts Luca about as far as he can throw him. Considering Luca’s easily his size, that wouldn’t be far.
“I’ll explain it outside,” Luca whispers back, a sense of urgent demand in his voice that makes the hairs on my arm stand up as goose flesh prickles across my skin. He finishes writing in his answers, then hands the clipboard to Dante with a nod. Dante sighs heavily, but the look that Luca gives Dante is withering. Dante exhales heavily, then crosses his arm over his body and pats his fist against his chest with a curt nod of his head.
I turn to watch Dante walk over to the reception desk, then wheel around to face Luca. “Did you seriously just pull rank on him?”
Luca grabs both of my hands in his with a heavy sigh. “Look, Emily. I told you that I had secrets, and that you wouldn’t be willing to accept all of them. Many of them are things I’ve done for the good of the family, my biological family. The others I’ve done for la famiglia. Those are the ones I know you’ll have trouble accepting. This is one of those things. I will explain it to you, I promise, but not here.”
He squeezes my hands and tugs his bottom lip into his mouth. It’s such a vulnerable, un-Luca-like move that it catches me completely off guard. I nod, then wonder to myself what the hell I just agreed to do. “Stay here, please. Let me change out of this beacon that screams I just got out of jail… and I’ll explain everything to you.”
I watch him as he turns away from me and disappears into a holding room. When he’s gone for over five minutes, I walk over to Dante and point a finger at him. “I will respect his privacy and give him a chance to explain himself, but I need to know if you knew.”
Dante refuses to look at me. He sighs and nods. “I knew, but not for the reason you think. You’ll understand when he explains it, but it’s not my secret to tell.”
