“Shut up and grab some water,” I grouse, picking myself up off the mat.
Chapter Six
In which Lucca is a complete dick. And his gets punched.
Tatiana…
Two weeks later…
“So, how’s it going with Mr. Dark and Dangerous?” Mariya asks one day at lunch. I have my poisons notebook open and I’m trying to review my notes for the “practical applications” test this afternoon.
“There is nothing reassuring about the phrase ‘practical applications’ when it comes to poison,” I sigh. “What does that even mean?”
“You’re avoiding the subject here,” Mariya grins.
“Lucca will never admit it, but I think he’s not actively hating our training sessions as much,” I said. “At least he doesn’t look at me like I’m a used litter box anymore. I’ve noticed he’s also taking more time with me than the required hour for our training sessions.”
“Oooo, extra sparring time with that tasty morsel?” Mariya nudges me. “Just how hot do these training sessions get?”
She’s a tiny thing, even shorter than me but wiry. I’ve seen her spar and take out someone twice her size. She has the same controlled savagery as her brother Maksim. They look the most alike of all the Morozov siblings, with dark hair and icy blue eyes. But she has a warmth her brother doesn’t. She pulled me into her friend group effortlessly, and they welcomed me like I’d always been there. Her roommate Camilla Boucher is one of my favorites, a relentlessly cheerful redhead from a French crime syndicate and in the Leaders division.
It’s nice to know that some crime families have given up their misogynistic views against female leadership.
Aleksandr also made me feel welcome immediately. He’s tall and lean, without the overly bulked-up look most of the men have here. He’s slow to anger, though I can tell by the way other students look at him that he’s held his own in a fight before. There are twins in our circle - Meiying and Jun Chen - from a Chinese Triad organization so notorious that even I knew all about them before I came here. Meiying is far more terrifying than her brother. She’s also the most persistent.
“Come now, we want details, Tatiana,” Meiying pokes me in the ribs, “does he pin you down on the mat? A few full-body contact moments? Does he get hard when you’re sparring? Does-”
“Bozhe moy, my god! What is wrong with you all?” I laugh, though there is a humiliating red flush blooming on my cheeks. “Lucca has absolutely no interest in anything but getting through his commitment to Professor Zimmerman and then removing my presence in his life.”
Aleksandr shrugs, “Lucca’s not the type to spend this much time trying to please a professor. If he really hated you, he would have found a way to break your leg or something on the first day he trained you.”
“Very inspiring, Aleks,” I said dryly, “I feel so much better now that my leg has remained unbroken. Has he always been this…” I flounder for a moment, “This surly?”
They all laughed. “Worse,” Mariya says, “He came to the Academy with a huge chip on his shoulder. He was in a lot of fights.”
“He didn’t start many of them,” Aleksandr adds, “but he definitely finished them. After a few legendary drubbings, everyone left him alone.”
Camilla leans in, lowering her voice. “My father has a trade deal with the Toscano Mafia. He told me that Lucca did something the famiglia found unforgivable, so they set him aside.”
“What does that mean?” I frown. It sounds archaic.
“It means he fucked up so seriously that they don’t view him as family,” Camilla said, “he has to redeem himself here at the Academy. He doesn’t even go home for those two months during summer. My best guess is that they’ll accept him back into the family based on his performance here.”
My gaze wanders over to a table by one of the windows, where Lucca’s surrounded by his friends. One of them is Konstantin Turgenev, Mariya’s fiancé. I’ve always thought it was odd that he and Mariya don’t ever sit together, considering that they’re getting married after they graduate.
Konstantin is talking and laughing, gesturing wildly with his hands - more Italian than Russian - having Lucca as his roommate must be influencing him. Lucca’s leaning back, arms folded, listening to his friend’s story with a slight smile on his face. It’s genuinely startling because I don’t think I’ve ever seen him smile. Not once. It’s a shame, too, because his smile is beautiful, his full lips curved up and his eyes are softer, more relaxed.
My brothers are hard men, they’ve had to be. But I can’t think of what I could do that would make them throw me out of the family.
Have sex with someone they haven’t chosen for me? I think bitterly. Virginity is still a currency in arranged marriages.
My gaze goes back to Lucca, wondering what he’d be like in bed. With that body? He’s like an X-rated anatomy lesson in physical perfection. He’s never taken off his shirt when we work out, but just in basketball shorts and a t-shirt, he’s ridiculously sculpted. His ass is…
Wait. What the hell am I doing? I’m perving on Lucca? What is wrong with me? Of course, just then, he looks over at me and his smile drops. Sighing, I turn away, focusing on some story that Jun is telling involving a baby tiger, too much sake, and a kidnapping.
Lucca…
Later that day…
Tearing through the underbrush, the same phrase circles my brain.
I’m an uncle, not an uncle. Not an uncle.
Fucking Gio and his wife Ekaterina had a baby.
This discovery came from the Google search I do on my family every few weeks. There it was, an article from an Italian magazine about the huge donation the Toscano Famiglia made to the Pausilipon Children’s Hospital in Naples, where apparently, my sister-in-law delivered my nephew (not nephew) a few weeks ago.
I didn’t even know she was pregnant.
There’s a big picture of Giovanni and Ekaterina standing in front of a new wing in the hospital, she’s holding a blue blanket-wrapped bundle, and next to them, Dario and his new wife Cora, and my sister (not sister) Francesca and my nephew (not nephew) Alessio.
What’s left of the Toscano famiglia.
They all look so fucking happy in the picture, standing close together as some fawning hospital official thanks them for the donation. There’s no space there for me.
I laugh harshly as I bound over a limestone outcropping. “Family is everything,” as my father loved to remind us. “Family will always come first.” Somehow, this bit of news is the last punch to crush my pathetic hope that I am still a Toscano son. It doesn’t matter what I do or don’t do here. They’ve cast me out.
“Lucca?”
Blinking, I look around and realize I’m in front of the gym, and Tatiana is waiting for me with a concerned expression.
“Are you okay?”
“Just… get inside,” I snap, trying to pull myself back together.
It’s not fair, how I’m yelling at her tonight, I know that. I can’t stop mocking her efforts and irritably tapping her feet and hands back into position. Tatiana keeps her mouth shut, working harder to get the moves right and I keep ridiculing her efforts.