Chapter 18 INTERESTING TIMING.
\~~~RAINA.
“You don’t… You don’t like me?!” My eyes widen and my hands fly to my chest.
Okay, that hits a nerve as hell.
This is the first time someone tells me, boldly and without blinking, that they don’t like me.
I am a very likable person, to be fucking honest.
And I am not bragging right now, but a lot of people prefer my company to my sister’s.
Well… except my parents, who believe Talia is the exact definition of a perfect daughter.
Well, look whose perfect daughter absconds from her wedding, leaving me, the imperfect daughter, to save the family.
Viktor doesn’t respond. He just stares ahead, gripping the wheel so tightly that it looks like he’s trying to strangle it.
The petty part of me wants to snap back that I don’t like him either, but who cares?
Definitely not this man, because he looks like he wouldn’t blink even if I hissed at him or whacked the back of his head.
The silence stretches, heavy and uncomfortable. I wonder where Luciano is and who he is talking to. And just then, the front door opens.
A man slips into the seat beside Viktor.
“Yo! How could you not call for two fucking weeks?” the man bursts out immediately. “I get the boss, I don’t expect him to send a text, but you? Come on, man!”
I blink slowly, watching them. Viktor only blinks back at him.
Wow. He and Luciano should honestly be married.
They’d fit each other so well. The silent kings of emotional constipation.
The new man, with wine-colored hair, and a slimmer build than Viktor, grunts and leans back in his seat.
“And the boss’s wedding?” he continues. “None of you deem it important to tell me about it? I would have wrapped up the job in the first week and…”
He stops mid-rant, his head turning and his eyes land directly on me.
“The Pakhanessa!” he exclaims, grinning like he just found free food. He points his index finger at me with dramatic excitement.
I blink again.
Oh lord.
Not another one.
His grin widens. “I have been gone for two weeks and the whole damn hierarchy flips. You look shorter than I expected, Pakhanessa.”
My mouth drops open. Short?
First, I am sitting. So how could you tell if a person is short that way?!
Viktor mutters under his breath, “Gabriel, shut up.”
Gabriel ignores him completely and he leans over his seat a bit, his eyes bright with mischief, studying me like I am a new pet shark the family somehow adopted.
“So…” he says slowly, “What is it like being married to him?”
I stare at him, blankly and he snorts out a laugh.
“Oh, I like her already,” he says.
Me too!
Because honestly? This is literally the first and only person I’ve met around Luciano who actually laughs.
The others? Oh, they act like happiness is a deadly disease that wiped out their ancestors.
The scene in their underworld earlier still sits printed in my brain.
Not a single twitch of a lip, nor a smile and not even an accidental facial muscle spasm.
They all stood there as if joy were illegal and smiling was punishable by public execution.
Gabriel, meanwhile, still has that grin plastered on his face like he is the group’s illegal sunshine.
“Well, I am glad someone in this house has a functioning sense of humor,” I mumble.
Gabriel lets out a loud laugh. A real one, by the way, not the silent, and murderous-smirk type everyone else practices like a cult ritual.
Viktor shoots him a sideways look, the same way someone looks at a child that was playing near a landmine.
Gabriel ignores him completely.
“So tell me, Pakhanessa,” Gabriel continues, his eyes sparkling with trouble, “Did you enchant him? Threaten him? Or accidentally kidnap him? Because I swear, two weeks away and suddenly the boss is married.”
I open my mouth to answer, but the air changes and the temperature drops.
The door opens, and Luciano slides into the seat beside me smoothly, and silently, like a nightmare wearing a suit.
His presence hits the atmosphere so hard that even the car seems to sit up straighter.
Gabriel shuts his mouth so fast I hear his teeth click and Viktor grips the wheel even harder.
And me?
I sit there like someone caught gossiping about the devil right before he walks in.
Luciano’s gaze sweeps the car, Viktor, Gabriel… then me.
His eyes narrow slightly.
“What,” he asks, his voice low and dangerous, “What is so amusing?”
There was silence, but then Gabriel pointed at me immediately.
“It was her,” he says.
I gasp, feeling betrayed. “What?! You were the one laughing like a cracked kettle!”
Luciano’s eyes slide back to me, slow and heavy, and I suddenly remember every single life choice I have ever made.
He leans back, adjusting his cuff.
“Of course it was,” he says. “My wife has an interesting timing.”
I breathed out heavily and then Gabriel mouthed Good luck to me.
Viktor starts the engine like he’s preparing for our funeral procession.
And Luciano?
He simply rests his arm on the seat behind me, the ghost of a smirk tugging at his mouth as he says,
“Drive.”
The drive stays silent for a while and my fingers fidget with the edge of my dress, my heart still hammering from the earlier chaos.
Then, Gabriel turns his head back to look at me, his eyes gleaming with mischief.
“And what, Vanessa?” he asks, grinning widely, clearly enjoying the tension in the car.
I froze for a second, completely caught off guard. Then, in some unspoken synchronization, we both burst into laughter. Real, messy, and uncontrollable laughter that fills the car like a wild noise in a tomb.
“I swear I heard Vanessa!” I defend immediately, waving my hands like it is a legit reason, not caring at all about the man sitting beside me. The cold, and deadly, Luciano.
Gabriel laughs harder. “I heard it too! I thought I was imagining things!”
I glance at Luciano’s profile out of the corner of my eye. He doesn’t move, doesn’t flinch, but the slightest twitch of his jaw makes me feel like I have just dared a volcano to sneeze.
Oh, God… I think I just invited the wrath of a mafia don while simultaneously making his friend laugh like a lunatic. But that is fine, right? Totally fine.
“You both are so dead,” just like that, Luciano growled.