Page 16 of Lucky Boys
The day had been hectic. Getting Brooks and Diego settled at the manor had been harder than expected. Diego had ended up having a full-blown panic attack before he’d even been fully in the house, so he and Brooks had ended up locking themselves in one of the guest rooms until he’d passed out from exhaustion. While Skye had focused on them, I’d made sure everything was cleaned at their house and the security cameras were wiped so there was no trace of the attack. Wes had stayed for a while but eventually went back home so he could check on Riley and Beckett and update them on what was happening. Luca had wanted him to stay too, but he’d refused. So far, there hadn’t been any word of fallout from the events earlier, and with no real way to trace it back to Wes, Luca had had no argument and let it go.
We still hadn’t identified the men or who they worked for, even after running them through facial recognition software. Ihad a feeling we would have to wait until Diego was up and could do his thing to find them.
Luca had holed himself in his office from the second we’d gotten home. I knew he had a ton of work to do and was trying to give the Foster brothers some space, but I was pretty sure he hadn’t even left to eat and I was getting worried.
His office door was closed, so I knocked softly on it.
“Come in.”
I opened the door, and sure enough, Luca was at his desk, flicking back and forth between his phone and the monitors in front of him. He glanced up long enough to see it was me before going right back to his work.
“I’ve been digging all day and I can’t find these fuckers. Hopefully Diego will be up for work tomorrow because we need his skills.”
I threw the sandwiches on his desk then walked up behind him and scanned the screens. I pointed to a picture of a woman in her late forties with perfectly styled blonde hair wearing a rock on her finger that cost more than my parents had made in their entire lives. “You think she knows something?”
Luca shrugged and finally looked up to me. He’d aged ten years since this morning. That was when I noticed the desk . . . and the four empty coffee mugs and the half-drunk bottle of whiskey.
“I can’t imagine how she wouldn’t. Her son, or at least adopted son, has been missing for a year. Meanwhile, she’s taking girl trips to Aspen and weeklong spa getaways.”
I grunted, unsure what to say. Even if I saw it every single day, it always shocked me how many shitty parents there were out there. It made me grateful for mine. I had to give them a call soon. It had been too long.
I spun Luca’s desk chair so he was facing me, ignoring his sound of protest.
“What the fuck? I was working.”
“Not anymore.” I walked behind him and started to massage his tense shoulders.
“Mav, I don’t have . . . Mm-hmm.” He ended on a moan when my fingers dug into a particularly sore spot.
“You said it yourself, we’re pretty much stuck until Diego can start looking at this stuff, unless you want to bring Mickey into it?” Mickey was a freelancer we usually called when we were stuck with anything to do with technology. While I trusted him to a degree, I felt uneasy bringing him into this until we had a better grasp on the situation. I wouldn’t put it past him to sell information to the media for a bigger payday.
Luca’s scoff showed he was on the same wavelength. “Yeah, no. We’re not bringing in anyone who’s not absolutely necessary right now. Besides, Diego is better than Mickey.”
He was. I always wondered why we didn’t try to bring him onto our team, at least doing freelance like Mickey, but the few times I’d brought it up, Luca had shut it down immediately so I’d dropped it.
I continued my massage, smiling as Luca relaxed fraction by fraction from my touch.
“How’re you doing with everything?”
“Fine.” My thumb dug into his shoulder, hard.
Luca’s head snapped back so he could glare at me. “Oww. What the fuck, Mav?”
I just grinned. “Don’t lie to me. You know I see right through you.”
The fight left Luca, and he collapsed back, his head resting against my thigh.
Luca and I had an interesting relationship. Besides some serious make-out sessions and more intimate moments like this, we didn’t do anything sexual together. Okay, I take that back. We’d shared partners before, especially Skye, and everytime it had been fucking hot, but we’d never had a desire to take it further than that. What Luca and I had was more of a companionship. We leaned on each other, fed off each other, and were each other’s mostly platonic other half.
Which I guessed made it a good thing we were both poly. Skye too. I was sure most people thought the thing the three of us had was unusual and would lead to a terrible working environment, but they didn’t know shit. Our dynamic was what made it work so well.
“Do you wanna talk about it?” I knew damn well what the answer would be.
“Don’t ask questions you already know the answer to.”
I shrugged, not bothered one way or the other. “The offer is there if you ever change your mind.”
Luca’s body sunk further into mine. “Thanks. I needed that, even if I never take you up on it.”
