Meet Lucca Bonano
"FIND ME" has been temporarily removed. Only six chapters are currently available. It will be reposted after revisions. This is my debut novel, and I want to improve it for my readers.
All the best, Mira.
Chapter 1.
It was exactly fifteen years and three months until he went to Sicily to meet his father.
On that day, Lucca’s whole life changed in ways he could never have imagined.
With a big yawn, rubbing his cheeks with both hands, he got out of bed and checked his cell phone on the nightstand.
Today he was a thirty-four-year-old man with a sixty-year-old father. The time flew by, and Silvio, his father, became more demanding with each passing year. Every new birthday brought new parties and new women, and this year surpassed them all.
The number of years was proportionally opposite to the maturity of his father.
Silvio Bonano behaved like a spoiled child.
At that moment, in the guest room of Luca’s London apartment, the birthday boy was sleeping in the arms of two young blond nymphs.
The night before, he partied with his entourage and got a bit tipsy. He had probably drunk more than all his guests. But after years of practice, alcohol could hardly knock out the big Sicilian boss.
How many parties does a man need to turn sixty? More than Lucca could imagine. The menagerie, which had danced, dined, and gambled all night, settled into one of his hotels and planned more fun for the next day.
His father lived his life to the fullest, every night with a different young woman ready to spoil him.
Money and beauty always go together. So everyone in this world traded on the goods they got from God.
There were worse women than the blonde twenty-five-year-old mercenaries who often graced his aging father’s bed.
The women who reached deep into your soul, promising love and devotion. The kind of woman who feeds you with lies and fairy tales and then throws you to the wolves.
Nowadays, everything in Lucca’s life had to be perfect, from the clean lines of his fine pants to the immaculate white shirts and the most exquisite ladies in his arms.
He preferred experienced partners in bed, those with brains and charm—the women who could play independently, at his level, and rarely became clingy.
After hard and long work, babysitting was the last thing he wanted. Career women knew how to stimulate a man’s body and brain without chasing him for marriage or money.
A light knock sounded at his door. Even his employees knew he never slept past sunrise.
″Come in,” Lucca said, still looking outside. The sky was metallic blue, and the sun couldn’t penetrate the heavy clouds.
″You should sleep more,″ said Marija, his housekeeper and friend, in a motherly tone.
″You came early this morning. How long did you sleep, an hour?″
He grew up on a remote Greek island with only his mother for family, and he worked hard and long hours as a fisherman. So getting up early at the deaf time of night became a habit. Back then, he went to work with other village men at a time when only ghosts and spirits roamed the rocky land surrounded by the magnificent sea.
Now that he was a million lighting years away from that gruesome life, he still couldn’t sleep more than a few hours at night.
Lucca winked at the small, neatly dressed woman in front of him. He needed Marija’s motherly energy. It was something he’d missed all his life.
Don’t get him wrong. He loved his mother. But she was so fragile that sometimes she couldn’t get out of bed, and on the better days, she only had the strength to complain about her misfortune.
The constant medical care she needed gobbled up more and more money. Then there was the food that had to be paid for, the heating, the electricity, and a house so old it could barely hold the water out on heavy rainy days. He couldn’t earn enough, no matter how hard and long he worked.
″Do you know that your father is as old as me?″ Said Marija. She was obviously irritated by Silvios behavior.
Lucca’s firm face relaxed into a smile, revealing a row of strong white teeth.
″Yes, I’m aware of that. But I hope you wouldn’t remind him, or we’ll have more parties and even younger women here.″
She snorted, ″If he had grandchildren, he wouldn’t be babysitting so often.″
They exchanged glances, both knowing it was a bad joke.
Marija couldn’t hold the sniffing sounds.
She burst out laughing.
“Oh, dear. I can’t,” she said, wiping tears from her eyes, “I’m serious, Lucca. He needs a distraction before his heart distracts him with a seizure attack.
The corners of Lucca’s mouth twitched. His father’s appearance in London had always upset everyone, especially him.
* * *
When Silvio first met Lucca, he became his favorite son.
Although he had other children with different women, some legitimate and some not, Lucca was the one he had been waiting for all his life.
Not even Lucca’s decision to decline his role in his father’s business could keep Silvio from favoring him.
There was always hope in the older man’s heart that his firstborn would change his mind in time.
The first meeting between father and son was more than dramatic.
Silvio discovered that his runaway, the lousy wife, had left him with a baby in her belly.
He never stopped looking for a cheating wife who favored his accountant over him. But he did not know she was running away in fear, believing that the child she was carrying was not his.
Every woman Silvio met knew that he never forgot betrayal. Especially betrayal like that.
So he planned to make her life hell as soon as he found her.
Revenge was the only language the Sicilian boss understood. He wanted her dead, buried two meters deep.
No one who cheats and steals from him goes without consequences.
Lucca went to his father to demand that he leave his mother alone. In the last year, while they were living in Athena, she found a new man and started a new life.
Who held a grudge for so long? Twenty years in poverty was more than enough to pay for old mistakes.
Until that day, he had never been to Sicily. He spoke Sicilian. His mother had taught him, but he had never gotten further than Greece.
Silvio arranged the private jet for him. A pretty young woman followed him throughout the flight. After landing, she stood next to him, waiting to be noticed.
″Excuse me,″ Lucca addressed her politely, ″do I know you?″
″I am Jenny. Your father sent me to help you. The car is there,″ she pointed to the large, shiny convertible on the side of the road.
″Of course, if you are too tired to drive,″ she said carefully, looking at his black eye and swollen lip
″I’ll drive you to your father’s house.″
He knew what he looked like. Exactly how he felt, beaten to a pulp.
Two days before this journey, he was betrayed by the only person he had trusted. Why did she do this? Why did she send her brothers after him? A simple no would have sufficed.
Lucca was a proud man. He would never beg her.
Shaking his head from the gloomy thoughts, he got behind the wheel and started the engine. He had to concentrate on the meeting.
Oddly enough, his biggest fear was that he would like the bustard. What if he finds a missing piece in this evil man? Would it be a betrayal of his mother?
He already found Sicilly alluring. It was the call of the land.
There was no man without a root. No one comes into this world alone. He dreamed of family, the big shiny thing Elly had promised him.
Jenny, the girl from the plane, guided him to the house. There, two men approached Lucca and had him searched.
“He’s clean,” the taller one called out, and heavy double doors slid aside to let him in.
The mixture of cigar smell and expensive perfume was something Lucca could never forget. It was a heavy, strange scent not found in modern men. It gave away who the boss was. The blinds were closed, and the Sicilian sun shone in streaks through tiny holes, blinding the visitors.
Silvio Bonano stood proudly. He was an incorrigible man, a coarse mass with a bullying manner. The very way he appeared confirmed everything Lucca suspected about him.
He came ready for a fight. Now he was intrigued.
“Mario, do you see the same thing I do?” asked Silvio, and Mario, the fat man in the corner of the opulent office, laughed.
“Si. Who would have thought it possible?”
Silvio leaned harder against the desk, and the wood cracked under his weight.
″English Mario. I suppose the whore did not teach him a word of Sicilian.”
Lucca saw red. His body instinctively flew across the shiny desk.. He grabbed the man by the throat and bared his flawless white teeth.
“If I hear anything but a lady when you take my mother in your filthy mouth. I am done here. Do you understand?”
Two men stepped out of the room’s shadows, but Silvio held his hands in the air to stop them. His face was as red as a lobster. Mario watched the commotion with a smile on his face.
“You can drive the man out of Sicily, Silvio, but you can not drive Sicily out of a man,” Mario said smugly, “Blood is not water.”
Lucca was still bent over the table, holding Silvio Bonanno, his father, by the throat. The wretched man smiled even though it was hard for him to breathe.
“You heard the man. In his presence, his mama is a lady. You will all respect that.”
Mario and the others nodded, and Lucca let go of Silvio, straightening his disheveled appearance and feeling a strange calm come over him.
“You have three brothers,″ Silvio said casually, “three lousy excuses for a man.” He sat down in his chair and poured the whiskey into two glasses.
“You drink?”
“Sometimes.”
“Then drink with me today. Tomorrow I am going to jail.”
Lucca took the glass and saluted the whole room.
Silvio did the same.
“I trusted a stupid man, and now I have to lie down for a bit - wait for the dust to settle. Is that the right way to say it?”
Lucca took another swig of whiskey. It slid pleasantly down his parched throat and burned in his cuts and wounds.
“Who made you so well?” Silvio asked, looking into Lucca’s bruised face.
“I trusted the wrong woman. It’s pure luck that I am not lying in some hole while worms feast on my body.″
The big guy chuckled, ″You have a temper. I like that.″
But Lucca was there to settle his mother’s future. This man was no friend.
“You sent your men after my family?″ Lucca said softly. His father did not bat an eye.
“I am your family, and if that cheating whore had not kidnapped you, you would not sit here, beaten up like a dog because of some tramp. You would be a king!″
He ended the conversation breathing heavily, and Lucca finally understood this man’s anger and resentment towards his wife.
He understood better than Silvio could ever imagine. He had a broken rib to prove how much he understood.
But a mother is the mother. And here he was as a son, not as a man who was badly beaten up because of a woman. So he had to protect the woman who had given him his life. That was the only right thing to do.
″Mum paid for her mistakes. She had a hard life. Forget about her.″
Silvio leaned back in his chair.
“How do you think a man becomes me?” his voice softened like a cashmere glove.
“This,” he waved a large hand, “does not come from forgiveness. It’s either an eye for an eye or nothing. The day I start forgiving will be the day I die.”
Lucca felt like he was floating. All his life, darkness lurked in his soul. His mother’s illness grounded him, and life pressed him down.
Lucca always felt anger. He wanted to slip into the darkness and bask in it. It was more familiar to his soul than the sun.
“Forget the mother and ask for anything you want. Anything?”
He was willing to bargain with his soul if it was necessary with this man. He felt relief in letting someone else decide his fate.
Perhaps peace would come, and a new beginning would be possible - a fresh start.
“The only thing I need is freedom,” Silvio said, “that’s something the prime judge could not give me, and I have him in my pocket, so ... no, there is nothing you have for me.
“I will go to prison instead of you.” Lucca barely recognized his own voice.
“What?”
“Call the judge. Or pull him out of your pocket,” Lucca said mockingly, “I am the prodigal son who set you up.”
Silvio thrust his body forward. A fascination crossed his face.
Lucca felt his broken rib like a knife in his chest. He felt he had to do it.
“You ruined me and my mother’s life. We lived in poverty. I am the bustard son who hates you so much that he set you a trap ...” with a lazy smile, he waited for Silvio to understand.
“Who else could be so clever as to outwit the great Silvio Bonano if not his flesh and blood? So, I plead guilty, and you are free.”
Mario clapped his fleshy hands.
“Fuck Silvio, you lucky bastard. Fuck it. He is yours.”
Silence hung in the air as breaking glass echoed through the office. Silvio held a broken bottle in his hand. He took his son’s hand and cut into the palm with a sharp edge, from the bottom line, just an inch above the veins, to the middle finger, not taking his eyes off Lucca’s dilated pupils.
Adrenaline surged through his blood as Silvio left his hand and repeated the same cut on his palm.
It did not hurt. The red trail of blood ran down Lucca’s shirt and pants.
Silvio pressed their palms together and exchanged blood according to a centuries-old ritual. A small red puddle gathered under their hands on the table.
So many scars and cuts. What was one more? Lucca mused in his head.
There were cuts from fishing lines and sharp work knives. The ones from chopping wood. So many scratches and scrapes. What was one more?
Then he felt a kiss on his lips. It was a burning sensation. Silvio sealed the deal.
Somehow he was not surprised. It felt normal to be cut and kissed by this burly, robust man who smelled of old perfume and had a face so strongly masculine that it could not be called handsome. Attractive, perhaps, but not handsome.
“Your mother can bask in her newfound freedom, and you will rot in my place,” Silvio’s face contorted into an obscene, smug smile.
“I am so proud of you, my son. God bless you.”
It all made sense to him. For the first time in his life, he felt he belonged. A weight fell from his shoulders, and he could finally breathe a sigh of relief...
″Now what?″ Lucca asked.
″Mario, call Jenny!″ Silvio said, then turned his head toward Lucca.
″She will take you to your room. Change your clothes, eat something and rest a little. You are mine. There is nothing to worry about.″
And Lucca trusted him. How strange was that?
Jenny showed up in the room to take him to the apartment, where he could rest, shower, and recharge his batteries.
It was a large, luxurious apartment with a Jacuzzi and massage table in one corner and a fully equipped kitchen and living room in the other. The bedroom was spacious, with a bed covered with large pillows and satin sheets.
The first thing he did was wash his tired and tense body.
It had been a year since he had left the island, and his whole life had been turned upside down. He planned to find a job and continue his education. He wanted to set up an affordable room for himself and Elly. How insane he was. He had not even believed she would have the strength to come with him, but to send her brothers to hunt him down and leave him unconscious at some deserted station? Damn, he was a complete idiot!
Hot water slid over his tired, sensitive body. What a day, he thought, wincing each time the water scalded open wounds.
Where was Elly now, to help him heal, to clean and kiss his scars and make them better? The pain and hurt pride were so bad he needed a distraction.
After the shower, he walked naked into the bedroom. Jenny was still there, folding the white shirts and black pants in the closet.
“Why are you still here?” he asked.
But somehow, he would not be surprised if a rabbit, a queen, and a girl in a blue dress with golden hair and a bow appeared before him.
″Nothing, I just wanted to check if you were okay. Do you need anything else?″ He took the clothes out of the closet. He was still naked,
″Who are you?″ he asked, sliding his hand into a sleeve.
″Usually, when you get caught naked, you start with pants,″ Jenny advised him with a cheeky smile, ″not a shirt, you know.″
He turned his back to her and buttoned the shirt while holding her eyes with his in the mirror. With a shrug, she slipped a tiny strip of her even tinier dress over her arm.
It was a beautiful little shoulder covered with soft, honey-brown skin. Jenny was a pretty girl and obviously worked for his father.
“You are in my room? Who are you?″
She smiled, “I am your dream girl. I can spy, fly, cook, sing and dance. All you have to do is ask. Your father pays for the best, and that’s me. The best you can get.”
She squeezed her small body between his half-naked and the mirror. Lucca’s mind needed relief. There was a whole life he dreamed of and needed to forget in a day to keep from going crazy.
Her small hand found its way under his shirt and down his spine. He shuddered with pent-up energy. ″Are you getting paid for this?” Lucca asked gruffly.
″No, this is pro bono,″ she kissed him.
″Look at you, Lucca. There’s no other man that good-looking. What woman would not want you?“.
Her hand traveled along his manhood, and he pressed his forehead to the mirror above her head. Hot breath blurred the space before his eyes.
″Fuck me,″ she whispered in his ear, and he pulled her legs around his waist, sliding her tight dress over her ass.
″No panties?″ It was a statement, not a question.
″Do you have a condom?” His whole body was one big ache.
She pulled it out of her bra. ″A girl has to be ready. Sometimes there’s only one chance to get what you want.″
His flesh felt like hot coals. With sharp nails, she drew small moons on his skin the second before he poured himself into her hot, receptive body. It was done. All that remained was the smell of sex and perfume. Her head leaned against his shoulder.
“Are you all right? Lucca asked.
“I am fine. Oh, man! I am excellent!” she patted his chest.
“God, you are a real Bonano. What a shame your mother ran away and left you without the right to a firstborn son. What a shame, Lucca. All this could be yours. Such an impractical woman. Of the worst kind.”
Lucca looked at her and felt a big black hole spread where there had been a warm feeling a moment ago. It seemed that Jenny was a practical woman. He almost winced at the idea of what might come out of her mouth next. He remembered another girl with a warm, impractical heart who had gotten him a meeting with her deviant brother’s fists.
May God save him from all women. That thought formed in his mind as Jenny waved her hand at him and left his room without another word.
While he was still buried in the memories of that day, Marija changed the bedding and stacked all the clothes neatly in a closet.
The other maid set out a plate with his favorite coffee, lemon juice, and cinnamon rolls.
He had to wonder when he had become a spoiled billionaire. He knows when he finally made that first big deal, but he misses the moment when people stop contradicting him.
That’s why he liked Marija so much. She always said her thoughts.
The constant -Yes, sir. How can I help you, sir? Right away, sir - made him tired.
It was not just the money that made people grant his every word and request. It was that prison story that haunted him since his youth. The fact that he was in prison as a young man made everyone whisper behind his back.
People who have too much money and free time get bored easily. To them, he was a devilishly intelligent businessman, a lost and eventually found Sicilian boss son and an ex-con. An ideal mix for modern fairy tales dreamed up by the idle minds of rich and spoiled people.
One story followed another, and guiltily, he sometimes fed the expectations of others with his behavior simply because it was fun.
For him personally, the years when he lived in poverty and earned his living as a fisherman were the years that should inspire ave in people. He did not become so sharp and clever by living a deviant gangster life. He became the man he was by fishing and cleaning fish guts. More hungry than full, angrier than any kid should be.
With long, sure strides, he walked to his nightstand. The phone lay on the wooden surface next to the perfectly arranged plate the maid had just left. The screen was on, and Nik, his childhood friend, was calling.
A shiver of excitement ran down his spine. Luca was shocked at how much the news he was expecting from Nik meant to him.
He felt he needed to take a deep breath and collect himself before answering the phone. ‘’Good morning, my friend. Did you sleep well?’’ Nik’s voice was deep and calm, as always.
‘’No, not at all. We had another birthday party. Tell me good news.’’
Nik laughed, ‘’poor you. The news is good, as always. But explain to me why we need that particular house. We could build a new one for the money you are paying.’’
Lucca pinched his nose. Nik annoyed him with his business approach mainly because he had the right.
‘’It’s a good investment. Did you finish the deal?’’ Lucca sounded too eager to know.
‘’Yes. I talked with a lawyer?’’ Nik said in a business manner, ’’The house is yours.″ He paused for a
moment. ″There is just one problem.’’
Lucca hated problems. He never had problems, just obstacles he had to overcome.
‘’Tell me.’’
’’The housekeeper is the former owner’s wife, a widow. She goes with the house. Her late husband
left everything to his cousins. But there is a clause in the contract that states she had the right to live
and work there as long as she wanted. He left her a monthly allowance, a pitty sum of money.’’
Well, well, Lucca’s perfectly shaved face stretched into a devilish smile. This becomes even better than
he hoped for.
He expected to find her there. She was the reason he wanted that particular house in the first place.
The idea that she became his employee uniquely appealed to this business deal.
‘’It’s not a problem. Finish it. I will deal with a widow.’’
