LITMIR.BIZ

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ever and it might make it easier for Sophie to settle in. ‘Sure,’ Luka said. ‘Bella can come too. Now, get back to work.’

      Laughing, happy, she did so. Her hands moved and held his taut buttocks. He let her hair fall and what went on behind the black curtain was a private tasting. Sophie rested on her heels, her sex on fire as Luka didn’t try for gentle. She loved his passion, how he told her exactly what he wanted—which was simply more of the same. It was hot work and then he swore again, and it was right to swear because things could never be the same as he swelled in her throat, she pulled her head back and caught him first on her tongue, tasting and swallowing him down, more turned on than she thought possible. But then she realised he hadn’t finished, and the sound of him gently swearing as he came over her lips and into her hair had her close to climax.

      ‘Tonight...’ Luka scooped her up to him, told her he would wash himself out of her hair, right now in the shower, and then, ‘I shall go and speak to your father tonight.’

      Not yet, though. He saw her so flushed and aroused and ready that he pushed her back on the bed. Too giddy to stand, he knelt on the floor. She would take a minute. Luka knew. She was almost there. He could see her wet, sore and swollen, her clitoris erect, and God help him but he never wanted them to get out of bed.

      Sophie watched, shocked and laughing, as he pulled her to his mouth, and she lay there longing for the building pressure in her to release to his lips. She would later wish she could somehow hold that moment, for it was a time that belonged only to them. A time of pure happiness. A moment without shame, where the future was bright, where dreams were coming true, but then a crashing noise doused her in panic.

      There was the sound of footsteps running up the stairs.

      A lot of them.

      Her first thought was that Malvolio had come home, though there was too much noise for it to be only him, but then the police shouted out that they were being raided.

      Luka threw a sheet over her. The bedroom door splintered and as it was kicked open he lay over her as gruff voices told them not to move.

       ‘Non muovetevi!’

      Sophie closed her eyes in terror as Luka was hauled from the bed to the floor where he was cuffed.

      ‘Stay still,’ Luka warned her. ‘Just stay calm.’ Then he shouted to them to fetch her clothes but all they gave her was one of Luka’s shirts.

      ‘Not in church this evening?’ The lewd comment only added to her embarrassment and terror as Sophie attempted to cover herself.

      ‘Say nothing,’ Luka warned her. His voice was the only calm in the room but then it changed as they pulled Sophie’s hands behind her back and put on cuffs. ‘Why are you cuffing her?’

      ‘I don’t know what’s happening...’ Sophie said, and then she looked at Luka, met his eyes and in that moment she did know.

      This was about their fathers.

      ‘Say nothing,’ Luka said. ‘I’ll get you a lawyer.’

      It had all been perfect and now she had been plunged into a hell that burned ever hotter. Sophie was unceremoniously marched to a car. The entire congregation of the church, it seemed, had come out and were watching from the other side of the road. It was mortifying. The only saving grace was Bella, shouting to her friend, ‘I’ll get some clothes and bring them.’ She was already running down the hill towards Sophie’s home.

      There was no time to thank Bella. Instead, Sophie’s head was pushed down as she got into a police car, but it didn’t come close to the loving way Luka’s hand had, only moments ago, guided her head.

      ‘Poutana...’ She heard the whispers—some even said it loudly. The people she had grown up with had all turned on her in one night and very soon she would start to understand why.

      ‘I suggest you don’t take your boyfriend’s advice and that you do speak,’ Sophie was told as the car started to drive off

      Sophie said nothing. She trusted Luka to sort this out and she knew that she’d done nothing wrong. She rested her head against the window and lifted her hands to her tousled hair, feeling her mother’s earring, then moved her fingers to her other ear.

      It was gone.

      ‘My earring,’ she started, and then stopped. She would speak with Luka later. It had to be in his bedroom, or maybe on the path as she had been led out.

      She looked down at the car floor, wondering if she had lost it when she’d been pushed in.

      ‘So where’s your father tonight?’ she was asked, but Sophie refused to answer. She had given up looking for her earring and was now back to staring unseeingly out of the window,

      ‘There’s Luka’s father,’ the officer said, and Sophie started to breathe faster as she saw Malvolio being led by the police from the hotel. ‘I wonder where Paulo is,’ the policeman said. ‘Let’s take the scenic route.’ But instead of the beach road they were heading now towards the hotel and into a small side street, the same street that Sophie had walked down just a few hours ago. Now, though, it was filled with firefighters and the deli was alight with flames.

      ‘You were in there this afternoon, weren’t you?’ the officer checked, and there was no point denying it so Sophie nodded.

      ‘Your father went and visited them this morning,’ the officer said. ‘For the third time.’

      It was then, Sophie knew, time for her to start talking.

       CHAPTER SIX

      ‘SOPHIE DURANTE.’

      Sophie stood as her name was called.

      It had taken six long months to get to the trial.

      After the arrests she had been released without charge the next morning but her father, Luka and Malvolio had all been charged with various offences.

      The last six months she had spent living with Bella and her mother because, even from prison, Malvolio still ruled Bordo Del Cielo. Her father’s house had been signed over to him to pay for Paulo’s lawyer.

      Sophie had been allowed a few short, monitored visits with her father.

      She would have preferred to have seen Luka.

      It was a terrible thing to admit perhaps, but at every visit she had ached for just a glimpse of him and she could no longer look her father in the eye.

      ‘You will hear many things in the trial,’ Paulo had said. ‘Some of the things will be true, but most are lies...’

      Sophie simply didn’t know what to believe.

      Trinkets and jewellery had been found in their home. Souvenirs, the police called them, for they had all belonged to victims.

      Sophie knew they had not been in her home, she’d cleaned it after all. But she also knew that her father, though perhaps not a killer, had not been entirely innocent either and it hurt like hell to know that.

      ‘Malvolio would send me to warn people—it doesn’t mean that I hurt them...’ Paulo attempted to explain.

      ‘You went, though,’ Sophie shot back. ‘You terrified them just by passing on the warnings. Why would you say yes to him?’

      ‘Sophie, please—’

      ‘No!’ She would not simply ignore the facts. ‘You chose to say yes to him and, please, never say that you did it for me. He kept us poor.’

      ‘You have Luka.’

      Sophie let out an incredulous laugh. ‘Don’t tell me you said yes to him just for that. I’d have had Luka with or without your help.’

      She was confident of that.

      Almost.

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