the way she held my hand, squeezing it back, I got that she’d understood my small explanation. She shot a look across the room, her gaze sharp, full of something that made my chest hurt when she snagged Luca’s attention and they held each other’s stare. I knew then she understood me probably better than anyone.
“You have to decide, Maggie, if it’s worth the risk,” she said, nodding as she moved her gaze from that handsome man still talking to her brothers and back to me. “My brother is an idiot.” I tilted my head, my mouth hurting from the frown, but Toni held up a hand, silencing anything I might say. “He’s an idiot who really seems to love you and your son.”
I hated the sadness in her expression, though I didn’t think it had anything to do with me and Smoke. Toni had been kept away from the man she loved by circumstance, by stupid promises she told me Luca made to her brother, though she’d never told me everything. She never told me why they still weren’t together.
“Toni,” I said, knowing it wasn’t my place, knowing she likely wouldn’t tell me everything, but thinking she might need a friend, “what happened with you and Luca? What…did Smoke do to get between you?”
There was a pause, a moment’s hesitation that Toni took as she watched me—like she wanted to say everything and nothing all at the same time. Then, I reached for her, touching her hand. “Tell me to mind my own business if…”
“It’s not that.” She looked over the crowd, her features tensing. “Smoke, he’s made a lot of bad decisions but sometimes they were for the right reasons.”
“Like keeping you and Luca apart?”
“Yeah,” she said, squeezing my hand. “I don’t want you to think any less of him if I tell you what happened. It was…a long time ago and I wasn’t…easy back then.” When I shifted my eyebrow up, Toni grinned, laughing at my expression. “I was even worse then.”
“Impossible.”
She shrugged, pressing her lips together before she exhaled. “Luca was like a brother to Smoke. Trained him in college. He trained most of the boxers at the gym where they worked out. He’d even been close to going pro when he was younger, but he’d made some bad decisions, ended up doing time.” Toni picked at a napkin on the bar top, looking away, eyes unblinking, her lineless skin glowing under the soft light overhead. “But Smoke loved him. We…all did. Me especially.”
She glanced at me, eyes glossy and wet, like what she wanted me to see, she wouldn’t hide, and I could see plainly everything that was there. She’d loved him, but it went deeper than what her family felt for Luca. He was her lover. He was her everything.
“I was twenty. He was almost thirty. We were so stupid. And Luca, he was all about honor and respect. He’d messed up so much and Smoke had given him a second chance. But my brother…when he found out about us…” Toni closed her eyes, squeezing them tight, like the memory was too much, the irritation, the pain of it all ached between her temples. “He thought I was some stupid kid. He thought Luca had taken my virginity and Smoke lost it. Told Luca that he’d kill him if he ever came near me again. So, I convinced Luca to run away. He didn’t want to go anywhere. He wanted my parents’ blessing. He wanted to do everything the right way.
“But I was so young and so in love with him. And Luca would have given me anything. But he was so messed up about never knowing who his father was. Some gangster from Sicily his mom should have never messed with. Her family put her out because she ran off with him. It was a big scandal. But, he wasn’t interested in her after she got pregnant. Refused to marry her and she was left on her own. Turned out by her family, then her man. It was hard enough being a single woman back then living on her own, but being a single Black woman with a baby? Here? You don’t know how hard it was for Luca…half-Italian, half-Black kid with some guy for a father no one knows and his mother’s people refusing to claim him because he was a bastard.”
Toni pushed her eyebrows together, the frustration, the anger bunching up until a small line deepened along her forehead and she