* * * WARNING: This chapter contains a discussion regarding the rape and abuse of a main character. * * *
Monsoon-like rainstorm expected to hit Falville within the week.
John Fitzpatrick, predecessor of Senator Diego Paolo, found dead in upstate home. Police suspect foul play.
Caring for Luca in the hospital with plenty of nurses around to help was one thing. Getting him home to their new studio apartment where there was no one to help Sario keep him in bed or on the couch whenever possible was something completely different. Sario had to use every logical weapon in his arsenal to stop Luca from getting up and doing things. "I'll get it," he said ten billion times in just the first week they were home. "I'll do it. Don't move."
Luca glared every time, and he still tried to do things himself even though he winced and had to hold his hand tightly over his stomach to even stand up.
When he got up for the third time in ten minutes one day, Sario ceased trying to reason with his husband and just picked him up bridal style and deposited him back in the bed. "Stay. There." He stressed each word and looked Luca directly in the eyes as he spoke them.
Luca rolled his eyes but settled back into the nest of pillows Sario had made for him. "Fine, Mr. Bossy."
Sario raised an eyebrow. "Just Sario is fine."
Luca rolled his eyes again. "Jesus, you're annoying." He sounded super pissed for absolutely no reason. Hormonal. That was what Noah had said. He was probably really hormonal. That was where this attitude was coming from.
With a heavy sigh, Sario pulled off his shirt to Luca's stunned expression and then did the same to Luca, silently daring him to fight him, before joining Luca in the pillow nest. Making sure to be careful of the red new scar across Luca's abdomen, he shifted them into a spooning position, his chest pressed to Luca's back as he cautiously began to release soothing pheromones.
Luca seemed stiff and uncomfortable for a few minutes but then slowly relaxed fraction by fraction. His head drooped heavily onto Sario's bicep, and his breathing evened out from the harsh, angry rhythm it had been. Goosebumps broke out over his skin when Sario traced fingers lightly down his bare arm. "Sario…"
"Mm?" Sario was getting comfortable now too, especially since his breathing had synced with Luca's. And this nest of pillows was making him feel sleepy.
Luca's breath hitched before settling back into rhythm when Sario traced his fingers back up his arm. "What are you doing?"
"What Noah told me to," Sario replied calmly. "Keeping you calm and helping you heal." He pressed his lips to the exposed side of Luca's neck in a dry kiss.
Luca shivered faintly but made no move to cut off Sario's access. Then he winced, pain streaking across his face.
Sario set his chin on Luca's shoulder and carefully pulled the blankets up to Luca's neck. "I'm sorry," he whispered, feeling bad that his kiss had caused Luca pain.
"It's fine," Luca answered, but his tone said it was not fine at all. His tone said he was angry and in pain and he hated the whole world, but Sario especially.
Sario did not argue though and just let himself relax so that Luca would as well. He had to be calm; he had to be strong. Everything he felt or did would rub off on Luca, his marked mate, since he was pheromonally influencing Luca's mental and emotional state. So he took deep, even breaths and carefully cradled Luca against him, making sure to not even accidentally brush his hand or arm against Luca's stomach.
Luca shifted in little increments to settle more comfortably into Sario's embrace, either from pain or quiet embarrassment. It was twenty minutes until he finally settled and the softest of snores escaped his slightly parted lisps.
Sario smiled into Luca's messy hair at the sound and let himself fall asleep. It felt like just a long blink before he woke to an armful of sweat and tears. At first, he could not tell whether Luca was dreaming or in pain since the two looked so similar. But when Luca did not wince even when Sario turned him into his back, Sario knew he was dealing with nightmares. As gently as he could, he tried to talk and shake Luca awake. "Hey, hey, wake up. It's okay. It's not real, Luca I just need you to wake up. Wake up, please. Please, please, please!" He did not know what he was doing. He had no idea. He just knew Luca was in mental and emotional pain and that had to stop. He would make it stop. He had to. "Luca! Wake the fuck up!"
Like a charm, the addition of a curse word got Luca's eyes open. He stared up at Sario, breathing hard with pupil-filled eyes. Without any sort of warning, he grabbed Sario's arms, looking ready to punch him, and then suddenly burst into tears.
"Woah, hey," Sario soothed, adjusting his tone to be calming. "What's going on? It's okay, I'm here."
Luca glared through his tears. "And you're the absolute worst!"
"We both know you don't mean that," Sario countered. "So tell me what's going on."
Luca slammed his head back into his pillow with so much force Sario was scared of him getting a concussion. "You don't want to know."
Sario brushed Luca's hair back off his damp forehead. "I do want to know. That's why I asked." An idea wormed its way into his head, an idea for fishing for some information about Luca's past. "What did you dream about, huh?" he asked softly, stroking Luca's hair in the way his husband liked. Maybe it was manipulative, but Sario wanted to know. "Something from the past? Something that scared you?"
Luca had stiffened when Sario mentioned his dreams, but his eyes had grown panicked with the follow-up questions Sario voiced. "Please," he whispered. "Don't make me tell you."
Sario raised his eyebrows. "You're my husband, Luca. You should tell me everything I need to know to protect and take care of you. This falls into that category, so I'll make you tell me if that's what it takes." A memory struck him, the memory of the day Luca had begged him for this contract marriage. "This has to do with that guy, right? The one who became a senator?" By Luca's harsh inhale, Sario knew he was right. "You knew him. Pretty well, I'm guessing. The guy's married, so what were you to him? A secret hookup cause he's in the closet cause he's a politician?"
Luca's lips were pale and trembling like he had hypothermia. "Sario…" he said faintly, pushing himself up into a sitting position.
"Tell me the truth, Luca," Sario insisted, "or I will find another way to get the information."
Luca, who never became small for anything or anyone, crossed his arms over his body and hugged himself, even drawing his knees together. "I met Diego Paolo when I was a sophomore in high school." Wait, he was actually telling Sario the truth? "I don't know how our paths crossed, but they did, and he told me everything I wanted to hear. He agreed that my family was being too controlling and that I'd be better off away from them. In two months, he'd convinced me to run away from home and live with him." He shivered, hugging himself even tighter even as he winced from the pain. "And that was when I found out I had made a mistake, the biggest mistake of my life. As soon as I was completely under his control, he…he fucked me."
Sario felt blood leave his face. He had not wanted to know this truth. "You were a kid!" How old had Luca been? 16?
"He didn't care," Luca replied, his voice shredded into bleeding shards of ice. "It was fun for him. He enjoyed my begging and pleading, and he did what he wanted until…" He sucked a deep breath in, like what he was going to say next physically hurt him. "Until I got pregnant."
Sario wanted to cry. Pregnant. That was how Luca had gotten pregnant in the past, why they were here right now. Had Paolo been the one to kill the baby as well?
"But he didn't have me tested until a month in, so I could have been pregnant for weeks by the time it was confirmed. He kept me locked up and, under the excuse of 'this is what experts say is good for you and the baby,' he continued to fuck me every night." Luca exhaled a long, shaky breath, like it took all of his strength just to keep talking. "One of his guards got me out, but not for good reasons. He wanted to use me as blackmail, and he sent videos to Paolo of him beating me up."
"Oh, god," Sario whispered in horror. He had had no idea Luca's history had been this bad. The nightmares and stuff he had said had implied it, though. "Please tell me you got away from that bastard before the baby was born." But even before Luca spoke, Sario realized what the answer would be.
"There was no baby." Luca's eyes had gone hollow and haunted. "He beat me so badly that I had a miscarriage." He bent over, nearly folding himself in half, as a tear tracked down his face. "I hated Paolo for what he did to me, and I hated that his child was in me, but it was mine too." A sob shook his body. "It was still my baby!" He had been so young when all this had happened, and Sario could see that Luca had never really let himself mourn the loss of his bodily autonomy, not to mention the sudden and violent loss of his child.
Sario quietly wrapped his arms around Luca and kept him from sliding off the edge of the bed onto the floor. He did not say anything. After all, he knew he did not have the right words to say. Not to anyone who had gone through that horror, and especially not to Luca, who he was coming to care for more than anyone else in his life.
After a few moments, Luca fiercely scrubbed the tears off his face and sat up again.
Sario cautiously removed his arms, not interested in getting sucker punched because Luca did not want his hugs.
"The guard who kidnapped me," Luca continued, his voice still tear-broken, "the neighbors called the cops on him cause they thought it was domestic abuse. He went to jail, and I was free. But I didn't go home. I couldn't. I was too filthy, fucked, and messed up to do that. I couldn't burden my family with all the shit I'd been in. So I moved into the underworld, became a hacker. And that was when Melvin fucking Steinbeck showed up." He spat at the wall. Literally spat. "He didn't hurt me, not physically, but he gaslit the hell out of me until I couldn't tell what was fucking real anymore. I decided that it didn't matter what I was on if reality was all a lie anyways, so I started taking really hard stuff. And he supported it." A bitter laugh snapped out of Luca's mouth. "He'd bring me more or new drugs to try. And the day our relationship ended was the day he purposefully made me OD and then just left me on the floor to die."
Sario wanted to puke and cry and torture every single one of these motherfuckers until they begged for forgiveness but never let Luca accept their apologies. They did not deserve Luca's forgiveness for the atrocities they had forced him to endure. How did one person go through so much shit and still function? How had Luca stayed sane enough to keep out of an institution?
"If it had been in an apartment, I would have died. Fortunately, it was a hotel. Housekeeping found me and called 911." Luca ran his fingers down the silk comforter spread across their bed. "Your brother met me while I was with that fucker, so that's why he already knows a lot of the shit that went on during that time. Including the fact that I'm an omega cause Melvin would never shut up about what I was like in bed and how he just longed to breed me." Luca's face screwed up like he was going to vomit. "That bastard deserves the hell I sent him to."
Sario raised an eyebrow.
Luca smiled faintly. "Oh, once I was a good enough hacker, I bankrupted him and I've been keeping him from getting a job for, let's see, five years now." He smirked, and Sario made a mental note to never join the list of people who had hurt Luca. Then Luca's face twisted, and he pressed his hands to his stomach. "Ah, fuck."
Sario braced one hand behind Luca's head and the other around his back and got him to lay back down. "Alright, let's lay down. Feet on the mattress. I'll go get the heating pad." He slid out of the bed, only to get his wrist caught. He glanced back. "Hey, what's wrong?"
Luca's eyes were wide and wet. How had he changed so quickly from fierce revenge-seeking hacker to this sad puppy-eyed boy? There were really no better words to describe his sudden change of expression. "I'm sorry." The words came out mangled, like they had been tortured before they even left his lips.
"What?" Sario had never been more confused in his life. What did Luca think he had done that was worth apologizing teary-eyed for?
"M-my answer." Was Luca stuttering? Since when did Sario's confident, no-fucks-given husband stammer? "I made you mad. I'm sorry. I didn't mean to. I didn't."
Sario felt like he had suddenly entered an alternate dimension. "What the actual fuck is happening?"
Luca seemed to shrivel, still holding one hand over his stomach. "I'm sorry," he whispered again. "I know the things I did made you mad."
"The things you did?" Was this what insanity felt like? Sario sat down on the bed again, determined to set things straight. "Luca, you were fucking groomed, kidnapped, raped, and abused! I'm not mad at you! I'm mad at the shitty bastards who did all that to you!"
Luca's eyes somehow got wider and wetter. "What?" he asked faintly, like he could not believe it.
Sario leaned over and cupped Luca's face in his hands. "You don't have to apologize. You shouldn't apologize. None of that was your fault. You weren't asking for it or anything. I should apologize. I made you tell me that when you clearly weren't ready to. I'm so sorry." He quietly pressed a kiss to Luca's forehead and got up again. "I'm going to get the heating pad. I'll be right back, okay?" The rest of the night was spent denying all of Luca's self-loathing remarks while also trying to keep his pain from taking over completely.
But it was worth it. Luca got up the next day when Sario returned from a grueling final (after consultation, Noah had said it was okay if he wanted to get up and do very light things very slowly) and started making himself some tea, seeming more at ease than he had ever been.
It felt like it would be a calm, domestic morning. Until there was a knock at the door.
Sario motioned that he would get it and promptly did. He did not recognize the older couple standing outside their door though. "Hi," he said cautiously. "Do I know you?"
The woman spoke right up. "No, no, of course you wouldn't know us. We haven't ever met, though we probably should have by now. You know, considering the fact that our son Augustine is your husband."