Every. Fucking. Word.
The coffee tray slips from her nerveless fingers, shattering against the marble floor in an explosion of porcelain and hot liquid. The sound echoes through the hallway like a gunshot, but no one moves. We’re all frozen—me, Danny, Dimitri, and Gigi—locked in this terrible moment of recognition.
Her full lips part, but no sound comes out. She’s trying to speak, trying to process what she just heard, and I can see her mindworking through everything with that sharp intelligence I’ve always loved and now fear.
“Gigi—” I start, taking a step toward her, my hand outstretched.
“No.” The word comes out strangled, barely audible over the ringing in my ears. “Don’t you fucking dare come near me.”
Dimitri looks between us, and I can see him calculating, trying to figure out how much she heard and what it means. His hand twitches toward his side—an instinctive movement toward where he usually keeps his weapon—and that makes everything infinitely worse.
Danny moves with surprising speed, grabbing Dimitri’s arm and physically pulling him away from the door. Away from Gigi. Away from the disaster that’s unfolding.
“We’re leaving,” Danny says firmly, his voice cutting through the shocked silence with unmistakable authority. “Now.”
“But the boss—” Dimitri starts, still trying to assess whether this is a threat that needs neutralizing.
“Now, Dimitri.” Danny’s voice carries an edge I’ve rarely heard from him, sharp enough to finally penetrate Dimitri’s assessment. “This is between them.Move.”
He practically drags Dimitri down the hallway, but not before shooting me one last look over his shoulder. There’s sympathy there, along with disappointment or even resignation. Then they’re gone, disappearing around the corner, and I’m left alone with Gigi.
Alone with the woman I love and the smoking ruins of everything I’ve built with her.
She’s shaking. I can see it from here, the fine tremor running through her entire body, the way her hands are clenched into fists at her sides so tight her knuckles have gone white. Her chest rises and falls with rapid, shallow breaths that suggest she’s on the verge of hyperventilating or screaming or both.
The coffee is spreading across the floor between us, dark and steaming, creating a barrier that feels symbolic. On one side, me the monster who planned her death. On the other side, her, the woman who trusted me despite every reason not to.
“How much did you hear?” I ask quietly, even though I already know the answer. Everything. She heard every damning word.
“All of it.” Her voice is hollow. She’s still staring at me like she’s never seen me before. Like the man she thought she knew has been replaced by a stranger. “I heard Viktor say to dispose of the prisoner problem, which is my dad. I heard Dimitri talk about moving forward with the Conti girl—withme. I heard him say the plan was always to kill me first, make my father watch, then execute him.” Her breath hitches, and I watch a tear slide down her pale cheek. “I heard you not deny any of it.”
I have no defense. Because she’s right. I didn’t deny it. I couldn’t deny it, because it was true. Thatwasthe plan.
“Gigi, let me explain—” I take another step toward her, desperate to bridge the distance, to make her understand.
“Explain what?” She laughs, and it’s the most broken sound I’ve ever heard, echoing off the marble and making me flinch. “Explain that you were planning tomurderme? That every moment between us was a lie? That every time you held me, every time you made me feel safe, every promise about ourfuture—all of it was just part of some elaborate plan to make my father suffer before you killed me?”
“No.” The word comes out desperately. “That’s not—my feelings for you arereal, Gigi. Everything between us is real?—”
“How can it be real when you were planning tokillme?” The question comes out as a scream, raw and anguished. “How can any of it be real when I was never supposed to survive this?”
“I changed my mind!” I shout, desperate for her to understand. “The plan changed. I’m not going to hurt you—I was never going to hurt you, not after I fell in love with you?—”
“When?” She cuts me off, her eyes blazing through tears. “When exactly did you decide not to kill me, Luca? Before or after we got married? Before or after I started believing we might actually have a future together?”
I open my mouth to answer and realize that there’s no good answer to that question. I didn’t fully decide until recently. Until the past few weeks when watching her transform my life made me understand that following through with the original plan would destroy me as completely as it would destroy her.
“That’s what I thought.” She reads my silence accurately, another piece of her heart visibly breaking. “You don’t even know. You kept me as an option—maybe I’d die, maybe I’d live, depending on how useful I was to your revenge.” She wipes her eyes then wraps her arms around herself. “I was never a person to you. Just something that happened to be more convenient alive than dead.”
“That’s not fair—” I start, but she cuts me off again.
“Fair?” Her laugh is bitter. “You want to talk aboutfair?Youdestroyed my clinic.Youkidnapped me.Youforced me into this marriage.Youmade me fall in love with you while secretly planning my execution. And now you want to talk about what’sfair?”
Each word is a knife between my ribs, and it hurts like hell. Because she’s right. She’s completely, horrifyingly right about all of it.
“I’m sorry,” I say, and the words feel monumentally inadequate. “Gigi, I’m so fucking sorry. I never meant?—”
“What did you mean then?” She takes a step toward me, and there’s pure fury in her expression. Her lips are bloodless, there are bright spots on her cheeks and her eyes—her eyes that used to look at me with such love now look at me with hate. “What did youmeanwhen you planned my death? What did youmeanwhen you made me trust you? What did youmeanwhen you promised me a future you never intended to give me?”
