I can’t afford to see Luca as anything but the enemy. My survival depends on it.
But the image of him laughing in that photograph, young and happy and whole, is burned into my brain.
And I’m terrified that I’ll never be able to see him the same way again.
The secret about the killer sits heavy in my chest, growing heavier with every moment I don’t speak it.
But I stay silent because I’m terrified.
I’m terrified of what would happen to me if I exposed him. I’m terrified that the information might make me too valuable to kill or too dangerous to keep alive.
I don’t know which fear is stronger, and that paralysis keeps the truth locked in my throat.
Either way, I’m in more danger than I’ve ever been. Not from Luca’s revenge or his enemies or even from the fate he has planned for me.
I’m in danger of forgetting who I am and why I need to keep hating him.
10
LUCA
I haven’t seen Giuliana in three days.
Not because she’s avoiding me (she’s locked in her suite, unable to leave without escort) but because I’m avoidingher, which is pathetic considering this is my house, my territory, my empire.
But every time I think about going to her room for our nightly dinners, my feet take me somewhere else. The gym. My office. Anywhere but the second floor where she’s trapped with the memory of what happened between us.
The whiskey in my glass catches the afternoon light streaming through my office windows, amber liquid that’s supposed to help me think clearly but only makes the contradictions sharper.
I’ve been drinking more lately. Not enough to impair my judgment, but enough to dull the edges of thoughts I don’t want to examine too closely.
Three days since I found her in my private office, staring at photographs of Marco like she had any right to see them.
Three days since she looked at me with those dark eyes full of empathy I don’t want and told me she understood grief.
Three days since I admitted—out loud, like a fucking idiot—that Marco’s death wasn’t her fault.
“It wasn’t your fault.”
I slam my open palm on my desk, barely registering the sting of pain. I can’t believe I said that.
I can’t fucking believe I let my guard down enough to speak the truth that’s been eating at me since the night I took her against the wall of her bedroom.
Because it isn’t her fault. Giuliana didn’t betray anyone, sell intelligence, or choose any part of this nightmare. She’s collateral damage in a war she never enlisted in, and I’m the one punishing her for crimes she didn’t commit.
But someone has to pay for Marco. Someone has to suffer the way I’ve suffered. And if not Antonio’s daughter, then who?
I was never able to trace down who the man who orchestrated it all.
The photograph on my desk—Marco at that barbecue, laughing with his whole face—seems to judge me.
I turn it face-down, but that doesn’t erase the image from my mind or the sound of Giuliana’s voice saying,“You looked so happy.”
I was happy. Before Marco died, before revenge consumed everything good in me, I was capable of happiness. Now I’m just…this. A man who destroys innocent women and calls it justice.
My office door opens without a knock, and Danny strides in with the kind of urgency that means trouble.
His eyes are hard and he’s carrying a tablet and a thick manila folder that suggests this briefing is going to take a while.
