He’s right, of course. But I’m not ready to admit out loud that my revenge plot has gone so far off the rails I can’t even see the tracks anymore.
Instead, I bury myself in work during the day and lose myself in Gigi at night. She’s started sleeping in my bed more often than her own, and I’ve stopped pretending I don’t want her there. We talk for hours in the darkness about everything and nothing, carefully skirting around the bigger issues of captivity and revenge and this.
It’s easier that way. To exist in this bubble where we’re just Luca and Gigi, instead of captor and captive.
Tonight I find her in the sunroom after dinner, sitting on the floor next to Bambi’s enclosure with a book open in her lap. The deer is standing now, his wound healing remarkably well, and he’s eating from her hand with the kind of trust that shouldn’t be possible given how recently he was injured.
“He’s ready,” she says without looking up as I approach. “To be released, I mean. The wound is healed enough that he should be able to survive in the wild again.”
I settle onto the floor next to her, close enough that our shoulders touch. “You did good work,” I murmur, placing an arm around her waist and drawing her close, needing to feel her.
“I got lucky,” she demurs as she lays her head on my shoulder. But there’s pride in her voice. “A few millimeters in any direction and that bullet could have caused damage I couldn’t fix.”
“But it didn’t,” I point out, wanting her to focus on the positives. “And you saved him.”
“Yeah.” She lifts her head up from my shoulder and looks at me. The expression on her face is complicated. She looks happy, but there’s also sadness in her eyes. “I wish I could do this. Really do this, I mean. Not just occasionally treating strays in your sunroom, but pursuing the surgical specialization I always wanted. Building a practice that focuses on complex cases.”
The wistfulness in her voice makes my throat burn. I would give her all the funding in the world to make her dreams come true. “You still could.”
“Right.” She laughs, but there’s no humor in it. “After we get married, after whatever happens with your revenge plan and my father and this whole fucked up situation—I’m sure my veterinary career will be exactly where I left it.”
The sarcasm is deserved, and it’s like cold water has been thrown on me. I’ve destroyed her clinic, ruined her reputation by making her disappear without explanation, and isolated her from colleagues and clients who might have offered opportunities. Even if I let her go tomorrow, her career is probably beyond salvaging.
The thought makes me feel sick.
“I could help you,” I hear myself say. “After the wedding—I could help you set up a new clinic. One with proper surgical equipment, everything you’d need for specialization. I couldconnect you with the right people, pull strings to get you into the training programs you wanted.”
Her eyes widen, surprise flickering across her features. “I—what?”
“A clinic,” I repeat, the words gaining momentum even as some part of me screams that I’m making promises I can’t keep. “Fully equipped for surgical cases. I could finance the additional training, make sure you have everything you need to pursue what you actually want instead of what circumstances forced you into.”
For a moment, she just stares at me. Hope, cautious and fragile, but unmistakably there is clear on her face. “You’re serious. You’re not—” She swallows audibly. “You’re not toying with me? This isn’t some test where I’ll be punished for the wrong answer?”
“No,” I tell her. “I’m serious.” And I am, even though I don’t know how the fuck I’m going to reconcile this promise with the plan that’s supposed to end with her death.
“That’s—that’s more than I ever had before. More than I could have afforded on my own even without—” She gestures vaguely, encompassing everything that’s happened. “That would beincredible, Luca. I could actually do the work I’ve always dreamed of.”
The hope in her voice makes me want to vomit. What am Idoing? I’m offering her dreams and a future when the original plan calls for her to have neither? When Viktor’s alliance gets secured and her usefulness supposedly ends?
The contradiction is suffocating.
“You deserve it,” I manage, and at least that part is true. “You deserve to have your dreams back.”
She’s looking at me differently now. Not with the underlying wariness that never quite disappears between us, but with full emotion, something softer. It looks almost like trust, like maybe she’s starting to believe I could be more than the monster who destroyed her life.
The guilt is crushing. It’s suffocating.
“I-I don’t know what to say.” Tears gather in her eyes now, happy tears. “Thank you doesn’t seem like enough, but—thank you, Luca. Really.”
I pull her against me before she can see the conflict that must be written all over my face. I’m promising her things I don’t know how to give her. I have to destroy her. That’s the plan. And the worst part is that I mean it. Every word. I want to give her this. I want to see her flourish in the way she was meant to before I fucked everything up.
I just don’t know if I can choose her over three years of revenge planning. I don’t know if I’m capable of being the man who keeps these promises instead of the monster who ends her.
“Tomorrow morning,” she says against my chest. “I want to release Bambi at dawn. Will you—” She bites her bottom lip nervously.
My eyes latch onto it, wishing I could capture her lips with mine.
“Will you come with me?”
