“Not duty to family? Not strategic considerations? Not anything other than protecting her?”
“Nothing other than protecting her.”
“And she knows this?”
“She was there. She saw what happened.”
“That’s not what I asked.” Luca leans forward, his party-boy demeanor shifting into something more serious. “Did you tell her? Did you explain that killing her father wasn’t about eliminating a threat to the Rosso family, but about keeping her alive?”
I’m quiet for a long moment, replaying that night in the warehouse. The gunshot, the blood, the way Kira looked at her father’s body. The silence that followed.
“I told her I couldn’t let him hurt her,” I say finally.
“And?”
“And then everything went to shit. Alexei ran off, Vito started making arrangements for the transition of power, the cleanup crew arrived. We never had a chance to...” I trail off, understanding finally hitting me.
“You never had a chance to actually talk about what happened,” Luca finishes. “About what it meant. About what it cost both of you.”
“I gave her my word,” I admit quietly. “Before all this started, I promised her that her father wouldn’t be killed. That we’d find another way.”
“And when he tried to murder her?”
“All bets were off. But that doesn’t change the fact that I broke my promise.”
“By saving her life.”
“By becoming exactly what she was afraid I’d become. A killer. Someone who solves problems through violence.”
Luca is quiet for several minutes, processing what I’ve told him. Around us, the club continues its relentless celebration—beautiful people pretending their lives aren’t as empty as the bottles accumulating on our table.
“You know what your problem is?” he says eventually.
“Enlighten me.”
“You’re trying to communicate with her like she’s a normal person instead of recognizing what she actually is.”
“Which is?”
“A hacker. A systems analyst. Someone who thinks in code and logic and carefully constructed algorithms.” He gesttures with his drink, alcohol making him more animated than usual. “You can’t just tell her you love her and expect that to override the programming. You have to speak her language.”
“Her language?”
“Code, you idiot. Digital communication. The medium where she’s most comfortable expressing complex emotions and processing difficult information.”
I stare at him, wondering if the alcohol is making him seem more brilliant than he actually is, or if he’s stumbled onto something genuinely insightful.
“You’re saying I should... what? Send her an email?”
“I’m saying you should find a way to communicate that makes sense to someone who’s spent her entire life translating human chaos into clean, logical systems.” Luca grins, clearly pleased with his own wisdom. “Make it a puzzle she has to solve. Make it a code she has to crack. Make it interesting enough that her curiosity overrides her grief.”
“That’s...” I pause, considering the implications. “That’s actually not terrible advice.”
“For someone who’s drunk and high as often as I am, I occasionally make sense.”
“Occasionally.”
“More than occasionally. I’m a fucking genius, and you people just don’t appreciate my intellectual gifts because I choose to express them through hedonistic excess and recreational pharmaceutical consumption.”
