Still, La’Nova didn’t move. Her feet felt rooted as her eyes drifted back to Lennox one more time. Memories hit her all at once. Vividly, she could see her father on his knees begging, her mother screaming. She could smell the scent of her childhood home and her feeling helpless and small, waiting for what was next. Tears burned her eyes, but she didn’t let them fall yet. This wasn’t just revenge. It was the end of a version of herself that had been stuck inside of her childhood home long before tonight.
Her chest hurt because endings weren’t always clean as everyone expected them to be.
“Where’s Lucille?” She asked suddenly.
The question slipped out before she could stop it. Balani’s lips curved into a soft, almost amused smile that didn’t reach his eyes.
“I let her go,” he said.
Relief hit La’Nova fast but it didn’t last as Balani stepped into her personal space. He tilted his head slightly, studying her closer.
“Interesting.” He mumbled more so to himself.
“What?” Her brows pulled together.
“She should be the last of your worries. I’ll soon have to kill her if she decides to come back around for revenge on her husband,” Balani stated coldly.
That was another truth that landed heavy on La’Nova. She swallowed down as her chest tightened again. Luca crossed her mind. Instantly, she felt bad for him because of all the dirty secrets his mom kept away from him. She wondered what was in store for him with a shady ass mother like Lucille still walking around with her chin pointed to the sky.
“She never inquired about you, so don’t worry about her. There’s money in your camper; it’s filled with gas. You need to go. I’ll see you never, my new friend.” Balani winked at La’Nova then stepped out of her personal space.
Chapter 23
A Don’s Love March 20th, 2026
La’Nova snored peacefully, unaware of who sat across from her still as stone. Luca watched her chest rise and fall, he observed that she was in a deep sleep which only meant one thing. She felt safe.
The dim light inside of her camper seemed to soften everything about her. Her heart-shaped face looked younger while she rested. There were no worry lines creasing her beautiful facial features. The scar that ran down the center of her face didn’t crease with each breath she took. La’Nova was in rare form in front of Luca.
To him, she looked like a sleeping angel. He stared at her hard, never blinking his eyes. There was so much confliction pumping through him, his thoughts were fuzzy. From the moment he stepped inside of her camper, his will to end her life got replaced with a bunch of what ifs.
La’Nova’s hair had shrunk into a thick, short fro with tight curls sitting close to her head. Luca studied her for hours. He noticed the slight changes like her weight loss. She also had bruises on her thighs and upper arms that made his jaw tick. The purplenightgown she wore clung to her body in soft folds, and it rose up her thighs each time she shifted in her sleep.
She looked good to him and that irritated him. His grip on his gun tightened as he leaned forward and eyed the markers and sheets of paper she colored before she fell asleep. He rested his forearms on his thighs as his eyes stayed on her.
Luca tracked her for a week and watched her from a distance. He made sure that there was no one else she was working with to go against him. While he had strong feelings for her that he no longer cared to deny, Luca didn’t trust La’Nova at all, given the circumstances of everything.
He always knew what to say and what to do when it came down to his enemies. From the moment he learned of his father being murdered in cold blood, he imagined all the ways he would avenge him. What he’d say to his father’s killer, and how many times he’d pull the trigger.
Now as he sat in her space, breathing in her air, and listening to her snore like it was something that normal men did, he had no clue how he would go about this. It was the number one reason why he decided to travel close to eight hours away from home to see about her, alone.
His gaze dropped to her hands resting over her stomach. Her fingers slightly curled as she shifted again with a small frown covering her face. Luca eyed the extra gun that he put close to her head. Tonight would be a game of Russian roulette.
“You ran…” he whispered.
Luca ignored the pain that zapped down his throat. His chest thumped with raw emotion while the back of his eyes burned.
“I still fucking found you, La’Nova.”
He leaned back in the plastic folding chair, letting his head rest against the wall behind him, eyes never leaving her.
Outside, the canyon stretched wide and endlessly. The mountains surrounded them with a lake nearby that barely moved. Peace lived in the Grand Canyon, and La’Nova fell in love with the scenery alone as she got her thoughts together on the next place she planned to travel to.
Luca understood they were enemies. He even understood now, how she tried her hardest to stay away from him since the beginning. Him being so determined to get her almost brought him to his own ruin. What he didn’t understand was after finding out everything he knew now… he found himself bothered.
Bothered by her running even though he knew she didn’t have a choice. The universe had a sick way of doing things. It aligned two individuals who truly couldn’t be together without overlooking the facts of what brought them together in the first place. It all felt like betrayal and contradiction. Luca cursed himself while sitting there, feeling too weak to pull the trigger hours ago when he first broke into her camper.
La’Nova was the culprit, the one person who ended the life of a man that taught, nurtured, and loved him unapologetically.
