Silence follows. Dense and heavy and alive with everything I’ve just made real.
Luca doesn’t flinch.
He doesn’t tell me I shouldn’t say things like that. Doesn’t look at me like I’ve turned into something ugly right in front of him. He just stands there with his eyes on mine, breathing like the air in the room got heavier all at once.
I let out a laugh that sounds nothing like laughter. “Well.”
His brow pulls tight.
“There it is,” I say, wiping at my face with the heel of my hand even though another tear is already slipping free. “The part where you realize I’m just as bad as the people I came from.”
His expression changes instantly. Hardens. “No.”
“No?” My voice cracks. “Luca, I just said I’ve thought about my father dying.”
I pause.
“Not just thought about it.” My laugh scrapes out thin and ugly. “Wanted it. There were nights I wanted the call. Wanted someone to tell me he was dead so I could finally breathe.”
The words hit the room and keep going, like they’ve been waiting years for daylight.
“There were nights I lay there and felt relieved just imagining it,” I say, quieter now, more wrecked. “Relieved.Do you understand how sick that is?”
“You said you’ve spent your whole life under a man who treats you like a thing he owns.” He takes another step, slow enough that I could stop him if I wanted to. “You admit that he was never going to let you go.”
I scoff. “That is a very generous interpretation.”
“It’s the true one.”
I shake my head, but weakly now. I don’t even know what I’m arguing with anymore. Him. Myself. The words still hanging in the air between us.
“You should be disgusted.”
“Why?” His voice drops, rough and fierce. “Because you finally said out loud what kind of man Anton Kozlov is? Because you realized he’s not going to wake up one day with a conscience and let you walk away?”
My throat works, but nothing comes out.
Luca stops in front of me. His hand comes to rest on the edge of the counter beside mine, near enough that I can feel the warmth of his skin without any actual contact. An inch between his fingers and mine. The whole room narrows to that strip of air between us.
“I’ve wanted him dead for years,” he says. “Not because he insulted us. Not because of pride. Because men like him don’t stop until somebody stops them.”
The words hit hard because they line up too neatly with the ones that have been living in my head for years, half-formed and poisonous.
I look down at the blanket crushed in my fists. “I hate that I’ve thought it.”
“I know.”
“I hate that some part of me meant it.”
“Nat,” he says quietly, “wanting the man who’s spent your life terrorizing you to lose his hold over you does not make you him.”
My eyes close for one beat.
Because that is too close to mercy, and I am not built for receiving it right now.
When I look at him again, he’s still there.
“You said it yourself. If he stays where he is,” Luca says, “he forces the marriage. He locks in whatever deal he’s building. Your life will never be your own. And if my family backs off, that just means one threat disappears. Not the real one.”
