And somewhere in the middle of all that, we try to end a war without getting buried in it.
33
LUCA
The Andretti Grandsits on the south end of the Strip like a middle finger wrapped in Italian marble.
I’ve been inside this building a thousand times. Walked through the lobby, cut through the casino floor. Never thought twice about it.
A month ago, I wouldn’t have noticed the noise. Tonight, it’s deafening. Slot machines screaming, chips cracking together, bass thumping from somewhere above, all of it bouncing off marble and glass and hitting me like a wall. The air is freezing and recycled and smells like perfume and whiskey and money.
No salt. No sand. No wind off the water.
I miss the beach house so viscerally it catches me off guard.
The restaurant is half full. Couples, business dinners, a table of women celebrating something with too much prosecco. Normal people doing normal things twenty yards from a back room where my father decides who lives and who doesn’t. I used to beone of the people who belonged here. Now I feel like I’m visiting from somewhere else.
I nod to the soldier posted outside the private dining room door. He steps aside without a word.
Lorenzo Andretti sits at the head of a table that could seat twelve. He’s using about two feet of it. Espresso cup, a stack of papers, a glass of something amber barely touched. Reading glasses low on his nose. He doesn’t look up immediately.
Dario’s here too, standing near the window with his arms crossed. He looks at me the way you look at someone who’s shown up to a funeral in the wrong clothes. Not surprised I’m here. Surprised I have the nerve to look like I’m fine.
Paolo is in a chair against the wall, legs crossed at the ankle, watching me come through the door with an expression I can’t quite read. He gives me one small nod.
Then my father looks up. Takes off his glasses. Sets them down slowly enough that the click of the frames on the table sounds deliberate.
I feel about sixteen.
My father doesn’t stand. Doesn’t smile. Doesn’t saywelcome home.
He just sets down his espresso cup and says, “Well. The prodigal son returns.”
I let the door swing shut behind me. “Nice to see you too, Dad.”
He studies me for a long moment, taking in the healed cut over my brow, the longer hair, whatever else he thinks my face might tell him. “Do you have any idea,” he says at last, calm anddangerous, “what kind of chaos you created by disappearing for nearly a month?”
My voice comes out rougher than I want. “I’ve got a decent guess.”
“Do you?” He folds his hands loosely in his lap. “Because from where I’m sitting, it appears you went off-grid in the middle of a war, ignored every order given to you, and then strolled back into my city when it suited you.”
Dario shifts by the window. “That about covers it.”
My pulse is beating so hard in my neck it feels visible. I had a whole speech worked out on the plane. Not a rehearsed one, exactly, because I’m not that organized, but enough of one to keep myself from sounding like a complete asshole. It evaporates the second I look at my father.
Great. Winging it in front of Lorenzo Andretti. What could go wrong?
So I opt for the truth.
“There was a storm the night I went out there,” I say. “Boat flipped. I took the mast to the head and went overboard.”
Silence. The espresso machine behind the bar hisses faintly, filling the gap where words should be.
Then Dario mutters, “Jesus Christ.”
My father’s eyes flick over my face, sharp and fast, as if checking for damage. “And after that?”
“I don’t remember much of the first day. Not clearly. I woke up on a beach with a concussion, a busted wrist, and no idea who I was.”
