I knew this moment was coming, but all the mental preparation did nothing to warn my heart against the love I feel for him.
I spent hours combing through the USB drive and every secret it contains. I read the files until my eyes burned and my hands shook and the scope of what Luca Valentina built from the shadows became so vast it took my breath away.
Hours of learning who the Red Letter Syndicate truly is, not just the dangerous men who control Chicago's underworld, but the men who read desperate wishes and try to help people.
Hours knowing that the man standing in front of me found my wish. I don’t know for certain if he has it, but I’m about to find out.
I rest my hands on my belly and start with the one thing he never saw coming.
"I know about the wishes."
His brows rise a fraction in understanding.
My voice comes out steady, grounded. I could have started with a million different things to talk about, but finding out he and the brothers are the ones behind the Red Letter wishes caught me off guard. Again.
"I know you and your brothers are the men behind the red envelopes. You found mine didn’t you?" The pause I let settle between us is deliberate, a beat of silence that lets the words land before I deliver the one that will strip him bare. "In all the chaos and emotions, I almost forgot about it."
His lips part around a breath that doesn't quite make it out of his chest.
"Yes."
Luca comes closer until he’s standing right in front of me. I can feel the warmth of his body heat and I want to fall into his arms and forget about everything. Forget the lies, my father, the mistrust.
I raise my chin and latch my gaze to his. "I’m curious. What did you think I meant with my wish?" My fingers press against the curve of my belly, anchoring myself to the one truth in this room that has never been a lie. "By 'make my mistake disappear'?"
I never meant to hurt anyone with my words despite having others hurt me.
He is quiet for a long moment, his hands hanging at his sides, fingers curling and uncurling against the denim of his jeans in a rhythm that matches the pulse I can see jumping at the base of his throat.
His hands slide into his pockets. "I thought you meant the baby at first." His voice is rough and dark. "Or me. Or all of it."
I tilt my head a fraction. "And you stayed anyway."
"I would have stayed if you wished me dead." The words carry no drama, no performance that I can find. I only hear flat certainty. "I would have understood and I would have accepted that you considered this a mistake. And then I would have spent my entire life figuring out how to show you we were never a mistake."
The sincerity in his voice scrapes against the rage I've been nursing, the carefully tended fury I've been stoking like a fire I wasn't ready to let die. Because being mad is easier than missing him.
"I meant trusting you." The words climb out of a place I've been guarding so fiercely that releasing them feels like removing stitches from a wound that hasn't fully healed. "I meant letting myself believe it was real. I meant being stupid enough to fall for a man in a mask, of all things."
"You made me believe I was special."
"You made me believe you saw ME, not my father's name, not my value as leverage, not what I could be used for, ME! And the whole time you were cataloguing my bodyguards' schedules and intercepting my medical records like I was a fucking case study. Do you understand the betrayal I feel?"
Despite my control, I feel my voice rising despite trying to contain my anger.
My voice bounces off the walls of Luna's guest room, too loud for this small space, and somewhere down the hallway a door closes softly as someone gives us the privacy to destroy each other.
"I DID see you." He closes the little distance between us, his voice matching mine.
His dark eyes blaze with a heat. "That's why I couldn't go through with it! That's why I gave you a cover name and walked away! Because you were real and I wasn't, and I knew if you ever found out who I really was, you'd look at me exactly the way you're looking at me right now."
He peers down at me with those dark eyes and a chill runs through me.
"And how is that, Luca?" My voice drops to something low and dangerous, trembling with the effort of holding back the tears that are trying to dissolve my fury.
"Like I destroyed the only beautiful thing I've ever been trusted with."
The words hit me in the chest. My eyes sting and my throat closes. I inhale slowly but it doesn’t keep my hands from shaking at my sides.
