LUCA
Imake it three steps down the hallway before my legs stop working.
I grab onto the wall to stay upright, trying to remember how to breathe. The music from the club pounds through the walls—bass that matches my heartbeat, voices that sound like they're coming from underwater.
Giulia. It was Giulia.
The thought keeps circling, refusing to become real. If it's real, then everything else—every moment, every touch, every word—becomes something else entirely.
I see her face in my mind. Not the face I just saw—tear-streaked and desperate and achingly familiar, but Valentina's face. The woman I met that first night. Auburn wig, heavy makeup, a confident smile. Except it wasn't Valentina.
It was never Valentina.
It was Giulia wearing a disguise, pretending to be someone else and lying to me with every breath, every kiss, every time she let me inside her body. My stomach lurches, and I have to close my eyes against the wave of nausea.
The first night. That first night, when I thought—God, I thought she was exactly what I needed. Someone anonymous. Someone safe. Someone who wasn't Giulia fucking Ciresa. But she was.
She was Giulia the entire time.
I remember the way she hesitated when I asked her name. The slight pause before she said "Valentina." I thought it was nerves. Thought she was shy, uncertain, maybe a little scared of what we were about to do. But it wasn't nerves. She was choosing which lie to tell me.
And I took her virginity.Fuck. All the things I thought were just hesitation and nervousness were her not knowing what to really do. That first time…
It washerfirst time.
My hands are shaking. I press them flat against the wall, trying to ground myself, trying to stop the trembling that's spreading through my entire body. Every conversation replays in my head, recontextualizing into brutal clarity.
"Tell me something real. Something true about you."
She'd told me about feeling trapped. I thought she was being vulnerable, that she was letting me see past the mask, but it was Giulia's truth, not Valentina's. She was describing her own life, her own prison, her own desperate need for escape. And I was too fucking blind to see it.
"There's never been anyone else. Only you."I remember how those words made me feel—possessive, protective, like I'd found something precious that belonged only to me. But that was a lie, too. I know Giulia hasn’t been with anyone but me, but there has been someone else this whole time. She was using me to… to what? Make sure Alessandro wasn’t her first? Get back at him and her father for forcing her into marriage? She used me, and I…
My chest constricts, making it hard to breathe. I wanted Giulia. I wanted her so badly it was destroying me from the inside out. And I had her.
I had her in almost every way possible, and I didn't even fucking know it.
I remember the way Valentina moved. The way she touched me. The sounds she made when I was inside her. The way she looked at me like I was everything she'd ever wanted. That was Giulia.
Giulia's hands on my skin. Giulia's body beneath mine. The woman I've been obsessed with for years was right there, and I was too stupid to recognize her.
My hands curl into fists. The shaking is getting worse. I can feel the rage building—hot and violent and absolutely consuming.She lied.
She lied to my face, let me confess things I never would have said if I'd known who she was, let me touch her in ways I never would have dared, let me fall for someone who didn't even exist.
Giulia, who knows exactly what I am—a soldier, a killer, a man who's sworn loyalty to her father. She knew all of that, and she still let me believe I was confessing to a stranger. The betrayal is so complete I can barely process it.
Every intimate moment we shared—every time I was vulnerable with her, every time I let my guard down—she was lying. She was playing a role. She was manipulating me into doing things I never would have done if I'd known the truth.
The hallway tilts, and I have to brace myself against the wall until the dizziness passes.Romeo's sister.The words echo in my head like a death sentence. I've been fucking Romeo's sister. The man who's closer to me than my own blood. The man who trusts me with his life, with his family's safety, with protecting the people he loves most, and I've been betraying that trust.
I remember Romeo asking me if I was okay, noticing that something was off. And I'd lied to him. Told him I was fine when I was falling apart inside because I was falling for a woman I thought I could never have.
Except I did have her. I had her, and I didn't even know it, and now?—
Now Romeo will have every right to kill me.
The thought should terrify me, should make me want to run, to disappear, to put as much distance between myself and the Ciresa family as possible. But all I feel is rage. Because she did this. She put me in this position. She made me complicit in a betrayal I never agreed to, never wanted, never would have chosen if I'd had any fucking say in the matter.
