Then I ask the question that matters.
"Why, Luca?" I search his eyes, looking for understanding. For recognition. "Whythe fuckam I telling you this?"
"You have a death wish."
"Yeah," I laugh, and the sound comes out hollow, edged with something dark and reckless. "Maybe. But... no."
I pause, letting the silence stretch between us for a heartbeat before I lock eyes with him again. Direct. Unflinching. The kind of eye contact that either gets you killed, or makes your point so sharp it can't be ignored.
"I'm telling you this because everything I think about Rico—every goddamn thing—I think about my father too. Salvatore Bavga." My lip curls with disgust as I say his name. "The great patriarch who can't even offer his own son up for sacrifice right. Can't even execute the one fucking job he had to do to keep the peace."
I reach up slowly, deliberately, and wrap my hand around the barrel of the gun. I press it harder into my own forehead, feeling the circular imprint dig into my skin.
"Killing me won't work, Luca. Youknowthis." My voice drops lower, more certain. "It's not gonna piss him off. It's not gonna make him sad. Hell—" I let out a short, bitter laugh. "—he'll probably call you up himself and say,'Sorry for the trouble. Let me know what I owe you for the cleanup.'"
Luca takes a breath. He knows it's true.
"If it wasn't true—if Salvatore did give a single damn thing about me—I'd already be dead. Not dead here, right now, for this fucking spectacle I'm causing at your place of business. Dead twenty-three years ago, when I was eight years old and tied to a post in a warehouse, starving for ten days straight while your son watched and laughed."
"What do you want, Giovanni? Mercy?" It's Luca's turn to laugh. But it's not a good one. He. Is.Pissed. "You think coming in here, to my place of business, insulting my men, my son, is gonna what? Earn you respect?"
"No," I say. Sharp and final.
"Forgiveness?"
I actually scoff. "Forgiveness? No, Luca. I'm here telling you this because your son was a disappointment. Your son was everything you'renot. Reckless. Impulsive. Cruel without purpose. And my father?" I spit blood again. "Salvatore Bavga is also everything you'renot."
I lean back a little, breaking skin contact with the gun. A signal that we're past that now. I hope. "He's not ruthless, or precise, or patient, or quiet, or deadly. He is none of those things. He isnothing."
Luca sneers at me. "So? What's your point?"
This is it. The make or break moment.
The moment when I learn if I will die in this bank vault, never to be seen or heard of again. Made into a deepfake to taunt my family.
Or.
It's the moment Luca LaRiccia and Giovanni Bavga make history.
So I get to the point. Words spill out of my mouth in a procession that would make Emmaleen proud. The lie I told about Rico raping and killing her, that's the only one in this room right now.
Everything else is the truth.
Every fucking bit of it.
After I finish, Luca's finger rests on the trigger for five seconds.
Ten.
Then—slowly, deliberately—the gun lowers. "You've got balls, Bavga." His voice is flat. Unreadable. "Stupid fucking balls."
The gun slides back into the holster.
"But you're not wrong."
22
Lorcan's arms are warm. Solid. The kind of warm that's supposed to matter when your world implodes.
