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“Not everyone is born a killer, sweetheart. I can do it for you if you want?”
Bang. My finger presses the trigger of its own accord.
It happens so quickly I’m reeling with the devastation.
Ivan slumps into his chair a bullseye shot to the head. My heart’s pounding amidst the eerie silence. Suddenly I feel alone again. Tears stream down my face uncontrollably as I’m reminded of my mother. Her body limp, and me sitting next to her screaming for her to wake up. Knowing she never does.
She left me alone and now the only thing I had left was to follow her, to fight for her, when no one else did—was gone. Adrenaline is coursing through me as Luca steps around to face me front on. As much as I’ve hated him all these years I can’t seem to look away from Ivan’s body. Yet somehow it still feels like he has power over me. Like this still isn’t enough. Because it still doesn’t bring her back.
Luca forces me to look at him by angling my chin in his direction.
He wipes the streaming tears from my eyes. “Don’t ever let anyone else see you like this. Only me.”
My eyes well even more because I never have. When I was a child, and I cried for nights on end for my mother, my father threw me to psychologists to study me like a lab rat. I realized quickly it was only seen as a weakness that was punishable. Yet in front of Luca, the last person I should show this to, I can’t help but crumble.
Slowly he plucks the gun out of my hand. I don’t want to let it go but the moment he does the startling truth sinks in. I killed a man. And I don’t feel remorse. Tarnished perhaps, but I’m left with a mourning in its wake.
“It’s all right, sweetheart. You avenged her.”
My world crumbles and my legs give out, but Luca is there to catch me. He picks me up and cradles my face close to his chest as I begin to wail. A heart-breaking cry bleeds through the pent-up frustration and years lost have finally come to an end.
“You did it now. He’s gone,” Luca whispers quietly.
I don’t know how and I don’t know why he understands me so fundamentally. But I can’t stop hiding in the crook of his neck grateful to have his warmth around me instead of being alone in the corner of a room like all of those years ago.
Broken.
I knew my revenge would take something from me.
I didn’t realize it would uncover something uglier in its wake.
And that is the pain and mourning I’d carried for all these years.
In his death I have found an unsettling feeling of humanity.
Something someone like me doesn’t deserve.
52
LUCA
For the first time in my life, I handed over my prey as if it was a plaything to impress a girl. Ara’s passed out in my arms, her jacket fanning around her after hours of crying. She fell asleep sniffing and wailing and I respected a kill does something different for both of us. Where it might at times make me insatiably horny and fixated to be ten inches deep in her, I resisted my own urge.
Because unsuspecting to both of us, she fell apart. I didn’t think it’d be like this. The back of my knuckle grazes down her neck pausing at the tip of her collarbone and the edge of her scar. The moment I’d realized Ivan had ever put a blade to her throat I’d intended to kill him. It took me a while to figure out he wasn’t with Dario that fateful night like he should’ve been.
Without Ara’s meddling and burning down one of my clubs I most likely would’ve called Ivan back within a few days anyway but she only prompted my realization. I was as equally impressed by her balls to burn down one of my clubs. Unfortunate for my brother but I rather enjoyed that cutthroat edge about her that she’ll trample on anyone to get what she wants.
We were the same. But inside this little viper was something still tender. Something that needed to be protected and loved. I wasn’t accustomed to such things but I would try for her. Whatever she needed and whenever. Because the reality is I’d already fallen to my knees for her long ago.
A day I thought would never come. It took me a while to recall all of the photos in her little secret room weren’t entirely of me. I realized the majority involved Ivan. The easiest way to Ivan was through Dario and me.
She wasn’t after a something but a someone that night she walked into the mansion. It’s just a shame for her I was here instead. It was a chance encounter that I turned the flight around because of the drugs that had gone amiss. A night before or after she might’ve slipped through my fingers entirely.
Now, I have no intention of letting her go.
Ivan’s head is still hung low at the end of the room. I hadn’t yet let any of the cleanup crew enter the room because I didn’t want to stir Ara awake.
A few hours into the night however I decided it was time to remove her. She’d done what she came here for.
