Page 29 of Vow to Claim You

“Luca…” His name leaves me in a ghost of a whisper, lips parting on instinct. Shock, disbelief, something colder than either.

Luca smiles as if he already knows he shouldn’t be here but couldn’t care less.

“What the hell are you doing here?” The cold air stings my lungs as I stare at him, stepping back instinctively. “How did you even get past⁠—”

“Calm down, baby.” He lifts his hands in a soothing gesture. “I came for you.”

He what?

My heart kicks painfully.

“Are you out of your mind?” I hiss. “You can’t be here.”

“I can be anywhere if it means getting to you.” His eyes drag over me with a heat that once made me melt. Now it makes me nauseous. Or perhaps it’s just my fear clawing its way up my throat. “I promised you I would come for you,” he continues, taking a step closer. “And I did. I’ll help you escape this madness.”

“No.” My voice shakes. “No, Luca. I can’t leave.”

His jaw clenches. “What do you mean, you can’t?”

“I’m a married woman.” The words scrape out of me. “I have commitments now. And if I left with you—if I even tried—I could start a war.” My breath fractures as the memory of the gunshot punches through me. “There might already be one after tonight. Someone tried to shoot me.”

“They weren’t aiming at you,” Luca says casually.

My pulse stumbles, brows raise on their own, because… how could he know? “What do you mean?”

“That bullet was meant for him.” His smile grows satisfied. “You were never the target.”

I take a step back, the world tilting beneath my feet. “Tell me you didn’t. Tell me you had nothing to do with it.”

He looks at me like I’m the one being unreasonable as he moves forward instead, fearless in the way only the foolish or the damned can be.

“I did what I had to. It was the only way to free you. If he was gone, you could leave with me. No more chains. No more threats.”

I feel sick. This isn’t him. This isn’t the Luca I knew. The boy who used to bring me flowers and recite poetry under the stars—that boy is gone. Or maybe he never existed at all.

“I created an opening. A moment for you to run. To come back to the life we planned.” He spreads his hands as if the entire world is a small inconvenience. “Remove Aric, and you’re free. Free to choose me. Free to be mine again.” His lips tilt into a delusional smile. “If I take out the king, the queen can finally walk off the board.”

Fear, denial, some desperate refusal to accept the man in front of me has carved his own fate with a bullet twists in my stomach.

“So did I shoot him?” His chin tips down, his grin lingering as he waits for me to confirm he shot my husband, convinced I’ll thank him for it.

I can’t speak. But someone else does.

“You did not.”

Aric.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Aric

Pain blooms in my shoulder like a half-hearted fire. Annoying more than alarming. But Eero is panicking like he’s watching my last breath leave my body.

“For fuck’s sake, it’s nothing,” I mutter as he shoves me into the back seat of the SUV, his voice shaking with a concern I don’t have time for. “Just get me to Kirill.”

Kirill. Our private surgeon. Former ER prodigy turned underworld myth—the kind of man who stitches ghosts back together. One of the few people I actually trust.

Eero drives like the devil is on our tail. Maybe he thinks he is.