Page 33 of Vow to Claim You

His throat bobs. I watch the realization settle behind his eyes. If a trained killer couldn’t survive my methods, what chance does he have?

Tassilo steps forward, ready to crack Luca’s skull on my signal. I lift a hand.

Not yet.

“Tell me who helped you breach my home.”

Luca hesitates, and I settle back in my chair, my tone cool, laced with indifference. “Hesitate again, and I’ll make you pray for the bullet.”

Tassilo wheels a metal table between us. A neat arrangement of gleaming steel, each instrument crafted to keep a body alive long enough to beg for death.

I don’t glance at them. My eyes never leave Luca’s face.

“Someone gave you access. Routes. Timings. Gates.” I cock my head. “Who?”

Sweat beads along his hairline. His breathing turns shallow. His jaw locks. For a man raised among diplomats and royalty, he’s lasted longer than I expected. I’ll give him that much.

“I don’t need you to talk.” I rest my hand on the cold handle of a bone saw. “I have ways of finding answers without your cooperation.”

An involuntary wail escapes his mouth, his legs bouncing uncontrollably.

“You know why they call me the Viking?” My thumb idly traces the serrated teeth, and his eyes track the motion. “Not because I’m Scandinavian or because I like axes. But because my reputation isn’t based on killing people. It’s built on making examples.”

“Examples?” He’s shaking so hard he struggles to breathe.

“You see, the Vikings understood something most men don’t. The dead can’t spread fear. The living can.”

People don’t remember the Vikings because they killed. They’re remembered because the Vikings made an example, left living warnings. Left men alive long enough for everyone else to understand the cost of betrayal, and fear has always been more useful than corpses. Death is quick. Fear lasts.

“You’re a sick sadist!” he hisses. His fists clench, but fear tightens everything else.

“I’m not.” My fingers drum on the metal table, almost absentmindedly. “I’m a strategist, Luca.”

If I enjoyed this, I’d be a sadist. I don’t. I simply understand fear. Even brutality serves a purpose.

“So tell me…” I lean forward, lacing my fingers together. “Should I make an example out of you?”

He breaks, and the tears come all at once. His head bows as though whatever hope he had drains away. Only now does he realize he’s chosen the wrong man to cross.

“Last chance.”

“Please, wait—” His resistance collapses. He lifts his head, and his bloodshot eyes dart to mine, pleading.

“Names.”

“Domenico.” His voice shatters as he blurts so fast I barely catch the name. “It was Domenico Conti.”

The room stills. Eero straightens. Tassilo looks at me like he knows the havoc it unleashed inside me, but I show none of it. No spike in my pulse. No change in rhythm. But internally, something goes off like a controlled explosion.

Domenico isn’t just a traitor. He’s proximity. To Chiara. To the past I’ve cut to avoid collateral. If he orchestrated this breach, Chiara’s either in danger…or already part of the equation.

“And what happens now?” Luca whimpers.

I rise, the stitches pulling tight as I straighten my jacket.

“You don’t die.” I regard him with the same detachment I’d reserve for a body on a slab. “Death is a mercy. You haven’t earned it.”

CHAPTER THIRTEEN