Chapter 23 Luca
LUCA
Two pink lines.
The world stops. Not slows—stops. Like someone hit pause on a movie I thought I understood, and now every frame before this moment feels like a lie.
Pregnant. Belle's pregnant. With my child.
The emotions hit in waves: shock, then rage, then something deeper—a terror so profound it makes my hands shake. Because I've been here before. I've loved a woman carrying my child, and I've watched that love turn to ash and screaming metal.
A flash. A sound that isn't sound so much as absence, like the world skipped a frame and came back wrong.
I bend and pick the test up off the floor. It's small. Stupidly light for the way it detonates my life. One more life for me to protect, and I didn't even know about it.
I can't believe Belle kept this from me.
I look up. Belle's got my shirt on, knuckles white at her sides. Her eyes are glassy, proud, terrified. It wrecks me.
"You lied to me," I say.
She swallows. "I—"
"You were going to sneak out again, during a lockdown week, right after an attack." I hold the test up between two fingers. "You were going to do this alone?"
"I didn't know how to tell you."
"Try not lying." I hear the snap and hate it, but I don't pull it back. "You think I haven't lost enough to secrets in this house?"
"Luca—"
"Elena died because of me," I say, the words ripping from somewhere deep.
"Car bomb. They wired our sedan, but the explosion was meant for me.
She took my keys that morning because I was running late, and she hated being late for anything.
I watched her get in." My voice cracks. "I watched her turn the ignition.
I was still on the front steps when the world caught fire. "
She takes a sharp breath and clutches her heart. "Luca, I'm so sorry… I didn't know."
The room tilts; I anchor on the counter. "I stood there like a fucking statue while the world burned five feet from me and there was nothing to pull her from. Nothing left to hold onto except a ring the paramedics put in a bag."
Belle's eyes well up. "I'm so sorry."
"So don't you dare make me watch another woman I love walk into danger because she thinks she has to do it alone." The word rips low from my chest. It's too honest. I hear it. She hears it.
"I was scared." Her voice cracks.
"Scared of what, Belle?" I hiss, still so fucking mad I could punch a hole in the wall.
"Of hoping. Of making it real before I know it's… for certain. I didn't want this—" she gestures helplessly between us, "—to be a reason you kept me."
The notion offends me so fast I taste blood. "As though I wouldn't have kept you anyway?"
Color rises in her throat. "That's not what I meant."
"It's exactly what you meant." My chest is a vise. The truth of it scares me too, because it's realer than anything. Because I would keep her anyway. "You think I need an excuse to claim you?"
She flinches. "I don't want to be a cage you build for yourself out of guilt, grief, or duty."
"It was never duty."
We stare at each other over the little plastic bomb in my hand. I don't know what to do with the storm inside me, so I do the only thing that doesn't involve breaking something in this room.
I leave.
Son of a bitch. This isn't how I hoped to learn I'm to be a father again. Belle really screwed up and it's impossible to stay mad at her, but right now, I need to clear my head.
I need space.
I walk down the hall, past Bruno curled like a boulder, down the back stairs to the gym. It's empty, thank God. I don't have the patience for small talk or the self-control not to put someone through a wall right now.
I wrap my hands quickly, sloppily, and face the heavy bag, apologizing for the wrath it'll soon face.
First punch: Belle lied.
Second punch: There's a baby.
Third: My brother wants me dead.
Fourth: Elena died because of me.
Fifth: It could happen again.
The sixth punch lands so hard the bag swings wildly. I follow it, striking again and again, letting the pain in my knuckles drown out the chaos in my head.
A baby. My baby. Inside Belle. My Belle.
When did she become mine? When did I start thinking of her that way?
I slam my fist into the bag again, harder, until sweat pours down my face and my lungs burn for air.
Elena's face flashes before me—laughing, alive, before I ruined her. Before loving me got her killed.
Will Belle be next? Will I find her broken and burning because someone wanted to send me a message?
And now there's an innocent life that never asked to be born into this nightmare.
I hit the bag until my arms feel like lead and my brain finally, mercifully, goes quiet. Until there's nothing but the rhythm of impact and breath.
My phone buzzes against my leg. Once. Twice. On the third buzz, I answer with blood on my knuckles and murder in my voice.
"What?"
"Boss, we got a situation." Vito's voice is tight. "That offshore money thing you mentioned? Word's spreading like wildfire. Half the families are calling you a traitor. The other half want your head."
My trap for Declan just became a noose around my own neck.
"How fast is it spreading?"
"Phones are lighting up all over the city. Someone's making calls. Big ones."
Declan. It has to be. He took the bait, and now he's mobilizing.
"Lock it down," I order. "Every property. Every business. Every man."
"Sir?"
"Full internal lockdown, Vito." My voice finds the register that moves men. "No one leaves. No one talks. Until we find every traitor and threat."