Chapter 21 Luca
LUCA
Three words keep clanging through my skull.
Kill Natalia Kozlov.
Paolo’s hands are still locked around my face. He shakes me once, hard, and the yellow glow of the house behind him blurs and steadies and blurs again.
My stomach pitches so hard I taste acid.
“Luca.” He gives me another rough shake. “What the hell happened?”
I wrench free so fast I stumble back two steps, my heel catching in the soft sand. My wrist torques as I catch myself and pain bolts up to my elbow. Good. Pain I can work with. Pain is better than whatever the fuck is happening inside my head right now.
“Get your hands off me.”
“Answer the question.”
“No.” The word scrapes out of me like gravel. “No, I didn’t kill her.”
Paolo goes very still.
Then his eyes harden, and when he speaks again his voice has dropped into a register I haven’t heard aimed at me in a long time.
“Three weeks, Luca.” The voice he uses on people who owe the family money. “Three weeks with zero contact. No check-in. No confirmation. I thought you were dead, and when I finally track you down, I find you sitting barefoot on her deck like you’re on goddamn vacation.”
“It’s not what it looks like.”
“No? Because what it looks like is a catastrophic fuckup. What it looks like is the one job Lorenzo trusted you with going sideways because you couldn’t keep your head in the game.”
The words land exactly where they’re supposed to. Right in the soft center of every insecurity I’ve spent a decade trying to plaster over.
And the thing is, he’s right. He’s so right it makes me want to puke.
“Your father almost sent Dario.”
Fuck.
Lorenzo almost sent my brother.
Which means Lorenzo heard nothing from me for three weeks and his first instinct wasn’t worry. It was replacement. Send the real son. The reliable one. The one who doesn’t crash the car every time you hand him the keys.
Behind Paolo’s face, a memory surfaces, sharp and unwelcome. Me at sixteen, standing in my father’s office. The heavy silence. The way Lorenzo wouldn’t look at me, his disappointment a physical weight in the room. The break-in at Blanco’s house had confirmed what I already knew they all thought.
Reckless. A liability. Not serious.
Ten years I’ve been trying to outrun that kid. This mission was supposed to be the finish line. I begged for it. I swore I could do this. And Paolo, the only one who ever went to bat for me, is standing here now, looking at exactly what he was afraid of.
“I talked him out of it,” Paolo says, yanking me back to the present. “Told him you deserved more time. That there had to be a reason for the silence.” He exhales through his nose. “So I need a reason, Luca. And it better be a damn good one.”
My brain is doing three things at once. Processing ten years of memories that just slammed back into place. Constructing a lie that needs to be airtight. And trying not to think about the woman whose sheets still smell like me.
I drag a hand over my mouth. My head feels like it’s splitting open all over again. From the sick, crushing certainty of what I came here to do and how badly, spectacularly, I have failed to do it.
None of that can show on my face.
None of it.
“A storm got me,” I say.
Paolo does not move.
I sort through the wreckage in my head and pull out the parts that can survive scrutiny.
“The boat capsized. I got clipped in the head when the mast came down. Went overboard. I lost everything. Phone, gear, weapon, all of it. By the time I made it to shore, I was half-conscious and bleeding.”
His eyes sweep over me, taking inventory. The healing gash on my temple. The fading bruises. The parts of the story my body can back up whether he believes the rest or not.
“And then what?” he asks.
I laugh once, short and humorless. “Then I woke up here.”
He folds his arms. “You expect me to believe you floated all the way to her beach and just decided to make the best of it?”
I swallow the urge to tell him exactly where he can shove that tone.
“Natalia found me,” I say. “She didn’t know who I was. At that point, neither did I. Not really. My memory was gone. Or scrambled. Whatever the hell you want to call it.”
Paolo’s eyebrows nearly disappear into his hairline.
That look on his face does me in faster than the shouting.
I know that look. I’ve seen it too many times over the years.
Not just concern. Not just anger. That specific mix he gets when he’s trying to figure out whether I’m actually in trouble or whether I’ve made another mess so stupid it’s offensive.
And underneath all of it, the thing that twists the knife deepest, the thing I have spent half my life needing from him and resenting him for at the same time—the part already calculating how to help me fix this.
I hate that he’s the one standing here. I hate it because if this were Lorenzo, I could get angry.
If it were Dario, I could get defensive.
My uncle just makes me feel sixteen again, standing outside Lorenzo’s office with my pulse in my throat while the men inside decided whether I was ever going to be trusted with anything that mattered.
His voice drops. “How much came back?”
“Enough.”
“How much, Luca?”
“Enough to know where I am and what I’m doing.”
His stare hardens. “Then tell me why Anton Kozlov’s daughter is still breathing.”
I swallow against the sudden dryness in my throat. My pulse kicks hard enough to make my skin feel too tight. I make my shoulders stay loose anyway. I make my face stay flat.
“Because killing her stopped being the only useful option.”
A line appears between his eyebrows. “Bullshit.”
“Believe whatever you want. It’s the truth.”
He takes one step toward me. I hold my ground because stepping back would be worse.
“You had one job,” he says. “One. We gave you the most important play in this whole war, Luca, and I come down here to find you living on the target’s property. So try again.”
The words land like a fist to the sternum. Not because he’s wrong. He’s not.
We gave you the most important play.
Not a favor. Not a pity assignment. Not something to keep me occupied while the real men handled the real work. I wanted it because it mattered, because I was sick to death of being looked at like the spare son, the reckless one, the guy everybody had to work around.
I had wanted one clean shot to prove I could carry something heavy without dropping it.
Now Paolo is looking at me like I’ve done exactly that.
“I’ve been getting close to the target.” I hate the defensive note in my voice.
He scoffs. “Getting close.”
“Gaining her trust. Extracting information.” I hold his stare and shove every screaming nerve in my body behind a wall of false composure. “Kozlov is trying to make an alliance with a Colombian cartel.”
That gets his attention. Just a flicker, but it’s there. The anger doesn’t leave, but something calculative slides in behind it, the way it always does when Paolo smells an angle worth working.
“Which cartel? Who’s brokering?”
“I don’t have names yet.”
I can feel the moment the flicker dies. His mouth flattens and the calculation hardens back into judgment.
“That’s what you’ve got after three weeks.” Not a question. A verdict.
“It’s not nothing.”
“I didn’t say it was nothing. But it’s pretty fucking thin.”
My hands curl at my sides. “I’m close.”
Paolo lets out a short breath through his nose. “Close to what? You don’t have names. You don’t have terms. And Kozlov’s daughter is still alive.”
I don’t answer.
Can’t.
Because every word out of his mouth keeps colliding with the same truth. Natalia at the kitchen counter. Natalia in that dress. Natalia in her bed, my real name on her lips like it changes everything.
My stomach turns.
“Seriously Luca, why are you still here?” he presses. “You’ve got some intel. That’s helpful. But the job is the job.”
“Because it’s incomplete,” I shoot back.
“An alliance is one thing. The terms, the routes, the players… that’s the real prize.
It’s bigger than taking out Kozlov’s daughter, and I’m the only one in a position to get it.
” I’m selling this too hard. I can hear it.
Dial it back. “Give me more time and I’ll get the rest.”
Paolo studies me. That long, quiet read he does where you can feel him peeling back layers, testing each one for give. I learned a long time ago that you can’t out-stare Paolo Andretti. You just have to hold your ground and hope your face is saying what you need it to say.
He turns away, pacing a few steps down the sand before turning back. The anger is still there, but now it’s laced with something else. Frustration. The weight of a decision he doesn’t want to make.
“You’re playing with fire, Luca.”
“I’m doing the job,” My voice is steady, thank god. “I’m getting more out of it.”
“Is that what this is?” He steps into me, his voice dropping again. “Or did you just get distracted? Lorenzo gave you this chance. I told him you were ready.”
The shame is hot and acidic in my throat.
“I am ready,” I force out.
“Then prove it. You have one week. Get the rest of your intel and finish the primary objective.”
He reaches into his pocket, pulls out a folded stack of cash and a torn piece of paper, and shoves both at my chest. I catch them automatically.
“Here,” he says. “For a burner and whatever else you need. Call that number within twenty-four hours to check in. No exceptions. No excuses.”
I stare down at the paper in my hand for a second, at the hard slant of his writing.
Then his next words make my blood go cold.
“If the week runs out and it’s not done, I tell Lorenzo everything I saw here tonight. And if Lorenzo sends Dario after that, there won’t be a conversation.”
The surf seems to get louder. Or maybe that’s just the rush of blood in my ears.
Dario.
My brother’s face flashes through my head.
Calm where I’m not. Steady where I never seem to be.
Trusted without having to ask for it. Loved without having to fight so hard for proof.
He’d never say it cruelly. That would almost be easier.
He’d just look at me with that tight line between his brows and ask what the hell I was thinking, and somehow that would be worse.
Because underneath it would always be the same thing.
Can you blame me for expecting this from you?
I squeeze the cash so hard that the edges bite into my palm.
Paolo’s voice drops a fraction. “Do not make me do that.”
“I won’t,” I say, trying not to let anything show on my face.
It’s a lie and not a lie. I won’t make him do it if I can help it. I just have no fucking clue how I’m supposed to stop the train that’s already halfway off the tracks.
Paolo searches my face one last time. Maybe he sees more than I want him to. Maybe he sees exactly enough. Not enough to blow up the whole thing tonight, but enough to know this is not clean. Not even close.
His hand comes down on my shoulder, heavy and brief.
Not a hug. Not comfort.
Just pressure. A warning. A reminder. Family and threat all tangled up in one simple touch.
“You begged for this job.” He squeezes my shoulder. “So finish it like a man who was worth trusting with it.”
Then he steps back, turns, and starts walking down the beach without another word.
I watch him go until the dark swallows him.
The tension doesn’t leave with him. It coils in my gut, a venomous snake.
I barely make it to the side of the porch before my stomach comes up hard and vicious, acid burning the back of my throat, one hand braced against a support post while the other still crushes the cash and Paolo’s number into a damp, wrinkled mess.
My whole body shakes with it. Once. Twice. A third time that leaves nothing but sour spit and the kind of emptiness that feels worse than being sick.
I stay bent over, breathing through my mouth.
The night air feels cold against my bare back now. The boards under my hand are rough and splintered. Somewhere above me the porch light buzzes faintly, the warm glow catching on the railings Natalia leaned against while she smiled at me over her coffee.
I straighten too fast. The world tilts. Black spots swarm the edges of my vision and then clear.
One week.
Most guys just bring home the wrong girl for Thanksgiving. I had to go fall for an assassination target.
Seven days to kill her, or come home with something that justifies why I haven’t.
Kill her. Put my hands around the throat I was kissing an hour ago and squeeze. She’s out with Ronnie right now, probably laughing, probably thinking about coming home to me, and I’m supposed to be planning her murder.
I drop onto the top step before my legs give out completely.
I can’t kill her.
The thought arrives like a reflex, and I don’t know what to do with it.
Because I can’t kill her is not a plan. It’s not even the beginning of one. It’s just the thing that’s true sitting in the middle of everything else that’s also true: the deadline, the cash in my hand, my father, a war that won’t pause because I caught feelings for the wrong woman.
I need to think. I need to figure out what comes next, what I tell Paolo tomorrow, what I do when the week runs out and the only answer I have is the same one I have right now.
I scrub both hands over my face.
This is bad. This is so fucking bad.
I don’t know whether there’s any version of this that doesn’t end in blood.
A car door slams somewhere up the road.
My head jerks up so fast my neck protests.
For one panicked second I think she’s back already. But no. Too far. Wrong direction. Somebody else.
Still, the sound shoves me to my feet because I can’t have Natalia come home and find me on the steps with puke in the sand and panic on my face.
My legs feel strange, like they belong to someone who has run too far on too little sleep.
I make it as far as the screen door before I have to stop again, palm flat against the frame. Going back into that house suddenly feels impossible.
The kitchen still smells faintly like coffee and the soap Natalia uses on the dishes. Her medical textbook is on the counter. Her hair tie sits beside the sink. The whole place is full of her in a hundred small ways. Soft ways. Ordinary ways.
Ways that make the kill order feel monstrous.
I stand there staring into the dim kitchen, waiting for a plan to show up.
Nothing comes.
Just the same hard truth, over and over.
I can’t kill her.