Chapter 35 Luca
LUCA
Natalia traces the bite mark on my shoulder like she’s memorizing it.
We should be moving. The clock on the nightstand says we’ve been here too long already, and every minute she’s not back inside her father’s house is a risk. But her fingertip keeps circling that little crescent of teeth marks, and I’m not built to be the one who says stop touching me.
“I got you good,” she murmurs.
“You got me plenty of ways today.”
She smiles, small and private. Then it fades, because it has to, because this is the part where we remember what we’re doing and who we are.
“I need to go,” she says quietly.
“Yeah.” The word comes out rough. “I know.”
She pushes up and reaches for her clothes. I sit up too, helping where I can, tugging her blouse straight once she has it on, catching her wrist when her fingers fumble the button because I don’t want to stop touching her.
When she’s dressed, I reach for my jacket off the chair.
She watches me. “What are you doing?”
I pull the handgun from the inside holster and hold it out butt-first.
Her expression changes immediately. “What the hell?”
“For you.”
“No.” She takes a step back and shakes her head harder. “Absolutely not.”
“If something goes wrong over there, I need you to have something.”
“I am not taking a gun back into my father’s house.”
“It’s better than taking nothing.”
Her chin lifts, stubborn as hell. “Better for who?”
“For me,” I say. “Because I’d prefer not to go insane every second you’re in that place.”
“What if someone found it?” Her voice is firm. “How could I possibly explain?”
“Okay, fine.” I set the Glock on the dresser. “Figured you’d say that.”
Her shoulders loosen a little. “Okay?”
“I came prepared for you to be difficult.”
That gets me a smile.
I grab the small purple device from my bag and press it into her palm. It’s disguised in a cover that makes it look like some harmless little cosmetic thing. She turns it over, frowning.
“What is this?”
“It’s a compromise.”
I take it back, slide off the cover, and press the safety with my thumb. A sharp crackle jumps the air between the prongs.
Nat jerks. “Jesus.”
“Mini stun gun. If somebody grabs you, hit the button, and stick it where it’ll hurt. Neck. Gut. Ribs if that’s what you can reach. Anywhere works.”
She studies it with that focused little crease between her brows that I’m stupidly obsessed with. “This won’t kill anyone?”
I shrug. “Don’t go around tasing senior citizens with pacemakers, and you’re probably fine.”
She huffs out a laugh. “You’re impossible.”
“And yet.” I close her fingers over it. “You like me anyway.”
She sighs and slides it into her bag.
Good. Now maybe I only spend the rest of the night imagining ten different ways this goes bad instead of fifty.
She shoulders her bag and faces me, and this is the part I’m garbage at. The goodbye. Every time feels like reaching into my chest and handing her something I won’t get back.
I pull her in. She presses her forehead against my sternum, and for three seconds, neither of us pretends this is fine.
“You call me,” I tell her. “Anything feels off, anything moves wrong, you call and I’ll get you out.”
“I know.”
“I mean it. Don’t be reckless.”
She pulls back, and her eyes are steady but her mouth is set in a way that tells me she’s already thinking about her father’s office.
“I’ll be smart,” she says. “I promise.”
There’s a tightness under my skin I can’t shake. No reason for it, exactly. Just the ugly certainty that every time I let her walk away from me, something bad is waiting on the other side of it.
I cup the back of her neck. “When you get back, text me.”
“I will.”
“Immediately.”
“Yes, bossy.”
“I’m serious.”
“I know.” Her gaze holds mine. “I’ll text.”
I kiss her once. Then again because once is a stupid number. The second one lingers. Her hand presses flat against and stays there a second after we break apart, like she’s feeling the shape of me through my shirt so she can take it with her.
“Go,” I say, because if I don’t say it now I’m going to lock the door and keep her here like a psycho.
She nods against my chest, steps back, and grabs her bag.
At the door she pauses. Looks at me.
I don’t say be careful again. I’ve already worn the words out.
She opens the door and slips out into the hallway. The latch clicks shut.
The room is too quiet after she leaves, and I sit on the edge of the bed longer than I should. I lace my shoes, check my phone twice. Nothing from Paolo, nothing from Dario. That should be a good sign.
I grab my jacket, holster the Glock, take the elevator down.
The lobby is doing its whole anonymous luxury thing, nobody looking at anybody too long, which is the entire point of a place like this.
I continue down into the parking garage and the temperature drops ten degrees.
Concrete and exhaust and fluorescent tubes buzzing overhead, half of them flickering.
My car’s on the far end near the wall. I click the fob and the taillights flash.
Three rows away. Maybe forty feet.
I slow.
The air feels wrong.
I can’t pin it. No sound, no movement, still, every nerve in me goes sharp. The hair on my arms lifts.
I adjust my path. Angle between two parked cars instead of walking the open lane. My hand drifts upward, fingers brushing the holster through my jacket.
I turn just as a body slams into me from the side.
We hit the ground hard enough to crack my elbow against concrete. Pain shoots up my arm. My gun tears free and skids somewhere under the nearest car. I twist under the weight on instinct, drive my fist into the guy’s throat, buck my hips, and throw him off. He rolls, cursing in Russian.
Bratva.
Of course.
I’m already pushing up when another one comes in swinging from my left.
I duck it, slam my fist into his kidney, and he folds.
But a third guy is already there, and his fist connects with my jaw hard enough to split the inside of my cheek against my teeth.
Copper floods my mouth. I grab his collar, yank him forward into a headbutt, and he staggers.
I get a punch into his ribs, feel a satisfying crunch under my knuckles, but somebody catches me low and drives me back into a pillar. The impact rattles my skull.
Hands grab for me.
I slam my head backward into somebody’s face. Hear a crunch. An ugly shout. I pivot and drive my fist into one guy’s chin hard enough to spin him. He goes down on a knee.
A burst of savage hope hits.
I can still get out.
Then I hear the click behind me. Close. Inches.
Metal kisses the base of my skull, cold and precise, and every muscle in my body locks.
“Hands.”
Fuck.
My arms go up, slow. Blood dripping off my knuckles, chest heaving, tongue probing the cut inside my cheek. I turn around.
Nikolai Kozlov.
This fucking asshole.
Behind him, two more guys. Six total. This was never a fight I was winning.
Veins in his neck stand thick, nostrils flared, as he’s pointing his pistol at me and smiling like the devil’s ugliest nephew.
“Look at that,” he says. “Andretti’s got some fight in him after all.”
I keep my eyes on his. “You always travel with this many people, or am I special?”
His eye twitches. “You’re very special.”
He’s furious. I can see it in the glassy brightness of his eyes, the way his hand keeps flexing at his side.
“Funny thing,” he says. “This wasn’t even hard.”
I frown. “What the fuck are you talking about?”
Nikolai grins. “Finding you.”
“Congratulations,” I snort. “You found a fucking parking garage.”
His smile stretches wider. Meaner. “All we had to do was follow her.”
The garage tilts under my feet.
“What?”
“Your girl,” he says. “She ran straight to you.”
The fluorescent hum overhead is the loudest thing in the garage.
“You’re full of shit,” I snarl.
Nikolai steps closer until we’re almost nose to nose.
“Found her little secret phone,” he says. “Cute hiding spot, by the way. Real creative.”
My gut bottoms out.
He keeps going, voice soft and vicious. “Didn’t get much off it. She was smart enough to clean up after herself. But I got enough to know she was hiding something. So I watched.”
Every word lands like a hammer.
“No,” I say.
“Oh, yes.” He tilts his head. “We watched her leave. Followed her right here. Saw exactly who she was meeting.”
My blood goes cold. Every molecule of air in this garage turns to ice, because the math is simple and the answer is catastrophic.
They tailed her. To this hotel. They watched her walk in, and then they watched her walk out.
And they let her go.
“She’s already on her way home,” Nikolai says, reading my face. A smile. Slow, satisfied, rotten. “Daddy’s waiting.”
Cold rips through me.
She doesn’t know.
She’s walking straight back there blind.
I lunge.
Stupid. I know it’s stupid even as my legs fire, even as my fist cocks back, because there are six of them and one of me and a gun aimed at my skull.
But Natalia is on her way back to that house right now.
She’s going to walk into that office thinking she’s alone, thinking she’s safe, and her father already knows.
I don’t reach Nikolai.
Two of them hit me from the sides. My knees buckle. The concrete meets my face and I taste blood and grit and the heel of someone’s boot between my shoulder blades pins me flat. I twist, fighting, but a second boot finds my ribs and the air leaves my lungs in a rush.
Nikolai crouches down. Close enough that I can see the pores on his nose, the spit at the corner of his mouth.
I strain against the weight on my back. My fingers scrape concrete. Useless.
“If you touch her.” My voice comes out wrecked, barely a rasp. “If you fucking touch her, I will—”
The butt of the gun cracks against my temple.
“Night night, Andretti.” Nikolai’s voice comes from far away.
Light fractures. Sound warps. The garage ceiling swims above me, fluorescent tubes streaking into white smears.
She’s walking straight into a trap.
His second blow takes the lights with it.