28. Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Six
Luca
T he Volkov meeting was a fucking waste of time.
I knew it would be the moment Demyan's smug face greeted me at the Gramercy Hotel, flanked by men whose hands never strayed far from concealed weapons.
No Dmitri in sight—just his lapdog son with empty promises and vaguer threats.
For ninety minutes, I endured Demyan's circular conversation about bloodlines and heritage, about connections that tied my wife to their family through her father. But when pressed for proof… for the evidence they'd claimed to possess… he offered nothing but smoke and mirrors.
A distraction. Nothing more.
Now, as I race back to the estate, rage burns cold in my veins.
Every false lead, every misdirection, every orchestrated chaos of the past weeks points back to one source: Dante.
My brother has been working with the Volkovs, feeding them information, setting me up while positioning himself to claim the throne.
The Aston Martin's engine screams as I take the corner too fast, tires grinding against wet asphalt. Rain slashes against the windshield, mirroring the storm building inside me.
My phone vibrates with Alessio's call. I answer with a bark: "I'm five minutes out."
"Sir—" His voice cuts through static, urgent and strained. "It's Matteo. He took her."
Ice floods my system, freezing the rage into something harder, colder, more lethal.
"Took who?"
But I already know. I knew the moment I saw his number on my screen.
"Mrs. Ravelli. To Vito's private quarters below the mansion. The old room."
The old room.
Fuck.
The interrogation chamber beneath the east wing where my grandfather once extracted confessions from enemies of the family. Where I watched my first execution at twelve years old.
"Who else?"
"Guards at the entrances. Nico's missing. I've removed those I could without raising alarm, but—"
"I want everyone loyal to me at the east entrance. Now."
I end the call, foot pressed to the floor as the estate looms ahead through sheets of rain. My mind fills with the image of Bianca. Her eyes fierce despite her fear, hands protectively cradling our unborn child as my father reveals whatever endgame he's been planning since before I claimed her that night in the hotel.
I'm pregnant, Luca. With your child.
The words fuel something primal and vicious inside me. Protecting what's mine has never felt more urgent, more necessary.
The security gates part as I approach, the guard's face pale as I screech to a halt in the courtyard. Alessio waits at the side entrance, rain plastering his hair to his skull, weapon already drawn.
"Status," I demand, slamming the car door.
"Four men inside. I can't find Matteo."
I check my own weapon, the cold steel of my pistol reassuringly heavy in my palm.
"Stay behind me," I order, moving toward the entrance. "Anyone who isn't Bianca is expendable."
We move through the mansion, dispatching the first guard we encounter with brutal efficiency. My bullet finds his throat before he can raise the alarm, his body crumpling to the expensive carpet that has witnessed generations of Ravelli bloodshed.
What's one more stain?
The east wing entrance stands half-open, another guard sprawled across the threshold, throat slashed. Alessio's work.
The stairs leading down to the old room stretch before us, concrete worn smooth by decades of fear.
I place my hand on the handle, ready to descend the stairs. This stairwell has witnessed countless men dragged down to meet their fate.
Tonight, it will witness one more.
Alessio moves like a shadow behind me, his breathing barely audible. My most loyal soldier.
The moment I open the door, I spot Matteo. He has his back to us, hand raised to ring the iron bell that alerts the interrogation chamber of an intruder.
Twenty-three years of service flash through my mind. Matteo standing beside my father at my mother's funeral. Matteo teaching me how to clean a gun when I was sixteen. Matteo smoothing legal complications after my first kill.
I shift on the spot and he turns, sensing our presence, and our eyes lock.
There's no surprise in his gaze. No fear. Just a cold resignation that tells me everything I need to know.
He's made his choice.
"Luc—"
"Fuck you."
The bullet leaves my gun before he can finish my name. A perfect shot through his forehead, the same precision he once praised me for. Blood sprays against the wall behind him, a crimson constellation marking the end of a legacy built on lies.
His body crumples, tumbling down the stairs like a discarded puppet, limbs twisting at unnatural angles until he comes to rest at the bottom, face up, eyes still open but seeing nothing.
I step over him without pausing, the blood pooling around his skull soaking into the toe of my leather shoe. I don't look down again.
The dead traitor deserves no more of my attention.
My focus narrows to the iron door beyond the stairs, to what waits on the other side. To who waits.
I can hear voices through the ancient door—Vito's rasp, weakened by disease yet still commanding.
And then I hear Bianca's.
"—a Ravelli now. And we don't break easily."
Pride surges through me. My little hotel maid has become exactly what I knew she could be… a queen worthy of the throne I'll claim tonight.
With one nod to Alessio, I kick the door open.
The scene before me burns into my memory like acid on metal.
Vito sits like a dying king on his wooden throne, oxygen tank at his side, a pistol aimed directly at Bianca's chest. My wife stands before him, chin lifted despite the bruise blooming on her cheek, hair wild around her shoulders, wearing nothing but my shirt from earlier.
"Let her go." My voice cuts through the damp air like a blade.
Vito doesn't flinch, doesn't lower the gun. Doesn't even look at me.
"As always… your timing is impeccable, son." His focus remains fixed on Bianca, finger steady on the trigger. "We were just discussing family loyalty."
I move forward carefully. Each step measured against the tension in Vito's hand, the distance between the barrel and Bianca's beating heart.
"This ends now, Vito." I reach into my pocket, extracting the phone that still contains his death sentence. "I have proof. Your voice ordering Elena's execution."
Something flickers across his face—not guilt, not fear, but something like... satisfaction.
"Ah… so you have. Tell me, Luciano, did you listen to all of it?" he asks, voice almost gentle. "Or only the parts that confirmed what you already believed?"
My finger hovers over the play button. "I heard enough."
"Play it. All of it." Vito flicks his gaze to me for the first time. "Let your wife hear exactly why Elena had to die."
Bianca's eyes find mine across the room. I press play, holding the phone where both can hear.
My father's voice fills the chamber, cold and authoritative as he orders my mother's death. But as the recording continues, words I haven't heard follow:
"Elena plans to take the boys to the Volkovs. She's been feeding them information for months. Their protection in exchange for ours. Make sure Luca sees it happen. Make sure he believes it came from outside. When he's old enough to understand, he'll know what betrayal costs."
The phone slips slightly in my grip. "You're lying. Mother would never—"
"Your mother was leaving me for Dmitri Volkov." Vito's voice hardens. "She was taking my heirs—you and your brothers—straight to our enemies."
The pistol remains steady in his hand, still aimed at Bianca's heart, still capable of destroying everything I've built with a single bullet.
"So you had her killed. In front of me." The rage bubbles up, threatening to consume everything in its path. "You made me watch her die."
"I made you strong!" Vito corrects. "I made you understand that in our world, trust is weakness, boy! Love is a liability ." His gaze shifts to Bianca. "A lesson you seem determined to forget."
In one fluid motion, I raise my weapon, aiming directly at my father's head. "The only liability in this room is you."
Vito smiles the same cold smile I've learned to wear when death is imminent. "You won't shoot me, Luca. Not until you hear the truth about your precious wife."
Bianca trembles slightly, but her voice remains steady. "I already told him everything. About my father. About the Volkovs."
"Did you tell him about the arrangement?" Vito's finger tightens minutely on the trigger. "About how Dante recruited you specifically? How he's been planning to use you against Luca from the beginning?"
The words land like blows to my heart. But it can't be… it can't be true.
"What arrangement?" I demand, not taking my eyes off Vito's trigger finger.
"Ask her about those six months she disappeared," Vito urges. "Ask her why she returned engaged to that nobody, working in a hotel Dante owns through shell companies. Ask her how convenient it was that she happened to be cleaning that specific room the night Malenko was executed."
Doubt flickers like shadow, but I crush it instantly beneath certainty. "She's carrying my child."
"A perfect trap, isn't it?" Vito wheezes, oxygen tank clicking beside him. "Dante and the Volkovs playing the long game. Using the daughter of a traitor to infiltrate the Ravelli bloodline. To give you an heir that carries enemy blood."
The room tilts on its axis, past and present colliding with dizzying force. Elena's betrayal. Dante's manipulation. Bianca's unexpected presence in my path.
"Luca," Bianca's voice breaks through. "He's lying. I never met Dante before you introduced us. I didn't know any of this."
"She's good," Vito acknowledges. "Convincing. Just like her father was before he betrayed us for the Volkovs."
"Enough!" I surge forward, unable to contain the fury that's been building for fifteen years. My hands find the oxygen tube feeding life into Vito's lungs. I twist it in my grip, restricting the flow to my father's failing body.
Vito gasps, face reddening, but the pistol remains steady in his hand, although now it's shifted and is aimed at me.
"You killed her," I hiss, squeezing the oxygen tube tighter, watching him struggle for breath just as my mother must have struggled when her life bled out on cathedral steps. "You made me watch. You used her death to shape me into... this."
"I... made you... strong," he wheezes between desperate gasps.
"You made me a monster." I squeeze the air tighter, watching him gasp.
His eyes lock with mine, something like pride glimmering in their depths. "Yes."
I release the tube fractionally, allowing a thin stream of air to return to his lungs. "Tell me the truth. All of it."
"Elena was leaving. Taking you to the Volkovs." Each word costs him, but he pushes through. "She discovered things. About me. About the family."
"What things?"
"Ask your wife," Vito's gaze shifts to Bianca. "Ask her what the Volkovs have been protecting all these years."
Before I can respond, Vito's oxygen tank explodes from the pressure of my grip on the tube.
The blast throws me backward, smoke filling the chamber as metal shrapnel tears through ancient stone and flesh alike.
Ears ringing, vision blurred, I scramble to my feet, searching desperately for Bianca through the chaos.
"Luca!" Her voice reaches me, panicked but alive.
She emerges from the smoke, blood trickling from a cut on her forehead. I reach for her, pulling her against me, hands checking for injuries, for harm to our child.
"I'm okay," she assures me, clinging to my shirt. "The baby's okay."
Relief floods through me, short-lived as movement catches my eye. Vito, still alive despite the explosion, drags himself toward his pistol that landed several feet away. His face is blackened with soot, blood pouring from a wound in his chest where shrapnel tore through his suit.
I lunge for the weapon, but Vito reaches it first, fingers closing around the grip with surprising strength for a dying man.
He raises it, not toward me, but toward Bianca.
"Your mother died protecting Volkov secrets," he gasps, blood bubbling at the corners of his mouth. "Now your wife will die for the same mistake."
I throw myself forward, but I know I won't reach him in time. The gun steadies in his hand, finger tightening on the trigger—
A shot rings out.
Vito's body jerks, a perfect red hole appearing in the center of his forehead. He slumps forward, dead before he hits the floor.
I turn to find Bianca standing with Vito's backup weapon clutched in her trembling hands, smoke still curling from the barrel. Her eyes are wide, face pale, but her grip remains steady.
She just killed the Don.
My wife. My queen. The mother of my child.
Killed the Don with his own weapon.
I cross to her, taking the gun from her fingers before gathering her against my chest. She doesn't cry, doesn't break, just presses her face into my shirt and breathes.
Vito's body lies twisted among the wreckage of the oxygen tank that kept him alive. Generations of Ravelli power, reduced to a broken old man on a stone floor.
Behind us, Alessio appears in the doorway, weapon drawn, assessing the situation with a single sweep of his eyes.
"Sir?"
"Get a cleanup team," I order, not looking away from my father's body. "No one enters or leaves the estate."
Alessio nods once, already backing away to carry out my commands.
In my arms, Bianca stirs, pulling back just enough to meet my gaze. "Luca, I didn't know. About any of it. About my father, about Dante—"
I silence her with a finger against her lips. "I know."
And I do. Whatever manipulation Vito was attempting, whatever connection Dante might have orchestrated, the truth shines in her eyes. In the way she's looked at me from the beginning.
"What happens now?" she whispers.
I press my forehead to hers, one hand sliding to rest against her stomach where our child grows. Ravelli and Volkov blood combined.
"Now," I say, voice hardening with purpose as I stare at my father's body, "we find Dante."
Vito's final words echo in the chamber. Volkov secrets. Elena's protection. Pieces of a puzzle still incomplete, still threatening everything I've built.
But as I hold Bianca against me, her heartbeat steady beneath my palm, I know one truth with absolute certainty:
Whatever comes next, we face it together.
As king and queen.