Chapter 12 Luca #3
My phone is already in my hand, Danny’s number pulled up, but I don’t press call.
What the fuck am I supposed to say? That I’m losing my grip on this revenge plan?
That watching Giuliana try on wedding dresses is somehow harder than ordering a man’s execution?
That I’m starting to see my mother’s hollow eyes in her face and it’s making me question everything?
No. I can handle this. I just need to maintain distance, remember why I’m doing this, honor Marco’s memory by following through on the plan we both would have wanted.
Except Marco never would have wanted this. He would have been horrified by what I’m doing to an innocent woman. He would have reminded me that justice requires proportionality, that destroying the wrong target for someone else’s crimes isn’t justice at all—it’s just cruelty disguised as revenge.
The boutique door opens behind me. I turn, expecting Madame Rousseau or her assistant, and instead find Giuliana standing there in her regular clothes. That black dress, severe hair, and exhausted eyes.
“I picked the dress,” she says flatly. “They took my measurements for alterations.”
I nod, not trusting myself to speak.
“They want me to come back for fittings. Three more appointments before the wedding.” She wraps her arms around herself against the cool air. “Is that acceptable to you?”
“Yes.” It’s all I can say right about now.
“Good.” She looks away, staring at the traffic moving past us on Michigan Avenue. “Madame Rousseau mentioned that my mother would be so proud to see me as a bride.”
Fuck.
“Giuliana—”
“She died when I was nineteen,” she continues, her voice distant. “Cancer—but wait, you already knew that, didn’t you?” She gives me a sharp, assessing look. “I’m sure you did an extensive background check on me, right?”
I don’t even bother confirming it.
Her shoulders slump. “Cancer took her apart piece by piece over two years until there was almost nothing left. But even at the end, even when the pain was unbearable and the drugs barely worked, she was still her. Still the woman who taught me to be strong, to stand up for what’s right, to never let anyone break me. ”
Her voice cracks on the last word, and I watch her struggle to maintain composure.
“She would hate this,” Giuliana says quietly, still not looking at me and twisting her hands. “She would hate what you’re doing to me. She would hate that I’m standing here in a wedding dress pretending this is something it’s not. And she would be so disappointed that I’ve let you turn me into—”
She stops, pressing her hand to her mouth as her breath hitches audibly.
I need to walk away and let her compose herself without my presence making it worse. But my feet won’t move, and I’m trapped watching her fall apart on a Chicago sidewalk while pedestrians flow around us like we’re invisible.
“She would be disappointed that I’ve become someone who doesn’t fight back anymore,” Giuliana finishes in a whisper. “Someone who just…accepts this because fighting is too exhausting and there’s no point anyway.”
The words land like blows. Not because they’re accusations, though they are, but because they’re an admission of defeat. Of giving up. Of the slow erasure of self that I recognize intimately from watching it happen to my mother.
“Go inside,” I tell her, my voice rough. “You’re cold.”
“I’m not cold.” But she’s shaking, and I can’t tell if it’s from the temperature or from trying to hold back sobs. “I’m just—I can’t—”
Her composure shatters completely. One moment she’s standing there with that careful mask, and the next she’s pressing both hands to her face, shoulders shaking with sobs she can’t contain anymore. The sound of it is broken and raw and wrong in every way that matters.
People are staring now. An elderly couple walking past shoots us concerned looks. A young woman slows her steps, clearly debating whether to intervene.
“Inside,” I say again, more forcefully this time. I reach for her arm, intending to guide her back into the boutique where she can fall apart without an audience.
She jerks away from my touch like I’ve burned her. “Don’t—don’t touch me. Don’t pretend you care. Just—” Another sob chokes off her words. “Just let me cry, okay? Let me have this one thing. Let me mourn what my life was supposed to be before you destroyed it.”
The elderly couple has stopped now, the man pulling out his phone. Shit. The last thing I need is some concerned citizen calling the police because they think I’m abusing my fiancée on a public street.
Which, technically, I am. Just not in the way they’d assume.
“Giuliana.” I keep my voice low, careful, trying to project concerned fiancée rather than crime lord dealing with a breaking prisoner. “You’re making a fucking scene.”
“Good.” She looks up at me finally, her face streaked with tears, her eyes red and puffy. “Maybe someone should see what this really is. Maybe someone should—”
“Should what?” I interrupt, my voice dropping even lower.
“Call the police? Report that you’re being forced into a marriage?
” An ugly laugh escapes me. “You signed the papers, Giuliana. You agreed to this. And even if you tried to claim coercion, who do you think they’d believe?
A respected businessman with half the department in his pocket, or a hysterical woman making wild accusations? ”
The cruelty of my words is intentional, designed to shut down this public breakdown before it becomes a real problem. But watching her face crumple further, seeing the last bit of hope drain from her eyes…
Fuck, it makes me feel like I’ve just kicked a wounded animal.
“You’re right,” she whispers, defeat written in every line of her body. “There’s no point. There’s never been any point.”
She turns and walks back into the boutique without another word, leaving me standing on the sidewalk with the uncomfortable weight of what I’ve just done settling over me.
The elderly couple is still watching. The man still has his phone out, possibly taking photos or video. I meet his eyes and let him see exactly what I am—the kind of man who makes problems disappear, who doesn’t give a fuck about public opinion or concerned citizens.
He pales and hurries away, pulling his wife with him.
When I return to the fitting room, Giuliana is sitting on the white velvet chair with her hands folded in her lap, her face carefully blank. Madame Rousseau is showing her something in a binder—veils, probably, or accessories.
“—and this cathedral-length veil with the French lace would be absolutely stunning with your dress,” the older woman is saying. “Very classic, very elegant.”
“That’s fine,” Giuliana says in a voice devoid of emotion.
“Wonderful!” Madame Rousseau reaches out toward Giuliana’s head. “And for your hair, we typically recommend—”
Giuliana jerks her head away. “Whatever you think is best,” she says quickly.
Madame Rousseau exchanges a quick glance with her assistant, clearly picking up on the tension.
“Of course. We’ll coordinate everything with your stylist closer to the date.
” She closes the binder. “Now, let’s schedule those fitting appointments.
We’ll need to see you three more times before the wedding—”
I tune out the logistical details, watching Giuliana instead. She’s sitting perfectly still, her posture impeccable, but there’s something broken in the set of her shoulders. Something that wasn’t there before our conversation on the street.
I did that. I took whatever fight she had left and crushed it with a few well-chosen words about her powerlessness.
Victory should taste sweet. Instead, it tastes like ash.
The rest of the appointment passes in a blur of scheduling and measurements and enthusiastic commentary about how beautiful the wedding will be. Giuliana participates mechanically, agreeing to everything, offering no opinions or preferences. This is what I’ve always wanted. To break her. To win.
So why does it feel like I’m the one who lost something?
We’re finally released with promises to return for the first fitting in a week. I guide Giuliana to the car with a hand at the small of her back that she doesn’t acknowledge. She slides into the passenger seat and immediately turns to stare out the window.
The drive back to the estate is silent. Giuliana doesn’t speak or move. She barely even seems to breathe. She’s a statue carved from misery, and I can’t stop glancing at her, trying to read what’s happening behind those distant eyes.
My mother used to get this way near the end. Silent and still, like she’d gone somewhere else in her head where my father couldn’t reach her. Like she’d checked out of her own life because being present for it was too painful to bear.
The comparison makes my stomach churn.
We’re almost back to the estate when Giuliana finally speaks, her voice so quiet I almost miss it.
“My mother used to say that the worst kind of death isn’t physical. It’s the death of hope.”
I don’t respond. I don’t know how to respond to that level of raw honesty.
“I used to think she was talking about my father, but I think I understand what she meant now,” she continues, still staring out the window. “You haven’t killed me, Luca. But you’ve killed everything that made me want to be alive. And somehow that feels worse.”
The words knock the air from my lungs and I grip the steering wheel even tighter.
Because she’s right. I haven’t just imprisoned her body.
I’ve destroyed her spirit, her hope, her sense of self.
Everything that made Giuliana Conti who she was before I decided she needed to pay for her father’s cowardice.
I’ve become my father.
The realization hits me with the force of a freight train. Not just intellectually, like I acknowledged to her earlier, but viscerally. Bone-deep. I can see it now with horrible clarity. The parallels between what I’m doing to Giuliana and what my father did to my mother.
The systematic isolation. The control of every aspect of her life. The way I dismiss her feelings and needs as irrelevant to my larger plans. The slow erosion of her spirit until there’s nothing left but a shell going through the motions.
I’ve become the monster I swore I’d never be.
We pull through the estate gates in silence. I park in the circular drive and sit there for a moment, gritting my teeth so hard my jaw starts to ache, trying to process this revelation that changes everything and nothing simultaneously.
“Go inside,” I finally say, my voice rough. “Get some rest.”
Giuliana unbuckles her seatbelt and reaches for the door handle. But she pauses, turning back to look at me.
“Can I ask you something?” she says quietly.
No. “What?” I ask.
“Do you even remember why you hate me specifically? Or am I just a convenient target because actually going after the people who killed your cousin would be too difficult?”
The question catches me off guard. “Your father—”
“Is a weak, pathetic man who was coerced into making a terrible choice,” she interrupts, a flash of her old fire returning. “But that wasn’t the question. I asked if you remember why you hate me. What have I personally done to earn this level of cruelty?”
Nothing. The answer is nothing, and we both know it.
“That’s what I thought,” she says when I don’t respond. “You don’t hate me at all. You just need someone to destroy because you don’t know how else to deal with your grief.”
She climbs out of the car before I can formulate a response, closing the door with controlled gentleness that’s somehow more damning than if she’d slammed it.
I watch her walk into the house, her spine ramrod straight, and I’m struck by how much strength it takes to maintain that dignity when everything else has been stripped away.
She’s right. Of course she’s right. I don’t hate her. I’ve never hated her.
Yet now I’m in too deep to back out. The wedding is in three weeks. The alliance with Viktor Torrino depends on my marriage appearing stable and legitimate. I can’t suddenly call it off or let Giuliana go without raising questions I can’t afford to answer.
So I’m trapped in a revenge plot, destroying a woman who doesn’t deserve it, becoming exactly the kind of monster I’ve always hated.
All because I don’t know how to stop without admitting I was wrong from the start.
I sit in the car for another ten minutes, trying to convince myself there’s still a way forward that doesn’t end with me becoming irredeemable. But every path I can see leads to the same conclusion: I’m already too far gone.
The only question left is how much more damage I’ll do before this is over.