Chapter 16 Luca #2
“Shh,” I murmur against her hair, breathing in the scent of her shampoo mixed with antiseptic and the faint copper of blood.
My lips ghost across her temple, then lower to press against the sensitive spot just below her ear.
She shivers in my arms, and I feel it everywhere—the slight tremor running through her body, the way her breath catches.
“Don’t make this more complicated than it already is. ”
“Pretty sure it’s already as complicated as it gets,” she points out, but her arms wrap around my waist anyway, her hands sliding up my back in a slow exploration that makes my breath hitch.
Her fingers trace the muscles there, gentle but deliberate, and it takes everything in me to fight back a moan.
I tighten my hold on her, one hand spanning the small of her back while the other tangles in her messy bun, tilting her head slightly so I can press another kiss to her forehead, her cheek, the corner of her mouth—not quite claiming her lips but close enough I can feel her exhale against my skin.
She makes a soft sound that goes straight through me, and her hands slip under the hem of my shirt, finding bare skin. The touch of her fingers—warm and slightly callused from her work—trailing up my spine makes every muscle tense with want.
We stand like that for longer than is probably wise, surrounded by the soft breathing of a sedated deer, my mouth tracing lazy patterns against her temple while her hands press into my skin.
Every point of contact between us feels electric, charged with all the things we’re not saying, all the ways this has spiraled so far beyond what it was supposed to be.
I try not to think about how right this feels. How natural it is to reach for her now, to need her presence in ways that have nothing to do with revenge or strategy or any of the bullshit reasons I told myself she was here.
How her touch is becoming as necessary as breathing.
She’s changed everything. The estate, the staff, me—all of it transformed by her presence in ways I didn’t anticipate and definitely didn’t plan for.
Fresh flowers in every room because she asked Linnea to order them.
Injured animals recovering in the sunroom because I couldn’t stand to see her so lost without her work and losing that damn first bird.
The household staff smiling genuinely when she passes because she treats them like humans instead of servants, learns their names and asks about their families, and shows the same gentle compassion she extends to wounded creatures.
Even Danny looks at her differently now. I’ve caught him chatting with her in the kitchen, laughing at something she said, looking almost protective in a way that should probably concern me but instead just confirms what I already know.
Giuliana Conti has made my fortress feel like a home.
And I’m falling for her so hard it terrifies me.
The realization hits so hard it feels like someone just punched me, making my arms tighten around her instinctively. This isn’t just attraction or possession or even the twisted dynamic of captor and captive finding unexpected connection. This is—
Fuck. This is feelings. Real, complicated, absolutely dangerous feelings that make every plan I ever had crumble into dust.
I’m supposed to be preparing to dispose of her.
The alliance with Viktor Torrino is nearly secured.
The wedding is fucking two weeks away. Once that’s finalized, her usefulness was supposed to end.
Antonio was supposed to watch his daughter die.
He was supposed to understand the complete and total destruction of everything he valued, before I ended him too.
That was the plan. That was justice for Marco.
But the thought of carrying it out now—of harming Giuliana in any way—makes me physically ill. My stomach churns with it, my chest tight with something that might be panic or might just be the crushing weight of recognizing I’ve completely fucked up my own revenge plot.
Because I can’t do it. I can’t hurt her. I can’t watch the light go out of those expressive eyes. I can’t be responsible for silencing her laugh or stopping her gentle hands from healing broken things.
I can’t destroy Gigi, right?
The name surfaces in my mind before I can stop it—Gigi.
It’s what Katie calls her, what her father probably called her before everything went to hell. It’s the name people closest to her call her. Intimate and affectionate in ways that “Giuliana” isn’t, personal in ways I have no right to claim.
But I’m claiming it anyway, in the privacy of my own thoughts where no one can call me out for the weakness it represents.
Gigi. My Gigi.
Christ, I’m so, so fucked.
“The deer should wake up in a few hours,” she says against my chest, her voice muffled by my shirt. “I’ll need to monitor him, make sure there’s no internal bleeding I missed, adjust antibiotics if there’s any sign of infection—”
“You’ll do all of that,” I interrupt, pulling back just enough to see her face. “Because you’re brilliant and competent and better at this than you give yourself credit for.”
She blinks up at me, surprise evident. “That’s—that’s probably the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me,” she says slowly as a lock of dark hair falls from her bun.
“Yeah, well.” I brush the strand of hair back from her face, my fingers lingering longer than necessary. “Don’t get used to it.”
But we both know that’s a lie. She’s already gotten used to it—to me being softer with her, more careful, showing her sides of myself I’ve kept locked away since Marco died.
And I’m getting used to her presence. She’s woven herself into the fabric of my life so tightly I can’t imagine what this estate would feel like without her in it.
That’s the problem, isn’t it? I can’t imagine it anymore. I can’t picture going back to the cold, empty existence I had before she arrived, before she transformed this fortress into something that feels like a home.
Before she made me feel something other than rage and grief for the first time in three years.
“I should check the sutures one more time,” Gigi says, but she doesn’t move away from me. “Make sure everything’s holding.”
“In a minute.” I’m not ready to let her go yet, not ready to break whatever moment this is. “Just—give me a minute.”
She nods against my chest, and I savor this snapshot in time, trying not to think about how completely she’s unknowingly destroyed every plan I made.
She’s made me want things I can’t afford to want. She’s turned revenge into something far more complicated than justice or retribution.
She’s made me into someone Marco might not be ashamed of, even if it means abandoning the quest for vengeance I swore I’d complete in his name.
Every moment with Gigi makes it harder to remember why I’m supposed to hate her, because I don’t, why her father’s sins should be visited on her, they shouldn’t, why destroying everything she loves was ever a good idea, it wasn’t.
But walking away from three years of planning, from the revenge that was supposed to balance Marco’s death—that feels like betraying him all over again. Like admitting his murder doesn’t matter enough to see justice through to its bitter end.
I’m trapped between the woman in my arms and the ghost of the man who made me believe I could be better than my worst impulses.
And I don’t know how to choose between them without losing everything that matters.
Nearly two weeks pass in a blur of normalcy that feels surreal given the circumstances. Gigi spends her days in the sunroom treating the deer—who she’s named Bambi, much to Danny’s amusement—and I find myself making excuses to check on her progress.
“Just ensuring the investment in equipment is being properly utilized,” I tell Danny when he gives me shit about the fifth time in one day I’ve wandered down to the sunroom.
“Riiiight,” Danny says, not even trying to hide his smirk. “That’s definitely why you’re down there. It has nothing to do with the fact that she lights up when you walk in.”
I scowl. “Fuck off.”
He shrugs. “Just saying, boss. You might want to figure out what you’re doing here before it gets even more complicated.”
He’s right, of course. But I’m not ready to admit out loud that my revenge plot has gone so far off the rails I can’t even see the tracks anymore.
Instead, I bury myself in work during the day and lose myself in Gigi at night.
She’s started sleeping in my bed more often than her own, and I’ve stopped pretending I don’t want her there.
We talk for hours in the darkness about everything and nothing, carefully skirting around the bigger issues of captivity and revenge and this.
It’s easier that way. To exist in this bubble where we’re just Luca and Gigi, instead of captor and captive.
Tonight I find her in the sunroom after dinner, sitting on the floor next to Bambi’s enclosure with a book open in her lap. The deer is standing now, his wound healing remarkably well, and he’s eating from her hand with the kind of trust that shouldn’t be possible given how recently he was injured.
“He’s ready,” she says without looking up as I approach. “To be released, I mean. The wound is healed enough that he should be able to survive in the wild again.”
I settle onto the floor next to her, close enough that our shoulders touch. “You did good work,” I murmur, placing an arm around her waist and drawing her close, needing to feel her.
“I got lucky,” she demurs as she lays her head on my shoulder. But there’s pride in her voice. “A few millimeters in any direction and that bullet could have caused damage I couldn’t fix.”
“But it didn’t,” I point out, wanting her to focus on the positives. “And you saved him.”