Chapter 18 Luca #2
“The secret is eating at you,” Danny says more gently as if he can see the war on my face. “I can see it. Every time she looks at you, every time she talks about your future together, every time she mentions her father, you’re dying inside from the weight of what you’re not telling her.”
I’m so sick of admitting this man is right, but goddammit he is again. The guilt is crushing, suffocating, making it harder to breathe with each passing day.
“I can’t tell her.” The admission comes out raw, scraping out of me as if it were forced.
“If she knew what I originally planned—if she understood that I spent all this time growing closer to her while planning her death.” My voice breaks.
“It would destroy her. And it would destroy any chance we have at something real.”
“So what’s your plan?” Danny asks, looking highly unsympathetic at my explanation. “Just carry this secret forever? Hope she never finds out? Live with the guilt while pretending everything’s fine?”
“I don’t know,” I snap, because I don’t know.
“I don’t know what the fuck I’m doing anymore, Danny.
” I place both hands around my coffee mug.
For a moment, it reminds me of my hands around Gigi’s neck and strangling her.
I pull away as if they are burned. “I-I don’t think that I can hurt her.
I can’t imagine a future that doesn’t include her. ”
“Then maybe it’s time to tell her that,” Danny says, watching me retract my hands onto my lap.
“Not about what you planned. Maybe she never needs to know that. But about her father. About the fact that you’re not going to kill him, that he’s actually recovering, and that she no longer needs to wait for some axe to fall. ”
The suggestion makes sense. Gigi deserves that much. She deserves to know her father is safe and that I’m considering choosing mercy over revenge.
But telling her means admitting I’ve changed the plan. It means acknowledging that my feelings for her have overridden three years of carefully calculated revenge. It means showing vulnerability I’m not sure I’m capable of.
“I’ll think about it,” I finally say.
“Don’t think too long.” Danny stands, draining his coffee.
“Because that secret? It’s not just eating at you.
It’s eating at her too. She’s terrified of what happens to Antonio now that the marriage is official.
And every day you don’t give her answers is another day she spends looking at you and wondering if you’re going to betray her. ”
He leaves before I can respond.
I sit there in the kitchen as dawn breaks fully over the estate, surrounded by Gigi’s flowers and the evidence of how completely she’s wrapped herself in my life, and I’m torn between two impossible choices.
Tell her the truth and risk destroying the trust we’ve built.
Or carry this secret forever and slowly poison what could be real love with the weight of lies.
Neither option feels survivable.
The day passes in a blur of meetings and business that I can barely focus on.
My mind keeps drifting to Gigi—to the way she smiled at breakfast, to her excited chatter about a new treatment protocol she wants to try with the animals in the sunroom, to the casual way she touched my arm when she passed by my office.
She’s happy. More than happy—she’s thriving. The wedding seems to have removed some final barrier, made her feel secure in a way she wasn’t before.
And I’m the one carrying the knowledge that could shatter her security completely.
By evening, I find myself in my private study, staring at the case files and photographs of Marco that I haven’t touched in weeks. The investigation that consumed three years of my life sits gathering dust while I play house with the woman I’m supposed to destroy.
Marco’s face smiles up at me from that barbecue photo. For the first time in years, I don’t feel crushing guilt when I look at it. I don’t feel like I’m failing him by not following through on revenge.
Instead, I feel something that might be peace.
“Would you hate me?” I ask the photograph quietly. “For choosing her over justice? For abandoning the plan because I fell in love?”
The frozen smile offers no answers, no absolution. But somehow I think Marco would understand. He always believed in redemption, in choosing to be better than your worst impulses.
He would have liked Gigi. The thought hits me with unexpected force. Marco would have appreciated her intelligence, her compassion, her ability to see the humanity in people despite their worst actions.
He would have told me to let go of revenge and choose love instead.
The realization makes my chest ache with grief that’s different from what I’ve carried for three years.
Not the raw, consuming rage that drove me to plan Antonio’s destruction.
But a gentler sadness—mourning what Marco never got to have, what was taken from him before he could find his own happiness.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper to the photo. “I’m sorry I don’t think I can follow through. I’m sorry that the woman who’s made me want to be better is the daughter of the man who helped get you killed. I’m sorry that choosing her feels like betraying you.”
The words hang in the empty study, and I wait for—what? Some sign that Marco’s ghost approves? Some flash of certainty that I’m making the right choice?
But there’s nothing. Just silence and the weight of a decision I still haven’t fully made.
The door opens behind me, and I don’t need to turn around to know it’s Gigi. I can feel her presence and sense the slight shift in the air that happens whenever she’s near.
“Hey,” she says softly, rapping her knuckles gently on the door. “Danny said you’ve been in here for hours. Everything okay?”
I turn to face her. She’s wearing black leggings and an oversized sweater, her wavy brown hair cascading down her back. But the concern in her expression makes the guilt wound fester. She’s worried about me. Actually worried, like my wellbeing matters to her.
“Just thinking,” I manage.
She moves closer, her eyes catching on the photographs spread across my desk. “About Marco?”
“About a lot of things.” I reach for her hand, pulling her into the space between my legs as I sit on the edge of the desk. I rub my thumb over her knuckles, relishing how perfectly our hands fit together. “About how much has changed in two weeks.”
“Good changes?” There’s vulnerability in her voice, like she needs reassurance.
“The best changes,” I assure her. “Gigi, you’ve—” I stop, struggling with how to articulate this without revealing too much. “You’ve made me remember what it feels like to be human instead of just angry.”
Her hands come up to frame my face, and I lean into her touch, even though I don’t deserve it. “You were never just angry, Luca. You were grieving. There’s a difference.”
“Is there?” I can’t help but ask. God, I don’t deserve her. She has every reason to hate me, but she has chosen forgiveness. It makes my heart squeeze like there’s a band around it. “Because from where I’m sitting, the things I’ve done in Marco’s name look a lot more like rage than grief.”
“Maybe.” She doesn’t try to deny it, which is one of the things I love about her—the honesty, even when it’s uncomfortable. “But you’re choosing to be different now. That has to count for something.”
Does it? Can choosing to be better now somehow balance out the harm I’ve already caused? The clinic I destroyed, the life I ruined, the father I’ve imprisoned?
The father I’m still lying about.
“Your dad,” I hear myself say, the words escaping before I can think better of them. “You’ve been asking about him.”
Her entire body goes rigid, hope and fear warring in her expression. “Yes?” she whispers, her face paling.
“He’s—” I stop, trying to figure out how to tell her without revealing the full scope of what I’ve kept from her. “He’s recovering better than I told you. The medical care has helped. He’s—he’s going to be okay, Gigi.”
The relief that floods her face is immediate, and it makes me hate myself even more. “Really?” she whispers, her lips white. “You’re not just saying that to—”
“I’m not.” I pull her closer, needing her to believe this even if I can’t tell her everything else. “I’ve given orders that he’s to be treated well, that his recovery is a priority. And when he’s stronger—” I swallow hard. “When he’s stronger, I’ll arrange for you to see him.”
“When?” The question comes out desperate. “How soon?”
“Soon.” It’s the same non-answer I’ve been giving her since the wedding, but this time I mean it. “I promise, Gigi. Soon.”
She throws her arms around my neck, holding on tight enough that I can feel her heartbeat racing against mine. “Thank you,” she whispers fiercely, her hands threading into my hair. I lean into her touch, even though I don’t deserve to. “Thank you, Luca. You have no idea what this means to me.”
But I do know, and that’s the problem. I know exactly what this means to her, and I’m watching her relief knowing I could have given her this peace weeks ago if I weren’t such a fucking coward about my own guilt.
“There’s something else,” I say, because Danny’s right—the secrets are eating me alive and I need to start being honest about at least some of it. “Your friend Katie. I know you’ve been wanting to contact her.”
Gigi pulls back to look at me, surprise evident in her brown eyes. “You—you’d let me talk to her?” She sounds hopeful, like she can’t believe I’ve even mentioned this.
“I think we can arrange something.” I give her that. “Supervised, monitored. But—you deserve to tell her you’re okay. That you’re—” I stop, not sure how to finish that sentence.
“That I’m happy?” Gigi suggests quietly, and the love apparent in her eyes makes me feel even more like shit.
“Because I am, Luca. I know this whole situation is fucked up and complicated and started for all the wrong reasons, but—” She stops, seeming to struggle with her own confession.
“But I’m happy with you. Happier than I’ve been in years. ”
The admission should feel like victory. It should make me feel accomplished, like I’ve successfully won her over to my side.
Instead, it just makes the guilt intensify. Because she’s happy based on lies and carefully curated truths, unaware of what I originally planned, and unaware of the internal war I’m fighting every fucking moment of every goddamn day.
“I’m happy with you too,” I tell her honestly, because at least that much is true. “I’m happier than I ever thought I’d be again.”
She kisses me then, soft and sweet, and I let myself sink into it. Let myself pretend for just a moment that this is simple. That we’re just two people who found each other and fell in love, without all the complicated history and revenge plots and secrets that could destroy us both.
When we finally break apart, Gigi’s smiling up at me with such trust, such hope, that I have to look away before she sees the guilt written all over my face.
“Come to bed,” she murmurs, taking my hand. “You’ve been in here too long. You’re thinking too hard about things that can’t be changed.”
If only she knew.
I let her lead me from the study, past Marco’s photographs and the case files I can’t look at anymore, toward the bedroom where she’s somehow made me believe in futures that don’t involve revenge.
But even as we settle into bed together, even as she curls against my side with that trusting contentment that’s become familiar, I can’t shake Danny’s words.
The secret is eating at you.
Every moment of happiness with Gigi is tinged with the knowledge of what I’m not telling her. Every promise I make about our future is built on the foundation of lies about what I originally planned.
And I don’t know how much longer I can carry it before the weight crushes us both.
In the darkness, with Gigi’s breathing evening out as she falls asleep against me, I make a decision.
The original plan, the fact that I once planned her death, is a secret I’ll carry to my grave.
Because the truth would destroy her. And I’ve already taken enough from Gigi without taking her ability to trust me too.
Even if keeping that secret slowly destroys me instead.
In the darkness, I close my eyes and try not to think about the irony: I’ve finally found something worth living for, and the price is becoming someone I don’t entirely recognize.
Someone who chooses love over vengeance.
Someone who protects instead of destroys.
Someone Marco might not be ashamed to call family.
The man I should have been all along, if grief hadn’t turned me into a monster first.