Chapter 20 Luca #3
Dimitri looks between us, and I can see him calculating, trying to figure out how much she heard and what it means. His hand twitches toward his side—an instinctive movement toward where he usually keeps his weapon—and that makes everything infinitely worse.
Danny moves with surprising speed, grabbing Dimitri’s arm and physically pulling him away from the door. Away from Gigi. Away from the disaster that’s unfolding.
“We’re leaving,” Danny says firmly, his voice cutting through the shocked silence with unmistakable authority. “Now.”
“But the boss—” Dimitri starts, still trying to assess whether this is a threat that needs neutralizing.
“Now, Dimitri.” Danny’s voice carries an edge I’ve rarely heard from him, sharp enough to finally penetrate Dimitri’s assessment. “This is between them. Move.”
He practically drags Dimitri down the hallway, but not before shooting me one last look over his shoulder. There’s sympathy there, along with disappointment or even resignation. Then they’re gone, disappearing around the corner, and I’m left alone with Gigi.
Alone with the woman I love and the smoking ruins of everything I’ve built with her.
She’s shaking. I can see it from here, the fine tremor running through her entire body, the way her hands are clenched into fists at her sides so tight her knuckles have gone white.
Her chest rises and falls with rapid, shallow breaths that suggest she’s on the verge of hyperventilating or screaming or both.
The coffee is spreading across the floor between us, dark and steaming, creating a barrier that feels symbolic. On one side, me the monster who planned her death. On the other side, her, the woman who trusted me despite every reason not to.
“How much did you hear?” I ask quietly, even though I already know the answer. Everything. She heard every damning word.
“All of it.” Her voice is hollow. She’s still staring at me like she’s never seen me before.
Like the man she thought she knew has been replaced by a stranger.
“I heard Viktor say to dispose of the prisoner problem, which is my dad. I heard Dimitri talk about moving forward with the Conti girl—with me. I heard him say the plan was always to kill me first, make my father watch, then execute him.” Her breath hitches, and I watch a tear slide down her pale cheek. “I heard you not deny any of it.”
I have no defense. Because she’s right. I didn’t deny it. I couldn’t deny it, because it was true. That was the plan.
“Gigi, let me explain—” I take another step toward her, desperate to bridge the distance, to make her understand.
“Explain what?” She laughs, and it’s the most broken sound I’ve ever heard, echoing off the marble and making me flinch.
“Explain that you were planning to murder me? That every moment between us was a lie? That every time you held me, every time you made me feel safe, every promise about our future—all of it was just part of some elaborate plan to make my father suffer before you killed me?”
“No.” The word comes out desperately. “That’s not—my feelings for you are real, Gigi. Everything between us is real—”
“How can it be real when you were planning to kill me?” The question comes out as a scream, raw and anguished. “How can any of it be real when I was never supposed to survive this?”
“I changed my mind!” I shout, desperate for her to understand. “The plan changed. I’m not going to hurt you—I was never going to hurt you, not after I fell in love with you—”
“When?” She cuts me off, her eyes blazing through tears. “When exactly did you decide not to kill me, Luca? Before or after we got married? Before or after I started believing we might actually have a future together?”
I open my mouth to answer and realize that there’s no good answer to that question.
I didn’t fully decide until recently. Until the past few weeks when watching her transform my life made me understand that following through with the original plan would destroy me as completely as it would destroy her.
“That’s what I thought.” She reads my silence accurately, another piece of her heart visibly breaking.
“You don’t even know. You kept me as an option—maybe I’d die, maybe I’d live, depending on how useful I was to your revenge.
” She wipes her eyes then wraps her arms around herself.
“I was never a person to you. Just something that happened to be more convenient alive than dead.”
“That’s not fair—” I start, but she cuts me off again.
“Fair?” Her laugh is bitter. “You want to talk about fair? You destroyed my clinic. You kidnapped me. You forced me into this marriage. You made me fall in love with you while secretly planning my execution. And now you want to talk about what’s fair?”
Each word is a knife between my ribs, and it hurts like hell. Because she’s right. She’s completely, horrifyingly right about all of it.
“I’m sorry,” I say, and the words feel monumentally inadequate. “Gigi, I’m so fucking sorry. I never meant—”
“What did you mean then?” She takes a step toward me, and there’s pure fury in her expression.
Her lips are bloodless, there are bright spots on her cheeks and her eyes—her eyes that used to look at me with such love now look at me with hate.
“What did you mean when you planned my death? What did you mean when you made me trust you? What did you mean when you promised me a future you never intended to give me?”
“I meant to make you suffer for what your father did,” I admit, the truth tasting like poison. “I meant to break you down piece by piece until there was nothing left and then I would end your life while your father watched. That’s what this started as.”
“And what is it now?” she demands, her nails digging so tightly into her arms that I can see the half-moons embedded into her skin. “What am I to you now, Luca? Still a possession? Or have I graduated to something slightly more valuable in your sick hierarchy of human worth?”
“You’re the woman I love,” I say desperately, reaching for her. “You’re the woman who made me want to be better than the person Marco’s death turned me into. You’re—”
“I’m the woman you were planning to murder!” Her voice breaks completely, tears streaming down her face. “I’m the woman you lied to for two months! I’m the woman who fell in love with her own destroyer because you were so fucking good at playing the role of someone who actually cared!”
The accusation makes me recoil because, yes, I was playing a role at first. Except somewhere along the way, it stopped being a performance. Somewhere between the night Rico Romano tried to assault her and this moment, I fell in love with her for real.
But how do I make her believe that when all the evidence points to her initial assessment being correct?
“I love you,” I say again, putting every ounce of truth I possess into the words. “I know you don’t believe me right now, I know I’ve given you every reason to doubt me, but it’s the truth, Gigi.”
“Don’t call me that,” she snarls, her voice vibrating with fury. “You aren’t allowed to call me Gigi anymore.”
I flinch, but I press on. If I could just get her to see how I’ve changed—how my initial plan went out the window, maybe I can salvage this.
“I love you so much it terrifies me,” I continue, feeling the band around my chest grow tighter.
“I love you enough that the thought of carrying out the original plan makes me physically sick. I love you enough that I’ve abandoned three years of revenge planning because losing you would destroy me more completely than Marco’s death ever did. ”
She stares at me for a long moment, and I watch her cycle through emotions—hope, doubt, fury, grief, all of them playing across her face like a kaleidoscope of pain.
“I don’t believe you,” she finally says, and the quiet certainty in her voice is worse than any scream.
“I think you love the idea of me. I think you love what I’ve made you feel.
But me? The actual person?” She shakes her head, her wavy hair moving with her.
“I don’t think you ever saw me as anything more than Antonio Conti’s daughter.
A life to be destroyed, a means to an end. ”
“That’s not true,” I protest, but she’s already turning away. I grasp at whatever I can to try and get her to see reason. “I’m trying to figure out what’s right,” I finally say, which is the closest I can come to honesty. “I’m trying to balance justice for Marco with—”
“With what?” She whirls back around, and the devastation in her eyes makes me want to vomit.
“With your love for me? With some twisted version of mercy? You can’t balance those things, Luca.
You can’t murder my father and expect me to still love you.
You can’t take everything from me and call it justice. ”
“Marco deserves—” I start, but she cuts me off with a sharp gesture, her eyes blazing.
“Marco deserves justice, yes. But I’m not the one who killed him. My father is not the one who orchestrated his death! You know someone else used him, coerced him, and beat him into compliance. And you’re planning to punish him like he’s the mastermind?”
“He’s still responsible—” I try again, but she’s not done.
“Then so am I!” Her voice rises with desperate fury.
“If my father is responsible for providing information under duress, then I’m responsible for keeping quiet about it for three years!
If he deserves to die for his cowardice, then so do I for my silence!
” She moves forward and pokes me hard in the chest, her face hard.
“Where’s the line, Luca? Where’s the line between understandable weakness and unforgivable sin? ”
I don’t have an answer because there is no clear line. Just the messy reality of people making terrible choices under impossible circumstances and me trying to assign blame in ways that let me feel like justice is being served.
“I don’t want to lose you,” I hear myself say, and the admission makes me feel like I’ve exposed a fundamental part of me. “I don’t want to choose between you and Marco’s memory. I don’t want to be the person who destroys you or the traitor who abandons the quest for justice. I just want—”
“What?” she demands, moving back again, crossing her arms around her chest. “What do you want, Luca? Because you can’t have both. You can’t have me and your revenge. You can’t keep me while murdering my father. You can’t build a future with me on the foundation of my family’s destruction.”
“I want you,” I say simply. “I want you, Gigi.”
“It’s Giuliana,” she snaps.
I ignore the sting at her words. “And I’m willing to give up the revenge if it means keeping you,” I finish.
“But you’re not willing to give up killing my father,” she observes, reading between the lines. “That’s still on the table. That’s still part of your plan.”
I won’t deny it. The silence between us is confirmation enough.
“Then you’ve already chosen,” she says quietly, and I watch something break in her expression.
Her face shutters and tears track down her cheeks.
Something that might never be repaired. “You’ve already decided that your need for revenge matters more than my need for my father to live.
You’ve already prioritized Marco’s memory over my happiness. ”
I can’t say anything to that. Because then I would be lying.
“I need to go,” she says, her voice hollow. “I need to—I can’t be here right now. I can’t look at you and see the man I fell in love with when all I can think about is the monster who was planning my death.”
She turns and walks away, her footsteps echoing on the marble floor. I watch her go, frozen in place by the weight of what I’ve destroyed, unable to follow because what could I possibly say that would make any of this better?
When she’s gone, I sink against the doorframe and try to process what just happened.
She knows everything. Everything we’ve shared is gone in the space of one overheard conversation.
And the worst part is that I can’t even claim she’s wrong about me.
Every accusation she leveled was accurate. Every word of condemnation was deserved. I am a monster. I did plan her death. I have been lying to her about her father while secretly planning his execution.
The only thing she’s wrong about is my love for her.
But how do I prove that when all the evidence suggests otherwise? How do I convince her that my feelings are real when everything else has been a lie?
I don’t know. And standing here in the wreckage of the best thing that’s happened to me in years, I’m terrified I’ll never figure it out.