Chapter 21 Giuliana
GIULIANA
I can’t breathe.
The hallway stretches before me like a tunnel, the walls pressing in from both sides, and I need to move. I need to get away from Luca’s voice still calling my name behind me. I need to escape the words still echoing in my skull.
The plan was always to kill her first, make Antonio watch his daughter die, then execute him.
My feet carry me without conscious thought, muscle memory guiding me through corridors I’ve walked a hundred times. Past paintings I don’t see and windows that reflect a ghost I don’t recognize.
I reach my old rooms and slam the door behind me so hard a picture frame rattles on the wall. My hands shake as I turn the lock, but it’s not enough. It’s nowhere near enough.
I drag the dresser toward the door, my muscles screaming with the effort, adrenaline giving me strength I didn’t know I possessed. The heavy wood scrapes across the floor with a sound like nails on a chalkboard, but I don’t care. I need a barrier between me and him. Between me and the man who—
The man who was going to kill me.
The thought hits again, fresh and devastating, and I have to brace myself against the dresser to stay upright.
He was going to kill me.
Every tender moment. Every whispered promise. Every time he held me in the darkness and made me believe I was safe, all of it was a lie. All of it was just him playing a role, manipulating me into compliance, breaking down my defenses so I’d be easier to eliminate when the time came.
And I fell for it.
I fell for every calculated touch, every practiced word of affection, every moment of vulnerability that was probably just as fake as everything else. I let myself believe that the monster who kidnapped me was transforming into someone better. Someone worthy of love.
God, I’m so stupid.
The chair scrapes across the floor next, adding to my barricade. Then the nightstand. Anything I can move gets piled against that door because I can’t—I won’t—let him near me while I’m like this. While I’m breaking apart.
My stomach lurches violently, and I barely make it to the bathroom before I’m on my knees retching into the toilet. Nothing comes up but bile and water, my body trying to purge the poison of Luca’s betrayal even though it’s already too deep inside me to expel.
The sobs come with the heaving, wracking my body until I’m shaking so hard I can’t tell where one ends and the other begins.
He was going to kill me.
The words keep circling through my mind like a vulture, picking at the corpse of everything I thought we had.
I think about the other night when I was lying in his arms after we made love, his fingers tracing lazy patterns on my hip while we talked about the clinic he promised to help me build. The surgical specialization. The future where I could pursue my dreams.
Was he laughing inside while he made those promises? Was he calculating how long he’d need to maintain the charade before he could dispose of me?
My stomach heaves again, but there’s nothing left.
I press my burning cheek against the cool tile and force myself to breathe. To think past the grief and rage churning in my chest.
The recording. The truth about Romano that I’ve been carrying for three years, terrified that revealing it would make me either too valuable or too dangerous to keep alive.
And the whole time, Luca had already decided to kill me anyway.
A laugh bubbles up my throat, half-hysterical.
All that agonizing over whether to tell him.
All those sleepless nights wondering if the information would save me or doom me.
And it didn’t matter. None of it mattered because my fate was sealed the moment he decided I was responsible for what my father did.
Footsteps outside of the bedroom make me freeze.
“Giuliana?” Luca’s voice, muffled by the bedroom door. “Please, let me explain—”
“Go away!” the scream tears from my raw throat. “Go the fuck away!”
“I’m not leaving you like this.”
I grab the soap dispenser from the counter and hurl it at the door. It explodes against the wood in a shower of glass and liquid soap. “You don’t have a choice! You lost the right to care about me when you planned my fucking murder!”
Silence. Long, painful silence.
Then a soft beep and my breath catches. He’s actually trying the key card. He isn’t going to respect my boundaries. A thud follows. Another. The door won’t budge.
Thank god I had the foresight to barricade the door.
“I can’t get in,” he says, voice cracking. “You blocked it, didn’t you?”
“Damn right I did.” My voice breaks on the words. “Go the fuck away, Luca and leave me alone!”
More silence. Then, finally, the sound of retreating footsteps.
I collapse against the tile, my body still shaking, and let myself fall apart completely.
Because it’s not just about the plan to kill me, though that’s horrifying enough on its own. It’s about every moment between us being recontextualized through this new, terrible lens.
The night after the Romano gathering, when we had sex on his bed—was that real desire, or just him asserting ownership? Making sure I knew I belonged to him body and soul so I’d be easier to control?
The morning in the garden when we released the deer together, when he promised me a future and I let myself believe him…
Was any of that genuine? Or was he just stringing me along? Did he enjoy giving me hope only to plan to crush it the entire time?
The wedding. The fucking wedding, where I stood in that beautiful dress and said vows while he—what? Counted down the days until he could dispose of me without complications?
Every memory is poisoned now. Every tender moment suspect. Every promise revealed as a lie.
And my father.
Oh god, my father.
Luca told me Dad was safe, recovering, that I’d see him soon. He looked me in the eyes and promised me, all while planning—what did Dimitri say? Make Antonio watch his daughter die first, then execute him?
My stomach tries to heave again, but there’s nothing left.
He was going to make my father watch. Was going to torture him with my death before killing him too. That was the plan. That was always the plan.
And when the plan changed, I—I was going to let him comfort me through Dad’s “natural death.” I was going to let him hold me while I mourned the father he murdered.
The thought makes me want to claw my own skin off.
How did I not see it? How did I let myself be so thoroughly fooled?
But I know how. Because Luca is good at this. He’s a predator who spent three years planning the perfect revenge, and I was just another piece on his chessboard. A tool to be used, a life to be destroyed, a means to an end.
And the worst part—the part that makes me hate myself almost as much as I hate him—is that I knew better. I knew what he was capable of. I knew his capacity for cruelty and violence. I knew I shouldn’t trust him or let my guard down, and I definitely shouldn’t fall in love.
But I did it anyway.
I fell in love with the man who was planning to murder me and my father. I let myself believe in a future that was never going to exist. I was so desperate for connection, so starved for gentleness after weeks of fear, that I mistook manipulation for affection.
God, I’m such a fool.
A knock on the bedroom door makes me lift my head.
“Giuliana?” Danny’s voice now, and the bastard actually sounds concerned. How touching. “Can you let me in? We need to talk.”
“No.” My voice is hoarse from crying and vomiting. “Go away.”
“I’m worried about you—”
The laugh that escapes me is ugly and broken. “Then you should have warned me! You should have told me what he was planning instead of letting me fall in love with the man who was going to murder me!”
Silence. “It’s not that simple.”
“Yes, it is that simple!” I’m on my feet now, stumbling out of the bathroom toward the barricaded door.
“You knew. You’ve known this whole time what Luca had planned, and you said nothing.
You let me believe that Luca had changed when I was really just—” My voice cracks.
“Just a complication waiting to be resolved.”
I can hear him sigh. “Giuliana, listen to me—”
“No. You listen.” I press my palms against the door, my forehead following.
“I don’t want to talk to you. I don’t want to talk to anyone.
I just want to be left alone. So go away and tell your boss that if he sends anyone else, I’ll start breaking things.
Starting with that priceless vase in the hallway that I know belonged to his grandmother. ”
I hear Danny sigh heavily. “Alright. But if you need anything, food, water, someone to talk to—”
“I won’t.” I turn away from the door, from his concern that comes too late to matter. “Just leave me alone.”
The sound of his footsteps grows softer, and I’m alone again with my grief and rage.
I sink onto the bed that’s once again my prison, and my hand drifts to my stomach, to where a tiny life is growing. A baby I was going to tell Luca about, thinking it might bring us closer.
A baby whose father was planning to kill its mother.
The thought makes fresh tears burn behind my eyes.
What do I do now? How do I protect this child from his father? How do I survive in a house with someone who—
Who what? Who was planning to kill me? Because that’s what Luca keeps claiming; that the plan changed, that his feelings changed everything.
But how can I ever trust that? How can I believe anything he says when every word out of his mouth might be another calculated lie?
I can’t. I won’t. Which means I need to get out of here.
It’s like a lightbulb has gone off. I need to escape. I need to get as far from Luca as possible.
But how?
His security is too tight, his control too absolute. The guards watch everything. The gates are monitored. Every communication is tracked—
My phone. I pat my jeans pockets and yank it out.
I could call Katie and beg her to help somehow, to—