Chapter 3
Chapter Three
Luca
I wake before the alarm, before the house wakes up, before the light comes down through the window and blinds me.
For a second, the ceiling is just a rectangle of soft gray, and my body does what it has practiced for eleven years—check the corners, catalog the sounds, brace for the scrape of a bolt.
Then the memory catches up with the present, and the tension releases from my bones by degree. No clank. No barked commands. No stale air. Just the hush of a house in the early morning. My house.
I am in my bed.
The mattress gives under my weight in a way I didn’t even know I was missing after years of sleeping on a thin cot. The sheets are smooth and expensive, not the stiff institutional blends that rasp against my skin.
There’s a faint scent of lavender wafting through the air, and something else. Clean. That’s it. Just clean.
A breeze moves the drapes as if the house itself is breathing in the beautiful morning air.
For the first time in eleven years, I wake up in my own room.
I lie there and let that fact settle into me. The celebration was big last night, even bigger than I expected. There were voices and clatter and the clink of glasses, and every surface covered with a dish or a serving plate.
All my brothers showed up. Giovanni, who stepped in and took my place all those years ago. Antonio, with a laugh that could fill any space, no matter how big or small. Roberto, loosening his tie before dinner, as if the fight were over.
My children dropped their stiff shoulders and relaxed.
Vito, a lot more like Antonio than me, smiled brightly and laughed loudly.
Nico, the reserved one, didn’t let that stop him from having a second glass of wine. And Caterina, my princess, telling a story that drew everyone in. Like a queen commanding her court.
Wine flowed. Others stopped by to see me, see if it was real, congratulate me.
People hugged me as if they had been holding their breath for eleven years and finally believed air was real.
There were toasts I only half heard because the sound of my front door opening and closing kept ringing in my head.
Life moved around me, not past me.
I drank enough to be social with everyone, but not enough to waste my morning on regret.
Being out and free doesn’t mean I lose my discipline. If anything, I have to be more disciplined than ever.
Now, the house is quiet. I can hear the soft sounds of the world waking up around me. A bird singing its morning song, running water somewhere in the house.
Not much else can be heard beyond the high walls of my estate.
Security was its purpose when I bought it. And it’s something you can feel. This estate is alive with it. Cameras set into eaves like careful eyes, alarms ready to wail, walls that keep everyone out. And some in.
I bought this place when Lucia was born—brick and stone and land enough to hold a life. I told Carlotta it was for her, for the children, for the mornings and the summers and the laughter that eats up afternoons. It was true. It is still true. The house is a body built to protect a heart.
The empty space where my wife Carlotta should be sits next to me in bed like a shadow.
Grief is an old thing with me now. Not sharp, but so very heavy. It does not stab; it presses. It is patient and never-ending.
Two years after they closed a door on me, the cancer she had in childhood came back to her with its hands out, asking for more.
She stayed positive for my sake. But I could see it eating away at her through the glass that separated us. Then one day, she stopped coming. One day, she went to the hospital and never left.
I did not get to tuck the blankets around her. I did not get to drive her to treatments or pretend, for her, that I believed everything would be fine.
It wasn’t.
They buried her without me standing there to see her off like a queen.
People like to imagine I cannot love because it’s easier to believe that a man like me can’t love.
They are wrong.
I loved Carlotta in every way imaginable. Completely, utterly, without condition.
High school sweetheart is technically the right term. It’s not enough. She was more than my sweetheart.
She was my breath, my language, my life. She reminded me of who I was when the world beat me down. She made a home out of nothing, so I could give her a home and prove I’m worth something.
In the last months, when she needed me most, I was staring at gray walls and counting down each hour until I could be with her again. I blame Dixon for a lot of things, and I will even the score in time.
But the part of me that is a father and a husband reserves a different feeling for the daughter who chose state over blood and made sure I wasn’t there when her mother needed my hand. There are sins the world calls justice. I know better. I will not forgive Lucia for that. Not yet. Maybe not ever.
It’s not anger I feel. It’s betrayal.
And it burns hotter than my anger ever could.
The ceiling softens from gray to pearl. Morning is here, and I don’t want to waste another minute of my life.
I swing my legs over the side of the bed and put my feet on the floor. The ankle monitor they installed before I left the courthouse is like an anchor holding me in place.
It doesn’t matter. It won’t stop me from doing what I need to do.
The rug beneath my feet is thick, a Persian pattern Carlotta chose because it reminded her of a story she liked as a girl. I never cared what story; I cared that she wanted it.
The floor beneath is wood, waxed to a sheen in preparation for the homecoming no one was willing to jinx by saying out loud. A dresser sits across from the bed, dark walnut, its top clean except for a silver tray and a photograph in a simple frame.
Carlotta is laughing in it—some party, some summer, sunlight turning her hair to copper. She is turned slightly away from the camera. I do not touch the frame. I look. It is too much for me right now.
The room feels familiar, though it’s not the same. High ceiling, tall windows, heavy drapes. The bed—carved headboard, clean lines, posts Carlotta used to drape dresses over while getting ready for dinner.
A sitting area with two armchairs, a low table, and a stack of books no one ever put back after the day they stormed my office and arrested me.
I shrug off the sheet and stand. My body wakes like an oiled machine. No, I’m not twenty-five, but the last four years of difficulty, determination, and hard work have made me strong and fit.
I go to the window first and pull the drapes open. The view rolls out like a flag: sweeping lawn, trees set in lines that aren’t intentionally random, a hint of the ocean in the distance when the air is clear enough—today it’s just a pale line on the horizon.
The gate is closed. The guardhouse is manned. I can, without trying, point to the cameras. I know where every blind spot is because there are none.
This estate is well-protected. I built it that way. It stands the way I do—no apology for the space it takes up, every weakness considered and reinforced. When I was forced to shrink myself to survive, the house held my family and my memories for me.
In the bathroom, the lights come on with a soft click. Marble, glass, steel, the kind of shower that makes a man feel like a king.
The mirror throws me back at myself. Stubble coats the bottom half of my face, and my hair is longer than it used to be. There are lines at the corners of my mouth I didn’t have the last time I stood in this room.
They don’t make me look older so much as they make me look like a survivor.
And I have survived.
I turn the water on in the shower and wait for steam to billow. When it hits the temperature I like, I step in and surrender to the warmth.
I took a shower when I got home last night, the first luxurious thing my body experienced in eleven years.
Prison showers were fast and calculated. I turn my face up to the spray of water.
This is different. No sound of a guard barking or prisoners talking.
I soap slowly, reacquainting myself with a body that feels like my own again. I carry my past like a map carved into my skin. Scars from a reckless childhood, clawing my way to power. Scars from fighting for my life while a guard stands by watching and laughing.
For a moment, I let grief and love and lust share space in me.
I think about that prosecutor. I close my eyes and imagine her standing before me, joining me in my shower. Elena. Her long dark hair cascading down her back, her blue eyes sparkling with a lustful look I’ve never seen in person but can imagine now.
Her luscious curves, her fit physique, it’s all there, vivid and real. My hands move instinctively, tracing the contours of my body as I picture her doing the same.
My cock throbs as I begin to stroke it, imagining the curve of her perky breasts, her nipples hardening under my gaze. I can envision her on her knees, her wet mouth wrapping around my dick, her tongue swirling with a hunger that matches my own.
I groan, the sound echoing in the large shower, as I lean against the wall, my breath quickening. I can feel her pressing against me, her tight pussy grinding against my hard, throbbing cock.
Her skin is warm and slick with soap, her body responsive, and I can feel her resistance crumbling under the force of our shared passion.
I slide my fingers down her stomach, into the wet heat of her pussy. She moans, her head falling back, her hair brushing against my chest as I finger her, slow and deliberate, feeling her clench around me.
“Luca,” she whispers in my fantasy, her voice breathy and desperate, and I smile to myself, a dark, satisfied smirk.
With each stroke of my hand, I imagine pounding into her relentlessly, her nails digging into my back as she begs for more. Her body is tight, her walls gripping me like a vice, and I growl, the sound primal and raw.
The water beats down on us, our moans filling the steamy space.
I thrust harder, faster, my orgasm building, a tidal wave of release that crashes over me in a way I haven’t experienced fully in years.
I picture her eyes rolling back, her body trembling as she comes on my cock, her walls milking me dry.
“Fuck,” I gasp aloud, my voice hoarse, as I spill my seed into the shower, the hot water washing it away almost instantly.
My breath comes in ragged gasps, my heart pounding in my chest.
The fantasy fades, but the memory of her lingers, her image burned into my mind. I turn off the water, the silence closing in around me.
Wrapping myself in a towel, I stand here, thinking.
Freedom feels good, but the thought of her—unattainable, forbidden—leaves me with a question I can’t shake: was it her I crave, or the thrill of wanting what I can’t have?
There is a ledger in my head, and I will balance it.
Not today. But the clock has started, and I’m not in a rush.