Chapter 10
Luciano
I made my way down to the basement, my footsteps echoing in the cold, damp stairwell. The air grew thicker, heavier as I approached La Stanza del Giudizio . Two guards stood at the entrance, their eyes snapping to attention as I approached.
“Leave,” I ordered, my voice flat.
They hesitated. “Leave,” I repeated. They all knew I rarely did that. They exchanged a quick glance before nodding and stepping away from the door. I stepped in, letting the heavy door shut behind me, leaving only me and the old man.
The once-feared old man was a pitiful sight—slumped in the metal chair, wrists and ankles bound with thick leather straps. His face was swollen, bruises mottling his skin, his lips cracked and bleeding from dehydration. But his eyes… they held no fear. No remorse.
I dragged a chair in front of him, the screech of metal against concrete slicing through the silence. I sat down, elbows resting on my knees, studying him.
“I watched you,” I murmured. “You’re good with your grandkids. I respect that. I like that you treated them well. They miss you.”
His jaw tightened, but his expression didn’t change.
“That makes you sad?” I tilted my head. “I don’t know why. Even if I hadn’t come for you, how much longer would you have left? I would think at your age you’d be settled with death.”
Tomaso remained silent.
“You know,” I continued, “your granddaughter Sarah? She’s the same age as my soon-to-be wife.” I let that settle before adding, “Ava graduated at the top of her class in high school. Seventh in business school.”
A flicker of confusion crossed his face. He wasn’t expecting this conversation.
“She’s smart,” I went on. “And stubborn. Frustratingly so. But I respect it. She built a business, made a life for herself despite having both of her parents murdered.” I exhaled slowly. “She’s capable of love.” My fingers tapped against my thigh. “I don’t understand love. But I want to. I want to be normal.” My gaze flicked around the dim room. “I want to give her a life that doesn’t involve this.”
I gestured to the darkness, to the blood-soaked past neither of us could ever escape.
“But I can’t. Because of what you did to me, Tomaso.”
Still, he said nothing.
His silence infuriated me.
My voice dropped, quieter now. “Today is the most I’ve spoken in years.” I let the words settle, heavy with truth. “I don’t talk much because of what I saw. Because of what you all did to me. I screamed loud enough for heaven to hear me, but it didn’t stop you. So I stopped trying.” I shrugged. “Most people don’t matter to me.”
“But Ava does…”
Tomaso finally made a sound, a rough, guttural laugh that turned into a cough. “What do you want from me, boy?” he rasped.
I leaned back, considering the question. “Advice,” I said simply. “You were married for quite a while?”
He nodded, slow and stiff. “Forty years,” he managed, his voice ragged.
“Then tell me,” I pressed. “How did you make it work, with the life we live? How do you keep a woman happy?”
His eyes flickered with something I couldn’t read. He let out a breath, a wheeze more than a sigh.
“You want the real answer?”
I gave a slight nod.
“You listen more than you speak. Even when you think you’re right. Especially then. You shut the fuck up and listen to what she’s saying underneath the words. What she’s not saying. You learn her silences like you learn her body.”
I didn’t interrupt.
“You stay consistent. Not just loyal, but dependable. You show up the same man every day, so she knows what part of you she can lean on when her world starts tilting.”
His breath hitched—maybe from pain, maybe from memory—but he kept going.
“You give her space to be more than what you want. You don’t punish her for needing things you don’t understand. You don’t try to win. You try to last. You let her be complicated.”
I stared at him, absorbing every word.
“And when she’s angry? When she’s spitting fire at you and calling you every name but the one she gave you? You take it. Because she has to know she’s safe being angry around you. That you won’t love her less for feeling too much.”
He coughed again, blood in the corner of his mouth.
“You want to keep her?” he said, voice weakening. “Then you make her feel seen. Not just when she’s dressed up and pretty. When she’s broken. When she’s tired of you and all your shit. You still stay. And you forgive her, even when she does the unforgivable.”
His words made me pause. I fought against compartmentalizing them. I wanted to be a man who took advice. I filed it all away and then I made up my mind about what needed to be done.
I stood up, pushing the chair back with a screech. “I had planned to keep you alive for weeks or months,” I told Tomaso. “I wanted you to suffer, to feel every moment of the agony you created. But Ava doesn’t like my father, and I won’t be returning to his house often. I won’t do things like this in the home I share with her. I don’t want her to know this part of me.”
He looked up at me, something like understanding crossing his face. For the first time, I saw a flicker of fear in his eyes. It was faint, but it was there.
“You say you’ve been married to your wife for forty years, and from what I saw, she was happy with you. She kissed you lovingly when you left home the morning I took you.” I paused, thinking over my next words and decided to extend an olive branch. “It is my wedding day tomorrow and I’m feeling sentimental.” I paused. “Should I have someone kill your wife? So she doesn’t have to live without you?”
His eyes widened.
I hadn’t expected the sheer terror that crossed his face. But once I saw it… it felt right.
Tomaso began to shake. “Non farle del male… please,” he stammered. His voice cracked with desperation. “She… she’s innocent…”
His dignity crumbled.
“Per favore,” he begged. “Don’t kill her.”
I watched him, unaffected. His pleas washed over me, empty and hollow. “Look at you,” I said, my tone sharper now. “Begging like a dog. After all the blood you’ve spilled, you expect mercy?”
He continued to babble, switching between English and Italian, each word more frantic than the last. “Io ti prego… I beg you… I beg you…”
So this was love—losing control, unraveling pride, fearing the loss of what mattered most.
I leaned forward. “Where was the mercy for my mother, Tomaso? Did you spare her? Did you listen to her pleas?” I inhaled a breath, trying to calm myself, but it didn’t work.
“There will be no mercy. You’ll die not knowing if your wife will end up here or not.”
He sobbed openly now, tears mixing with the blood on his face.
“Goodbye, Tomaso,” I said, reaching for the nearby hacksaw on the table.
I positioned the hacksaw against his neck. He was too weak and distraught to even try and move.
His sobs turned to screams as the blade bit into flesh. My injured arm burned with effort. But I kept going, even as sweat dripped down my forehead, even as my breathing grew labored.
The saw teeth caught on his vertebrae. I adjusted my grip, putting weight behind each pull. Cartilage popped. Tendons snapped. The hacksaw carved into Tomaso’s neck, turning his screams into short, wet gurgles. Blood pattered on the concrete like slow rain, triggering a memory.
And for a moment—
the room disappeared.
The scent hit me first. Gardenias, pennies, and the smell of rain in the air. It was the smell of my mother’s perfume mixed with blood. Her fingernails were dragging against the concrete, trying to hold on. They’d yanked her around, passing her from man to man. Like she was nothing. But she wasn’t. She was my everything.
"Shh," she whispered, voice shaking. "Close your eyes, cover your ears, and don’t make a sound, amore ." That’s what she had told me just before they came in that last time.
I hadn’t made a sound—just watched as they drained the life out of her.
The memory snapped like a rubber band, yanking me back to the dungeon, to the blood under my boots, to Tomaso’s body twitching.
I exhaled through my nose.
He was dead. He was the final ghost I had to chase.
A chilling silence filled the room as I pulled his head free from his body. I lifted it, blood dripping onto the floor in thick streams. I walked it over to the table in the corner of the room. I placed it into a custom trophy case I’d designed myself, then carried it to the refrigerated room at the end of the basement.
Inside, there were eight other heads, each one neatly preserved in its own case. I placed Tomaso’s beside the others, closing the glass door.
Ava would never know about this room. But it was part of me, part of who I was. It was my legacy. My father had built his empire on violence and fear, but I would build mine on justice and vengeance. Everyone would know not to cross me.
I thoroughly cleaned my hands and face, scrubbing away the last traces of Tomaso’s life, like he was nothing more than dirt beneath my fingernails, because to me he was nothing more than dirt.
I looked at him one last time—his lifeless, vacant eyes staring back at me, frozen in a fear he never thought he'd feel. I felt myself exhale.
He was the final name on my list.
For years, my existence had been defined by one purpose—vengeance. Every breath I took, every move I made, had been leading to this.
Now, there was nobody left to hunt. No more ghosts to chase. No more names to cross out.
I should’ve felt… something. A sense of peace. Triumph. Relief, maybe.
But I felt nothing.
But now I had time. Now, I had time for her. No distractions. No unfinished business lurking in the shadows. I could be the man she deserved—at least, whatever version of that I could manage.
I’d never be good, but I could be... something adjacent to good. To her. For her, I could be hers.
I wiped my hands one last time, then turned away. Then I walked upstairs. I needed to talk to Ava about our wedding.
How did you convince someone who aimed for your heart—and damn near hit it—to trust you with hers?
When words were already hard, when they never seemed to come out right, when silence had always been easier?
It sounded impossible.
So deep in thought I almost didn’t notice my father leaning against the wall near the elevator. His face was a mask of barely contained fury, his lips pressed into a thin line.
“Carlos’s father is furious.”
I shrugged. “Carlos’s father is too much of a coward to retaliate. Are the wedding preparations ready?”
My father’s mouth twitched in irritation, but he answered. “Yes. The ceremony is set for two o’clock tomorrow. The guests have started arriving already.”
“Good,” I replied. Without waiting for a response, I pushed past him. I needed to talk to Saint.