Chapter 38
Luciano
"Why take their heads?" she asked. "Why not just shoot them?"
I watched her carefully as I answered. "I read something once. About an old myth—Scythian warriors. They believed the soul lived in the head. That cutting it off didn't just kill a man—it erased him. Took everything. Power, memory, legacy. Gone."
My fingers flexed at my side, remembering the weight of Tomaso's skull in my hands. "A bullet ends a life. A severed head ends a lineage."
Her eyes never left the heads as she nodded slowly, like that made perfect sense. Then her gaze drifted to the security monitors mounted in the corner, showing every angle of the basement.
"Can I watch?" she asked suddenly.
The question shocked me—but it did. "Watch?"
"Yes. The footage. Of you. Doing this." Her fingersreached out and touched the hacksaw I used handle, testing its weight. "I want to see how you move. How you look when you're taking them apart."
Something dark and dangerous sparked in the space between us.
Again, I thought to say no to her. I shouldn’t have even recorded what I'd done in the first place,—but doing so was proof that they were gone.It stopped the screaming in my head. It was proof that I had avenged my mother.
They brought everything on themselves when they took us—when they left me alive. They wanted to die and I could watch them doing so over and over again.
Hearing them confess to what they'd done was proof I wasn’t just a monster. I was… a product of cause and effect.
And I was going to let her watch them because part of me needed her to know that. Needed her to see the arithmetic of my violence and understand—
I wasn’t the sin. I was the consequence of it. I was what they made me.
But I wanted to know why she wanted to watch them.
I stepped closer, watching how her pupils dilated. "Why?"
"I told you I want to learn to be your equal." Her thumb brushed a dark stain on the blade. "In every way."
“Okay,” I nodded.
She followed me to the corner where the monitors were mounted. I opened the laptop that controlled the feeds, pulled up the Tomaso footage, made sure the sound was off so she wouldn't hear our talk, Iskipped to the part I knew she wanted to see. Then I hit play. She didn’t look away.
Her eyes fixed on the screen and stayed that way, unblinking, as the footage played. The HD images showed every detail.
She leaned in.
I watched her watching me. She looked to be in awe.
"Here," I said, pausing the footage. My finger tapped the screen where my grip shifted on the hacksaw. "The first cut is easy. The second, you meet resistance."
Her pupils dilated further.
I rewound, zoomed in on the moment bone gave way. "You don’t force it. You let the blade work. Angle up—" I mimed the motion between us, close enough that my knuckles nearly brushed her collarbone. "—or your arms will shake before you finish."
She said, "replay it."
So I played it again. She studied it like a scholar.
She turned to me suddenly. "What does it feel like... getting vengeance for your mother?"
I paused, finding my words carefully. "There's a moment right after it—when it's done—where it's quiet in my head. No screaming. No replay of what happened. I can't hear crying anymore and there's just... stillness. It’s exhilarating."
I glanced down at her, at the way her chest rose and fell too fast. "But it doesn't last. That's the thing no one tells you. Vengeance is a ritual, not a cure. You can cut off every head. Burn down every house. You can watch the light leave their eyes and still..."
I swallowed hard. "It doesn't get rid of the residual."
Her lips curved downward. "You can hear your mother's screams?"
I nodded.
"I used to wake up hearing gunshots," she said softly. "For years. My body would brace for impact like the bullet was going to hit me instead of her."
The sadness in her eyes ignited something feral in me. It made me want to destroy everyone that had ever hurt her. My father most of all.
Suddenly, she moved. Fast. She rose to her tiptoes. Her mouth crashed into mine, angry and hot, teeth clashing before our lips could settle against each other.
Her bite split my lip. I tasted iron and toothpaste. Her fingers tangled in my hair, pulling hard. We moaned in each other’s mouths.
I responded without thinking, Just on instinct and need. It felt like the heads were watching.
I should’ve cared. Should’ve pulled away. But instead, it made the moment better—because there was something obscene about it. It blurred every line—between violence and pleasure. Between grief and love. Between pain and power. And it made sense. To find pleasure in a room surrounded by the men who almost took everything from me. Ava was giving me everything that shouldn’t be possible back.
I spun her around, her breath catching as I bent her over the steel table. Her palms flattened against the cold surface, legs spread instinctively.
I was... too aware. Not just of her, but of everything. The sound of my breath in my throat, the way my hands fumbled with the hem of her shirt, the slick glide of her skin against the metal table beneath her.
We were facing the heads. All eight of them. Lined up behind the glass, frozen in death.
I fumbled, pulling down my pajama pants. I yanked her hips back and drove my dick into her. Hard.
For a moment the world narrowed, and all I could do was feel the slick heat of her around me.
I was inside her.
Fuck. She was so tight, I had to grit my teeth. It felt like stepping into fire. Like her pussy was punishing me for making her wait. She cried out and whispered for me to move.
I started working my hips. Going deep, then harder. Deeper. I was desperate.
She took it all, her cries making my blood boil. The sounds of our bodies—wet and wild—echoed off the cold concrete walls.
And they were watching.
She pushed back—meeting every thrust.
We didn’t fuck with tenderness. There was nothing sweet about this. It was lust and rage wrapped in skin.
Sweat slicked her spine, my fingers dug into the softness of her ass. Each time I slammed into her, the metal table groaned.
Crash. The force of our movement knocked one of the trophy cases loose from its shelf.
The glass hit the ground and shattered, a head inside—an old one, graying at the temple—rolled out and thudding once before coming to a stop by Ava’s foot.
Neither one of us seemed to care.
I pushed Ava’s head down against the cold steel.
The sound of her— the way she moaned, whimpered, begged —made my blood boil.
She came first, clenching around me so tight. Her voice cracked as she called my name, the sound bouncing off the concrete walls.
I followed seconds later, hips jerking uncontrollably as I emptied my cum inside her. One hand on the nape of her neck, the other flat on her back, holding her in place while I gave her everything.
We didn’t move for a while. Just stayed like that—fused together, panting, surrounded by the stench of blood, steel, and sex.
When I finally pulled back, she braced herself against the table, shaky.
Glass glinted on the floor. The head stared up from where it had fallen, its eyes empty and cold. But Ava was still warm. That was all that mattered.
She glanced back at me over her shoulder.
“That’s the first time,” she breathed, her voice hoarse, “you didn’t analyze something before doing it.”
I grabbed her chin, tilted her face to mine, and kissed her slow.
Nothing —had ever felt more fucking right.