10. Nova #2
“He’s worse than any of us. The things he’s done - the people he’s hurt-” He laughs, bitter. “You have no idea what you’ve gotten yourself into.”
“I know exactly what I’ve gotten myself into.” I step around Luca, face Dante directly. “I’ve gotten myself into a relationship with a man who believes me. Who protects me. Who loves me.” I tilt my chin up. “Can you say the same?”
Dante flinches like I’ve slapped him.
“This isn’t over,” he says, and his voice is ugly now, stripped of all its charm. “Mother won’t let it be over. And when she comes for you-” He looks at Luca. “Even you won’t be able to stop her.”
“Watch me.”
Luca takes a step forward, and Dante takes a step back. And then another. And then he’s retreating toward the door, his bravado crumbling, his face a mask of impotent fury.
“You’ll regret this,” he says. “Both of you. You’ll regret this.”
“Goodbye, Dante.”
The door closes behind him.
I stand there, trembling, and I don’t realize I’m crying until Luca’s arms come around me. He pulls me against his chest, holds me while I shake, says nothing.
There’s nothing to say.
***
Luca
I watch her cry, and I think about killing my brother.
Not seriously. Not literally. But the fantasy is vivid - my hands around his throat, squeezing until his face goes red, until his eyes bulge, until he understands exactly what it feels like to be helpless while someone destroys you.
You think he’s different? Dante asked. You think my brother is some kind of hero?
I’m not a hero. I’ve never pretended to be. But I’m also not the man who watched his wife suffer and did nothing.
I’m the man who’s going to burn it all down.
“I’m sorry,” Nova whispers against my chest.
“Don’t apologize.”
“I shouldn’t have let him in. Shouldn’t have-”
“You needed to say what you said.” I pull back, tilt her face up to mine. “You needed to face him. And now it’s done.”
“He’s going to tell her.”
“I know.”
“He’s going to tell her where I am. What we’ve been-” She swallows. “She’s going to come for me.”
“Let her.”
Nova’s eyes search my face. “You keep saying that. ‘Let her.’ Like it’s simple. Like she’s not the most dangerous person I’ve ever known.”
“She’s not dangerous.” I brush a tear from her cheek. “She’s a bully. A predator who only attacks people who can’t fight back. She’s never gone up against someone who can actually hurt her.”
“And you can?”
“I can destroy her.” I let her see it - the cold, certain fury I’ve been banking since I was a boy. “I will destroy her. And when I’m done, she won’t be able to hurt anyone ever again.”
Nova stares at me for a long moment. Then something shifts in her expression, fear giving way to something else. Something that looks almost like anticipation.
“Promise me,” she says.
“What?”
“Promise me that when it happens, when you take her down, I’ll be there. I want to see it.” Her jaw sets. “I want to watch.”
I think about the plan. The wedding. The trap that’s almost ready to spring.
“You’ll be there,” I promise. “You’ll have a front-row seat.”
***
The invitation arrives the next morning.
It’s waiting on the breakfast table when we come downstairs - a cream envelope, heavy and expensive, with the Castellani crest embossed in gold on the flap.
I recognize the stationery. I’ve seen it before, on every formal occasion my family has ever hosted.
Nova picks it up. Turns it over in her hands. Her face goes pale.
“What is it?”
“It’s-” She stops. Opens the envelope with shaking hands. Pulls out the card inside.
I watch her read it. Watch her expression shift from confusion to shock to something I can’t quite name.
“Nova?”
She hands me the invitation.
I read it.
And I feel a smile spread across my face - cold, vicious, full of possibility.
Vivienne Castellani requests the pleasure of your company at the wedding of her son Dante to Miss Chloe Hartwell…
“That’s my sister,” Nova whispers. “He’s marrying my sister.”
I do the math in my head. The timeline. How quickly this engagement must have happened. They are sending this invitation to break me. To humiliate me one last time.
“They were together before you left,” I say. “Weren’t they?”
Nova doesn’t answer. She doesn’t have to. The truth is written all over her face - the betrayal, the humiliation, the sudden clarity of understanding exactly why her sister shut the door on her.
“They’ve been together for months,” she breathes. “Maybe longer. That’s why Chloe knew - that’s why she had Vivienne’s exact words-”
“Because she was getting them firsthand. From Dante.”
Nova sinks into a chair. Her face is white, her hands trembling. She looks like someone who’s just had the last piece of a puzzle fall into place, and the picture is uglier than she ever imagined.
“She knew,” Nova says. “My own sister knew what was happening to me, and she didn’t care. She was too busy fucking my husband to-”
Her voice breaks.
I kneel in front of her. Take her hands in mine.
“Nova. Look at me.”
She looks.
“This is a gift,” I say quietly.
“A gift?”
“They’re getting married. In public. In front of a cathedral full of my mother’s closest friends and allies.” I squeeze her hands. “They’re gathering everyone who matters in one place. Everyone who’s smiled at my mother across dinner tables. Everyone who’s turned a blind eye to what she does.”
Understanding dawns in her eyes. “The case…”
“The case is ready. The evidence is gathered. All that’s missing is the stage.” I smile, and I know it doesn’t look kind. “And they’ve just handed us the perfect one.”
“You want to - what? Crash the wedding?”
“I want to destroy it.” I stand, pulling her up with me. “I want to walk in there with you on my arm, in front of everyone my mother has ever known. I want to show them exactly what she did to you. And then I want to watch her world come crashing down around her ears.”
Nova stares at me. Her breathing is fast, her eyes wide.
“That’s insane,” she says.
“Probably.”
“It could backfire spectacularly.”
“It could.”
“Vivienne could - I don’t know - have us arrested, or killed, or-”
“She could try.”
Silence.
Then, slowly, something shifts in Nova’s face. The shock fades. The fear recedes. And in its place rises something I’ve only glimpsed before, something fierce and hungry and utterly unbroken.
“When?” she asks.
“The wedding is in two weeks.”
“And the dress?”
I feel my smile widen. “I was thinking red.”
***
Marta calls me again two days later. My mother has stopped hunting and started arranging, and as far as she can tell, everything is going exactly to plan.
She knows Nova and I will come to the wedding - Marta as much as confirmed it for her.
She knows we’re planning something. Some confrontation, some dramatic reveal. She’s counting on it. Let them come, she told Marta. Let them think they have the upper hand.
Because the men are already hired. Quiet professionals, the kind who make a problem disappear without disturbing a single guest. They’ll be waiting at the cathedral, invisible and patient.
And Marta is to call the moment we leave my gates.
My mother has been playing this game for forty years. She believes she knows how to handle threats.
She means for both of us to be permanently solved before the last song plays.