Chapter 21 - Luca
The bodies between us might as well be a wall between Faith and the rest of her life. I watch her stumble toward her car, each step taking her further from what she just witnessed, from what I’ve done in her name. My legs lock in place, every muscle screaming to chase, to catch, to explain.
Her hands shake so violently she drops her keys twice before managing the lock. The sound of metal hitting concrete echoes across the empty lot. I take one step forward, then force myself to stop.
If you chase now, she runs forever.
The logic barely holds against instinct.
My body vibrates with the need to pursue, to pin her against that car and make her understand that every death, every scream I extracted, was for her protection.
But her face when she looked at me across the compound, the pure horror mixing with something worse: recognition.
She saw what I really am. Not the man who teaches traumatized children self-defense.
Not the protector who sharpens her knives.
The demon who paints walls with blood and calls it love.
Her taillights vanish around the corner, red bleeding into darkness, as the cleanup van arrives.
I stand frozen in Neumann's driveway, arms hanging useless at my sides.
The November wind cuts through my blood-soaked shirt, the stench of copper and gunpowder clinging to me like a confession.
Can't feel the cold. Can't feel anything except the wrongness of her driving away, of letting her go, of not having her within my sight where I can ensure her safety.
This is what prey must feel like when they escape the wolf. Except I'm not supposed to be the prey. I'm supposed to hunt, catch, possess. The reversal makes my brain stutter, unable to process the new configuration where Faith exists outside my immediate control.
Three seconds. That's how long I hesitated when she ran. Three seconds of watching her flee instead of immediately following. The longest hesitation of my adult life, and it might have cost me everything.
Back inside, Nico's directing the cleanup crew. He takes one look at me and states, "You're compromised."
My hands shake as I help move bodies, fingers trembling against cooling flesh. The tremor is slight but persistent, like my nervous system is rejecting what just happened. Faith running. Faith leaving. Faith looking at me like I'm exactly what I've always claimed to be: a monster.
"She'll come back," Nico says, hefting a body over his shoulder. "They always do once they calm down."
But Faith isn't "they." She's not some traumatized civilian who'll rationalize this, who'll convince herself it was necessary. She saw clearly. The community center was performance, careful choreography designed to seem human. This, a dozen corpses systematically executed, this is truth.
Marco sends three texts while we work. I delete them unread. Nothing matters beyond Faith's closed door, beyond the growing distance between us.
I last nine hours. Nine hours of pacing my surveillance room, watching her apartment through screens, seeing her bedroom light burn like an accusation. She doesn't sleep either. Her shadow moves past the window again and again, pacing like a caged animal.
The bruises I left might fade, but I'm carved into her DNA now. She can run, but her body will always remember who owns it.
At 3 a.m., I turn my key in her lock. The key slips in my fumbling fingers. My hands won't stop shaking. When did locks become difficult? When did my hands forget their precision?
Her apartment smells like burnt sugar. She's been baking again. She's waiting in the living room. Not surprised. Not sleeping. Just sitting in darkness, silhouette backlit by streetlight.
"I knew you'd come," she says, voice flat as a flatline. Dead. Like Sofia's voice after the massacre, after finding out what I'd done to Mikhail.
"Faith…"
"Get out." Two words that hit harder than bullets.
"I need to explain…"
"There's nothing to explain. You killed all those people."
"You always knew what I was."
"I knew, but seeing it… Get out."
"I did it for you, little faith."
"No." She stands, and even in darkness I can see her hands clenched into fists. "For you. Because you're sick."
The words start pouring out of me wrong, too fast, uncontrolled like arterial spray: "I don't know how else to protect you.
When I was seventeen, I couldn't protect anyone.
My father died, and I could only watch his blood spread across marble while they kept coming.
Now I can prevent that. Have to prevent that. "
My voice cracks, and I realize I’m crying. When did that start? Tears running down my face like a child's, like that boy staring across the room at his father's corpse. My mouth tastes like old blood.
"You don't understand," I continue, unable to stop the flood. "Every man who looks at you could be the one. Could be the threat I don't see coming. I can't let that happen. Can't fail again."
I step toward her. She steps back. We dance this horrible choreography around her coffee table, me advancing, her retreating, neither of us winning.
Faith watches me fall apart with no sympathy in her expression. Her hazel eyes are stone, that warmth I've grown addicted to completely absent.
"You need professional help, Luca." She says it like a diagnosis. Clinical. Detached.
"I need you." I hate how young I sound. How broken.
"That's the problem."
She turns on the lamp, and the sudden light makes me flinch. I must look pathetic: tears on my face, hands still shaking, covered in other men's blood.
"You made me feel alive, Luca. But you also made me feel complicit in murder. I choose neither."
The admission cuts deeper than rejection alone. She felt it too, that electric connection, and she's choosing to sever it anyway.
"Leave," she says, each word precisely placed. "Don't come back. Don't watch me. Don't follow me. We're done."
My chest cracks, actual sound, actual sensation. Like ribs breaking from inside out.
"You don't mean that."
"I do. You're sick, and I can't fix you. And I won't enable you."
She's using therapy language, treating me like a problem to be solved rather than the man whose name she screamed two nights ago, whose fingers knew every secret her body kept.
"Faith, please." When have I ever begged? Never. But my knees want to buckle, vision graying at the edges from exhaustion and something worse: loss.
"If you have any genuine feeling for me, you'll leave."
The trap of it. Stay and prove I don't care about her wishes. Leave and lose her. Either way, I lose.
"This isn't over," I manage.
"Yes, it is."
I make it to my car before the shaking takes over completely.
My body convulses like a junkie's. Worse than a junkie's.
They can score another hit. There's only one Faith.
The steering wheel is slick with sweat, or is it blood?
Can't tell anymore. This must be what withdrawal feels like, except I can't find another dealer, another high.
I call Nico, my voice barely recognizable: "She left me."
Silence. Then: "Come home. It's not safe for you to be alone like this."
Like this. Compromised. Weak. Useless. The drive home happens on autopilot, missing turns, forgetting where I am until the GPS recalculates. Twice I pull over, convinced I'm going to vomit, but nothing comes up. My cock feels dead. Even the thought of violence feels empty without her to return to.
Walking into the mansion, everyone already knows. Nico must have called ahead.
Sofia takes one look at me: "Jesus, Luca. You look like death."
She's not wrong. My reflection in the hallway mirror shows someone I don't recognize: hollow eyes, skin pale as paper, dried blood still under my fingernails.
Marco appears, studying me with that clinical assessment he uses before ordering executions. "When did you last sleep?"
"Saturday. With her."
"It's Monday night, Luca. Almost Tuesday."
Is it? I've lost time somewhere between the warehouse and here. Between having her and losing her.
Maria brings water, making me drink, hovering like I might collapse. Maybe I will. This feeling, chest cracked open, insides spilling out, maybe this is what dying feels like when you're already dead inside.
"You need medical intervention," Marco says.
"I need Faith."
"She's not coming back, brother."
The words pierce through what's left of my control.
"Then nothing matters." I mean it. The community center, the family business, breathing, none of it matters without her to make it real.
Marco's phone buzzes with business. Detroit. Shipments. Territory. He shows me the screen, trying to pull me back to the world. I turn away. Nothing about the family business penetrates the fog of her absence.
Seventy-two hours without sleep now. The hallucinations started around hour sixty: shadows moving in peripheral vision, her voice calling my name from empty rooms. My hands shake constantly, making simple tasks impossible. I tried to clean my Glock and nearly shot myself when my finger slipped.
I lose control and call her. She answers on the third ring, and her "hello" nearly breaks me completely.
"You said you'd leave me alone." Her voice is tired. So tired.
"I can't." Simple truth.
"Luca…"
"I don't know how to exist without you anymore. You changed my brain chemistry. Literally. I sleep with you or I don't sleep. Feel with you or feel nothing. You've become necessary for my basic function."
Long silence. I can hear her breathing, each exhale a small torture.
"That's not love, Luca. That's addiction."
"What's the difference?" It's a real question. I genuinely don't understand the distinction.
She sighs, and I picture her rubbing her temples the way she does when overwhelmed. "If you loved me, you'd want what's best for me. Even if that wasn't you."
The logic cuts clean through me. Perfect. Terrible. True.
"What if nothing's best for you without me?"
"That's not your choice to make."
She hangs up. The silence that follows is absolute, like the world has stopped existing. I stare at the phone, willing it to ring, willing her to call back and say she didn't mean it.
But Faith doesn't call back. She's done exactly what she said: left me. And unlike the pattern I've followed my whole adult life (want, take, discard), she's discarded me first.
The phone slips from my numb fingers, screen cracking against marble floor. The sound echoes through the empty room, sharp and final. Everything's breaking now. The controlled killer who plans every cut, who knows exactly where to press to make men scream, he's coming apart at the seams.
I find myself in the basement without remembering the walk.
My body moves on autopilot, muscle memory guiding me to the one place that's always made sense.
My tools hang in perfect order: scalpels, pliers, everything I use to make men understand consequences.
The fluorescent lights buzz overhead, casting harsh shadows that make the metal gleam like promises.
My fingers trace the handle of my favorite knife, the one that's tasted more blood than I can count. The weight of it is familiar, comforting when nothing else makes sense. It's perfectly balanced, sharp enough to split atoms, an extension of my hand that's never failed me.
Seventy-two hours without sleep. Without her. My reflection in the blade shows someone I don't recognize: hollow, desperate, dangerous. Not the methodical man who takes men apart piece by piece. Something else. Something worse. Something without boundaries or purpose.
The knife feels right in my shaking hand. Solid. Real. It doesn't judge or leave or tell me I'm sick. It just exists, ready for whatever comes next.
I test the edge against my thumb, watching blood bead immediately. The pain is nothing compared to the hollow ache in my chest, but at least it's something I can control. Something I understand.
Without her, sleep is impossible. Without her, control is impossible.
And a Rosetti without control is everyone's nightmare.