Chapter 17 Lucia
LUCIA
Nothing outwardly changes on paper after the suitcase incident.
Security is still seamless, Caterina still moves through Dragoni Estate with quiet competence, Giovanni still commands entire rooms with the same calm authority, and I am still his wife in every legal and public sense that matters.
But something has shifted anyway.
It lives in the way he watches me now. Sure, the rabid hunger is very much present, and his intense attention hasn’t changed. But there’s a sharper awareness beneath it, as though some part of him is waiting for the moment I prove him right to be suspicious.
I tell myself I am not imagining it; that he has always been intense, always been too much, the kind of man who makes emotions feel like weapons.
But I know what I saw in his eyes when he found that suitcase. Something worse than rage or betrayal. Something like… loss, arriving early and catching him off guard.
The next day, I sit at the edge of the bed long after he leaves the room that morning, my hands folded in my lap, my mind circling the same thought with nowhere to land.
I tell myself I didn’t run and I didn’t betray him. That should surely count for something, shouldn’t it?
And yet I still feel as though I have done damage. Kicked a fracture into being that no amount of second thoughts and justification will fix.
The simple truth is, self-preservation kicked in and I wanted… needed to know if I could.
Now I know it was a test I never should have taken, because the cost of testing a man like Giovanni Dragoni is that he will never forget you were capable of it.
He’s lived his entire life with the certainty that people leave.
People turn and people betray. Experience has taught him that trust is for fools, and softness gets you buried.
And then I came into his life like a wildfire, loud-mouthed and stubborn and furious at the world, and somehow he let himself believe that I might stay.
The irony is almost unbearable.
I ran. He brought me back.
And now I’ve shown him that the instinct still exists in me, even if I hate it, even if it shames me, even if it is the last thing I want to be.
I’m still the girl who flees when the ground feels unstable, the girl who thinks survival demands immediate distance.
And Giovanni is the kind of man who believes survival is possession.
We are a collision waiting to happen.
My phone is in my hand before I fully decide.
I don’t have much of a plan, and I definitely don’t know what I’m doing, but I need to hear something normal, something familiar, something that existed before men like Giovanni and Salvatore Bellandi and his daughter turned my life into a chessboard and my heart and soul into pawns.
I call Queens.
Uncle Lazlo answers on the second ring, his voice warm and rough in a way that hits me somewhere deep.
“Lucia,” he says immediately, and I can hear the relief he tries to hide. “You okay?”
I close my eyes, basking in his uncomplicated warmth. “I’m fine.”
A pause. “That’s a lie.”
I exhale, because of course he knows. “I’m… here,” I say finally. “And I’m safe.”
Safe is a strange word now.
Safe in Giovanni’s world means locked gates and armed men and velvet luxury that feels like a gilded warning. So my kind of safe comes with a hundred strings.
Lazlo makes a sound in his throat. “How’s your husband?”
There is something careful in the way he asks, as though he is trying to learn the answer without saying what he really means.
Are you in danger?
“We heard something went down in Red Hook a couple of weeks back. We called the house yesterday. Got stonewalled.”
Yeah, on account of Giovanni’s security men screening every single call after Isabella Bellandi gained access to me.
I swallow. “He’s… Giovanni,” I say, which is not an answer and also is.
Uncle Milo comes on the line then, louder, blunter. “We kept the money,” he says, and the shame in his voice makes my stomach twist. “And it’s helping, Lu. It really is. So don’t… uhh, don’t hold it against us, okay?”
“I know. And I won’t. Sorry I judged you.”
“It’s okay, bambina. We didn’t want to,” he continues quickly, relief in his voice too. “We held out. We tried every other option. But things got tight, Lu.”
I grip the phone harder. “I was angry,” I admit. “Maybe I still am a little. But I understand.” Just as I understand that not all Made Men are cut from the same cloth. That my father was unlucky enough to fall into the clutches of a merciless one.
One a world different from the one I married.
I realise there’s silence, startled.
Lazlo speaks softly. “You do?”
“I do,” I say, and the truth of it settles. “I don’t want you drowning because I was too proud to accept reality. I just… needed to hear it from you.”
Milo exhales. “We didn’t betray your father,” he says, voice rough. “We would never.”
“I know.”
And I do. The anger was grief wearing a different face. The anger was the old wound screaming that loans come due. And more often than not, with several pounds of flesh the innocent can’t afford to lose.
Men like Giovanni do not give without expecting something back. But the truth is, he already owns the world they live in.
He always has.
Lazlo clears his throat. “Lucia,” he says carefully, “are you happy?”
The question lands too close to my ribs.
Happy.
I almost laugh. I almost cry. “I don’t know what I am,” I admit. “But I’m… here.”
“And you’re staying?”
I hesitate. Not because I want to leave but because I don’t know what staying means anymore. And something deep in my soul is a little terrified to find out if I’m fully committed to this path I’m already on.
“Yes,” I say finally. “I’m staying.”
Lazlo murmurs something like a prayer. “Good,” he says. “Call us whenever you need to hear someone who isn’t wearing a gun.”
That pulls a reluctant snort from me. “I will.”
When I hang up, the quiet returns. But it feels less suffocating. It feels like I have anchored myself, even slightly, to something real.
I stand, walk to the mirror, study my own face. God, I look tired. Like a woman living on the edge of something she cannot name.
I think of Giovanni’s eyes. The way his mouth tightened when he said, You do not get to test that. The way his hands trembled, almost imperceptibly, when he held my wrist.
He’s not a man who trembles.
And I did that to him.
Guilt is a slow poison. It spreads while it convinces you that repair is urgent. And maybe it is.
By late afternoon, the idea has taken shape in my mind. Something I choose that I refuse to call surrender or capitulation.
A gesture. Call it a peace offering. Or a reminder that I am here.
That I’m not packing bags.
I’m not running tonight.
Caterina raises her brows when I ask for something lighter for dinner, something indulgent. She says nothing, only nods, as though she understands far more than she ever voices.
I shower slowly, letting the heat loosen the tension in my shoulders, and when I dress, I do not reach for defiance.
I reach for honesty in a barely there dress. The one Giovanni looked at as though he wanted to tear it apart with his teeth. Then the world apart to ram home his primal ownership.
I tell myself it is strategy… or maybe it’s control. But I know deep in my bones that I’m doing this because I want to smooth what has frayed.
Maybe all of those things are true.
And maybe, somewhere beneath them, is the simplest truth of all.
I want him. As a husband and a lover and hell, even as my occasional tormentor.
Is there weakness in this? Oh yes. Danger too. And that’s the thing Isabella would exploit if she could.
But guess what? Over my dead body is that bitch going to get her way.
So when I descend the stairs in sky-high heels, I do it with measured calm, even as my heart beats too fast, and I sit at the dining table alone, waiting.
The soft jazz Giovanni likes plays in the background. The air smells of rosemary and expensive wine. Of candles and the breathless promise of seduction.
I want time to pass faster because the house is quiet. Too quiet.
I picture Giovanni walking in, his gaze catching on me, his mouth softening into that dark approval he tries not to show, even as his feral hunger ratchets high.
I imagine words, conversation, something almost normal. I imagine his hands and his mouth and his cock and I imagine confessing how much I need him. Maybe even how sorry I am to have thrown a moment’s doubt into… what? This everlasting union fraught with danger?
No. That’s not it.
Because I’ve realised something these last two weeks. I ran too quickly from my marriage before I had the full picture.
Is Giovanni Dragoni a crime lord? Yes.
But is he also a powerful, astute businessman who could walk away from his blood legacy and still thrive should he choose to? Also yes.
And do I want this man whose face and authority are stamped on both sides of this coin?
I’m gearing up to make a seismic admission to myself when the sound hits.
A screech of vehicles outside.
Sharp.
Violent.
Immediate.
My spine goes rigid.
The candle flame wavers.
And deep in my very core, before anyone speaks, before any alarm sounds and the house erupts into motion, I know with brutal certainty—
The war has arrived at my door.