Chapter 15
Cristiano
The prison smells like sweat, fear, and institutional food left out too long. The fluorescent lights buzz overhead, harsh and unforgiving, turning everyone’s skin sallow.
I empty my pockets into a plastic tray. Keys. Phone. Wallet. Watch. The guard eyes my suit with jealous contempt, probably calculating how many months of his salary it cost.
“Arms out. Feet apart.”
I give him my most charming smile as I oblige him. His hands run down my sides, my legs, and check my waistband. From the glower on the guard’s face, he knows who I am, and he’d dearly like to see me locked up in here as well. But that’s never going to happen to a Montoni.
The metal door buzzes open. Another door. Another buzz. The sounds echo off concrete walls, layering over the clang of metal gates and the shouts of the incarcerated.
The visitation room has plastic tables bolted to the floor.
Men in orange jumpsuits sit across from wives, girlfriends, mothers, and children.
Some are agitated, hands gesturing wildly.
Some sit slumped and morose, staring at nothing.
A few are laughing, but there’s a manic edge to it, like they’ve forgotten what real laughter sounds like.
Rafiel Lucania sits at a table in the middle of the room, his hard eyes tracking me.
He’s in his early twenties and prison-fit in a way that comes from having nothing to do but lift weights and fight.
His head is shaved at the sides, blond hair swept back on top.
Tattoos crawl up his neck and disappear beneath the orange jumpsuit.
There’s a wolf among them. The Lucania family symbol. Loyalty inked into flesh.
His face is hard and unfriendly, and his body is coiled tight.
In the far corner sits a man radiating cold stillness.
Fifties, broad-shouldered, some of his short beard gone to iron-gray.
The tattoos heavily marking his muscular arms and throat are faded, the ink blurring at the edges.
He has a visitor across from him, but he’s not looking at the visitor. He’s staring at me with hard blue eyes.
The resemblance to Rafiel hits me a second later. This must be Don Gabriel Lucania. Same build. Similar tattoos. Same eyes. But this man has decades on his son, many of them spent inside.
Two Lucanias staring at me like I owe them something. Typical.
Rafiel doesn’t move as I reach his table, and he doesn’t stand or offer his hand.
He just stares.
And stares.
The silence stretches. His dark blue eyes bore into me with pure, concentrated hatred. He’s examining every detail of my appearance. My tailored suit. My expensive shoes. My unscarred hands. Everything about me screams wealth, privilege, and freedom.
Everything he doesn’t have and never will.
I settle into the plastic chair across from him, refusing to be the first to look away.
Still, he says nothing. Just glowers. Hating me.
Finally, he breaks the silence. “Have you set a date?”
“For what?”
“For when you’ll become the happiest man on earth.” The words come out clipped, like he’s forcing them through clenched teeth.
I study him. His knuckles are white, his hands clenched on the tabletop. I wonder why he’s asked me here. This doesn’t seem to be about the Sokolis, like Silas Cross said it would be.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I say carefully.
“Don’t you?” The words come out like nails punched into wood. “Ariana Barone. When’s the wedding, Montoni?”
“I don’t…” I begin, my brow pinching in confusion. Is that jealousy pouring off Rafiel’s tense frame?
No, it can’t be.
This tattooed, violent, incarcerated man surely can’t be in love with Malus’s own ice princess.
“There’s been a misunderstanding,” I say slowly. “I’m not engaged to anyone.”
“That’s what you’re calling it.” His voice is flat and cold. “A misunderstanding? Ariana Barone wore your ring for weeks before you humiliated her in public. The whole fucking city knows what you did to her.”
So that’s what this is about.
News travels fast in Malus, even through prison walls.
Someone’s told Rafiel about what happened at the spa.
Me running past my supposed fiancée like she didn’t exist to finger fuck another woman in the break room.
Every client and staff member in that spa had probably spread the news to their friends, sisters, and husbands before Mina even climaxed on my tongue.
“It wasn’t intentional,” I say.
“Wasn’t it?” Rafiel leans forward slightly, and I see the effort it takes him to keep his hands flat on the table instead of around my throat.
“You gave her a ring. Let her think you wanted to marry her. Then you had your whore assault her. She tried to break Ariana’s neck just for talking about you. ”
The word “whore” makes my blood spike hot, but I keep my expression neutral.
I lean forward slowly, resting my forearms on the edge of the table, and let my voice drop to something quiet and lethal. “Watch your mouth, Lucania. You’re in a cage. I’m not. Think very carefully about what you say about my woman, or I’ll make sure you never speak again.”
The threat hangs in the air between us. I could see to it that he bleeds out naked in the showers by dusk. A payment to the right guard, the right inmate, and Rafiel’s days on this earth would be over.
Rafiel’s whole body vibrates with barely contained violence, and I’m curious about what’s driving it. If he’s in love with Ariana, shouldn’t he be happy that I’ve thrown her aside?
“You had everything handed to you,” he snarls. “A woman like her, beautiful and loyal and willing to marry you. A future most men would kill for. And you threw it away like yesterday’s trash.”
“It was trash.” I meet his dark blue eyes. “To me.”
The tendons in his neck stand out like steel cables pulled to breaking point.
Does she know he loves her? Does she return it?
Trying to picture perfect, polished Ariana with this criminal is laughable.
Then again, some women have a taste for chaos and violence.
I wouldn’t know anything about that, because my Mina is the sweetest, gentlest woman who ever lived.
Maybe Ariana likes it rough and dirty. Maybe she visited him here, sat across from him at one of these plastic tables in a low-cut top, and let him believe he had a chance.
Maybe she thrives on attention from a caged, violent man.
“How long have you been in love with Ariana Barone?” I ask, genuinely curious now.
“How does it feel to be sitting in this concrete box, hearing about her life unfolding on the other side of these walls, knowing with certainty that you’ll never touch her?
Never fuck her? Never be anything more to her than a criminal rotting in a cage? ”
“Shut up.” The words come through clenched teeth.
“A Barone and a Lucania.” I shake my head slowly.
“It was never going to happen. Even if you weren’t locked in here counting down the years, she was always going to marry someone like me.
A better man. A richer man. Someone with the right family name, the right connections, and enough money to keep her in the lifestyle she’s accustomed to. ”
“I said shut up.”
“I was supposed to marry her, and I didn’t even want her.” I let a smile curve my lips. “That must be eating you alive, seeing me throw away a woman you could never dream of having for yourself.”
“Shut. The fuck. UP.”
“Tell me, does she visit you here? Does she sit across from you in a tight dress, letting you look at her but never touch? Does she get wet knowing you go back to your cell and jerk off to her?” I glance around at the other inmates.
“There are fifteen, twenty men in this room. There’s your dear old dad as well.
I bet they all jerk off imagining your precious little ice—”
Rafiel comes across the table like a freight train jumping its tracks. His fist connects with my jaw in an explosion of pain and light.
I stagger back, catching myself on the chair.
The whole room erupts. Inmates shouting. Guards rushing forward. Metal chairs scraping across concrete.
I touch my jaw where Rafiel’s fist connected. My fingers come away bloody. He split my lip.
I start to laugh as blood runs down my chin. Rafiel’s just earned himself solitary confinement. Lost privileges. Maybe even months added to his sentence.
Perfect.
Recompense for him calling Mina a whore.
Rafiel is still coming at me. He gets a fistful of my collar before the guards reach him and drag him back. His feet scrabble against the linoleum, but he’s still shouting.
“Arrogant piece of shit! How dare you talk about her like that!”
Three guards wrestle him toward the security door. He’s fighting them every step of the way, his face twisted with rage. I smile from ear to ear, watching him go.
“You had everything!” he shouts at me. “You don’t deserve her. You don’t deserve anything.”
The security door buzzes and slams shut. A guard is still shouting at the other inmates to sit down. Someone is laughing. The fluorescent lights flicker overhead.
Gabriel Lucania is still watching me from the corner. While his son gets dragged away screaming, the father hasn’t moved a muscle. Silas Cross should have suggested I meet with the don instead. He at least seems to know how to put a leash on his temper.
I wipe the blood from my chin and walk out.
On the other side of the security doors, my belongings are returned to me in a plastic tray. The guard with the contemptuous eyes watches me go without a word.
Outside, the air is cold. After the claustrophobic prison, the sky feels enormous.
I sit in my car and dab at the blood on my chin. Rafiel Lucania punched me in the face in a room full of guards, knowing what it would cost him. He threw away even the little freedom he has left, just to defend her honor.
All for a woman he’ll never have.
The most expensive punch he’s ever thrown, and he didn’t hesitate for a second.
My phone buzzes with a text from an unknown number.
Call me when you’ve met with Rafiel Lucania. Silas Cross.