Blood Between Us
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The footsteps coming toward me are deliberate and slow.
Each one lands like a gavel—calculated, inevitable. The kind of rhythm you only hear when they want you to know they’re coming.
I press myself against the cold edge of the gallery wall, muscles trembling with adrenaline. My phone’s flashlight flickers once, then dies completely. Darkness swallows everything.
The only sound left is the echo of leather soles.
Whoever it is… They’re here for me.
I reach for the emergency alarm behind the central pedestal—only to remember I disabled it myself last week. Goddamn it.
I duck low, breath tight, trying to move around the exhibit without giving myself away. I glance toward the front entrance. Still locked. Still too far.
Then a voice cuts through the dark like a blade dipped in memory.
“Is this how you hide now? Behind glass and silence?”
I know that voice. Even after all these years.
“Luca.”
He emerges from the shadows like something summoned—no longer just a ghost from my past but a flesh-and-blood standing in his tailored suit with those same obsidian eyes that once burned with love and now burn with hatred.
He doesn’t speak right away.
I straighten slowly, arms rigid at my sides, trying to hide the tremor in my fingers.
“What are you doing here?”
He cocks his head. “You’ve got a lot of nerve asking questions when you’re the one who vanished. Left me in the dark.”
“I had no choice.”
“There’s always a choice,” he snarls, stepping closer.
He closes the distance in two slow, measured strides. “And now you’re here. In Vegas. Working under an alias.”
He reaches into his coat and pulls out the photograph—the one of Daniel. He holds it up between us like a weapon. “Is this my son you’ve been hiding from me?”
—
I stare at the photo, throat closing around air that won’t come.
“You had no right,” I whisper, eyes locked on the photo.
“No right?” His voice cracks like thunder. “That’s my blood. My son. And you kept him from me.”
I step back, the air between us vibrating with fury. “I did what I had to do to keep him safe. From you. From your father.”
His jaw flexes. “My father is dead.”
“And his empire isn’t,” I snap.
He lowers the photo slowly, but his eyes stay on mine, dark and deadly. “He’s mine, Giuliana.”
“You should’ve told me. Now I’m done asking.”
—
He steps closer like he’s stalking prey rather than confronting the woman he once vowed to protect. My instincts scream to run—but I don’t move.
The fury in his eyes is real, but beneath it… something else stirs. Hurt. Betrayal.
“You don’t understand,” I whisper. “I left because I had no choice.”
He shakes his head. “You made me believe you didn’t want me. That what we had meant nothing. And now I find out it was all a fucking lie?”
“I didn’t lie.”
His laugh is sharp, bitter. “Spoken like a woman who’s been playing survival games too long.”
I lift my chin. “You don’t get to judge the choices I made when you were raised by the man who forced me to make them.”
That lands. I see it in the clench of his jaw, the flicker in his eyes.
He steps in until there’s barely an inch between us, his voice a whisper over my skin. “Then tell me the truth now. All of it. Or I start digging until I find it.”
—
“Back off,” I hiss, shoving him in the chest. He doesn’t move. Doesn’t even blink. That’s the thing about Luca—he never needed muscle. He is all muscle.
“You want the truth?” I snap, chest heaving.
I shake my head, pacing now, heart racing. “Your father came to my home and in front of my family he told all of us what was going to happen next. What he’d do to my parents and to me if I continued seeing you*.*”
Luca flinches—just once. But I see it. Feel it.
“I was eighteen, Luca.” “And I believed him. He had photos. Records. Threats. He said if I didn’t disappear, they’d find me in pieces.”
He runs a hand down his face. I think it’s the first time he realizes I was his casualty.
“I would’ve protected you,”
“No,” I reply, fierce and gutted. “You would’ve tried. And they would’ve made you watch them bury me.”
I stand frozen in the gallery’s dim light, Luca’s gaze locked on mine—sharp, unrelenting.
It’s been ten years. But here he is. Flesh and blood. And my traitorous heart beats out a rhythm I can’t control.
I grip the edges of my coat tighter, knuckles white against black wool. I force myself to look at him.
And regret it instantly.
Luca Moretti stands like a storm held in check. Shoulders squared. Suit sharp enough to bleed. But it’s those eyes—obsidian and wild—that slice straight through my armor. They drink me in with a hunger I remember too well.
I swallow hard. My body trembles in ways I can’t disguise.
He’s not the boy I loved. He’s the man forged from that loss.
And yet... There’s a flicker beneath all that steel. The same Luca who once whispered against my skin that he would love me forever.
God help me—I still want him. And that terrifies me.
He leans against the sculpture; broad shoulders squared like a throne he was born to claim. This man isn’t the boy who used to sneak me cannoli in the middle of math class.
No—this is the new boss of the Moretti empire.
But even now—after all these years, there it is. That raw, reckless vulnerability that once pulled me under.
And some terrible, foolish part of me still wants to drown there.
His voice cuts through me like a blade. "We have a son."
Not a question. A verdict. One I can’t run from anymore.
I open my mouth, but no words come. Finally, I manage to nod, my voice no more than a whisper. "He’s ten. His name is Daniel."
The words taste like surrender—like pulling the truth from a wound that’s never healed. I hesitate.
"He looks just like you."
The moment they leave my mouth, I see it—the shift. Luca’s jaw clenches. His knuckles whiten where fists form at his sides.
"Why didn’t you tell me?"
"Because I was afraid of your father if I didn't disappear.” "And even if I had stayed—what kind of life could you offer him? Your world is dangerous. I didn’t want him dragged into it."
Luca straightens, eyes flashing. That dark fire reignites, swirling with something deeper now—betrayal, loss, a grief he’s only just begun to understand.
"My world is dangerous, but it’s also powerful." "I would have protected you both."
He steps toward me, closing the space like a predator, and I feel every inch of it. "Instead, you kept him from me. You kept us from me."
"I did what I had to do to keep breathing," I whisper. "I was scared, Luca. I was all alone."
He moves closer, not with anger now but with an intensity that robs me of breath.
"You’re not alone anymore," he murmurs. "Neither is he."
And in that moment—God help me—I believe him.
My breath hitched as his fingers traced the line of my jaw, slow and deliberate. And my body—the traitor—leaned in.
I wanted to pull away. I should have. I had built these walls; over every wound he'd left behind including the love that had curdled into hate.
But now—the years between us dissolved like smoke. And the pull between us was too strong.
"Luca," I whispered, my voice shaking. "It’s not that simple.” "Your son is my son," he cut in.
His other hand cupped my face, his thumbs brushing away tears I hadn’t even realized had fallen.
"Let me make it right, Giuliana. Let me be the man you deserved all those years ago."
"What if it’s not enough?" I whispered. "What if they come after us? What if—"
"Stop," he said, voice gentle but unyielding. "Don’t let fear control you anymore. Not when we have a second chance."
Then his lips were on mine, soft at first, trembling with restraint. And I broke.
He pulled me flush against him, his arms banding around my waist, his body radiating heat. A moan escaped me before I could stop it.
I wanted this. I needed this.
"I’ve missed you," he groaned against my mouth. "Every fucking day."
"I’ve missed you too," I choked out. "But it’s complicated, Luca. We can’t just—"
He devoured the words with another kiss, rougher this time. “We don’t have to figure it all out tonight."
"Right now, all I want is you."
I gasped as his fingers found the skin of my waist—hot, reverent, possessive. And then I gave in.
I pushed him back against the cold wall, trembling with need, fumbling with his belt like a woman starved. "You’re still mine," he rasped, eyes dark with wild hunger. "Even after all this time."
I didn’t answer. I couldn’t. My body answered for me. I dropped to my knees, driven by a hunger I couldn’t name, and when I took him into my mouth, his strangled moan carved straight through my soul. "Fuck, Giuliana," he groaned. "You’re going to undo me."
Suddenly, he hauled me up as though I weighed nothing, my pants tangled around my ankles, one leg hooked over his shoulder. The cold wall bit into my back as his arm locked around my waist, anchoring me to him.
"Mine," he growled against my throat.
And then he was inside me—deep—his thrust brutal and claiming. I gasped, nails clawing at his shoulders as my body surrendered to him completely.
"Luca—" I sobbed, head falling back.
Every inch, every snap of his hips sent shockwaves through me, pleasure sharp and dizzying. "You were always mine," he groaned.. "And you always will be."
I shattered around him then—as my climax hit like a wrecking ball. I sobbed his name again, body arching, helpless beneath the onslaught of his need.
But just as I tipped over the edge again—
A click. Subtle. Sharp.
A sound that didn’t belong.
The front door.
Someone else was here.