34. Luca
LUCA
By the time Rosalia knocks on my door, I’m in my leathers.
“Thanks for coming. I left Milana a note so she won’t freak out if she walks out and sees you here.”
“All good.”
Rosalia has her iPad with her and I bet she’s going to watch something.
“I won’t be too long.” With all the thinking I need to do, I could ride for days, but that’s a luxury I don’t have.
“What’s going on, Luca?”
I hesitate. Rosalia—Rosie to us younger lot, as we were around each other enough as kids—has always been part of our lives.
She’s now Matteo’s housekeeper, and her husband Burley is Tasha’s bodyguard.
Being born into this life herself, she knows exactly what we do and where we hail from.
“Just the usual Mafia shit, but we’ve invited the Russians in so best you develop a taste for vodka. ”
“Eww,” she jokes, but her gaze is serious. “Gabi’s in the hospital. That isn’t too close to home, Luca, it is home.”
Ain’t that the truth.
“I know. Trust me, everybody is dissecting how this happened.” I squeeze her arm. “It won’t happen again.”
She shakes her head. “Just get going. And be safe.”
I nod and stride out, closing the door behind me and making my way to the basement.
Ten minutes later, the last gate to the outside world rattles closed behind me and I slip into the night.
Black helmet. Black leathers. Black bike.
A sliver in the dark. As fucking incognito as it gets.
Freedom in the only sense I’ve ever known it.
I navigate the city streets and make my way to the nearest highway that will take me out of town.
I know this road so well, the off- and on-ramps are mapped on my brain.
I open the gas and the bike powers away with a screech you’d hear miles away.
Tonight, I don’t care. I weave through the traffic, knowing I’m playing with fucking death.
I drive like this for a good twenty minutes, until the blood roars in my ears and my mind is cleansed of the rage I’ve bottled up inside.
Eventually, I slow down, hitting a pace that allows me to think.
I try to find alternate solutions, but eventually, I have to face that there is only one: go to Russia and fetch Milana’s baby.
Getting Annushka out of Russia is key, because if Chertnikov learns that his last remaining son’s child is in the country, he’ll probably burn the world down to get her.
Not because she’s his only grandchild, but because she’s Milana’s.
Ivan’s sister. The man he wanted to kill in a coup.
The man who is married to Chertnikov’s girl.
Worst of all is, I—or us, Il Consiglio—hold the one thing Chertnikov could want if he really cared for his illegitimate son: the truth about how his life ended and the fact he left a child behind. Powerful stuff if used in the right way, but I would never betray Milana’s trust like that.
Would I use this knowledge to save my own family? I pray to never be tested in this way. Which brings me to my biggest concern: we need to hide Annushka in plain sight.
I’m not worried about the paperwork. That’s just a matter of money and the right connections, which we have aplenty.
I’m not sure how we get Chertnikov off Milana’s scent long enough for us to kill him. There is no question here: Chertnikov must be eliminated. As soon as possible.
The even trickier question: who do I trust with my wife’s secret? Milana and I can’t do this alone, and the more people who know, the riskier it gets.
My mind keeps spiraling back to a baby, a daughter.
A beautiful little human my arms yearn to hold.
It’s weird how I’m wired to be protective of her, even if I’ve never seen her, smelled her, or held her.
A longing took hold in me ages ago, and now it’s found fertile ground to shoot roots into the heart of me, only to bloom with love for a baby who will live as if she’s mine.
Milana is my wife. Her child, almost by default, becomes mine.
Mine.
A baby to hold and cherish and love.
Through some weird twist of fate, I’m getting the one thing I never thought I’ll be honored to have in my life.
By the time I head back to Boston, I’ve been out for more than two hours, but a plan is taking shape in my mind.
It’s strange, because I poured the foundations for it months ago, never knowing I was going to use it like this.
But I have to run everything past Milana first. If we go ahead with my plan, we’re together, for life, in more ways than vows can ever bind us.
I drive back into the garage, my own exhaustion hitting me, but as I park the Ducati and take my helmet off, I spot Benedict coming out of the door leading to our offices.
“Fucking day and half,” he grunts as I walk up to him, unzipping my jacket.
“You have no idea.” I follow him into the office. Now isn’t the time to spill the beans to Benedict, even if he is my biggest confidante.
“You went for a ride?”
“Had to clear my mind.” I immediately spot Gabi’s Bible where it lies next to his keyboard, totally out of place. “This is it?” I ask, thankful for the distraction.
He picks it up and it looks odd in his hands, what with the leather binding and golden cross embossed on the cover. He opens the first page and shows me the inscription.
Randazzo’s handwriting. “Fuck. That gives me chills.”
“You’re telling me.”
But to think our mom paged through that very Bible; it makes it a relic in my eyes.
“Have you discovered anything yet?”
“No, not in here,” Benedict says. “I haven’t really looked at it.”
The statement hangs. He has discovered something. “Where, then?”
“I’m not sure. I need to dig deeper, but I think I’ve found Chiara.”
Wow. What? Some good news at the end of this clusterfuck of a day?
“You have?” I ask, not popping the champagne yet. Lately, everything has been a cautionary tale; this might just be another one. “Where?”
“I mean I found her online on some porn site. I have to show you.”
Fuck. That’s the last thing I want to watch right now. Not when I can still feel Milana coming on my hand as if we were at it minutes ago. “Oof, not now, bro.”
“Listen, it’s not what you think it is.”
I roll my eyes. “Porn is fucking porn, dude. I’m not in—”
“Fuck, Luca, just shut up and let me show you.”
I raise my hands in surrender. “Okay. Jeez.”
Fucking tensions are running high everywhere and I don’t blame anybody. This thing with Gabi is a breach into our most sacred sanctum, and we won’t say it but we’re all freaking out.
Benedict opens some files he’s saved, and I’m already bracing myself.
“This is her,” he says as he presses play.
A woman’s moans fill the space as she’s getting fucked by two guys on the screen. She’s looking down, staring at the bottom guy, before she brushes her hair away to reveal her face and look over her shoulder at the guy giving her anal from behind. It’s so fucking staged, it gives me the ick.
“Just turn the fucking sound off already.”
He kills the sound. “Look closely and tell me what you see.”
“Jesus, Ben, I’m not in the mood. What is it?”
He pauses the video, changes the settings, zooms in. When he presses play again, it rolls at an agonizingly slow speed…and I spot it. “What the fuck? You’re sure it’s her?”
“I’ll make screenshots and check with Gabi. I’m about eighty percent convinced this is the Chiara Bellini Gabi spoke of. There are many Chiara Bellinis out there, but this woman matches Gabi’s description, as well as the image I sourced on an Italian church website for Catholic nuns.”
“It’s a deep fake,” I state the obvious. “The porn is a deep fake.” The body belonging to one person, the face to another.
“Yep. Begs the question who is this Chiara Bellini and does she really do porn? Does she even exist?”
“She exists. Gabi has no reason to make her up.”
“Unless we’re being fucking played. I mean, look what happened today.”
Fuck it. He’s right.
“Gabi got shot, almost fatally. Nobody plays that fucking hard for someone else.”
“And yet, Mara did, dying on this mission.” He looks away, and then pins me with a gaze that sends chills down my spine. “You would have done it, if the old Don asked you.”
Images of our dad flash through my mind.
The power he had over us. I don’t want to process Benedict’s statement.
I can only thank the universe for never putting me on a road where I had to cross that bridge, offering my life so Steph could survive.
There are only two reasons someone would sacrifice their life for another person.
She was protecting someone she loved more than herself, or—
“Mara knew she was going to die, and she’d rather take a bullet than let nature take its course.” Jesus. I can’t get my head around this. “We might want to get someone in to do an autopsy. See if she had another reason to hold life so cheap.”
We stare at each other, at a crossroads, neither of us having a clue which way to go, or if we’ll get back to this starting point if we lose our way.
“If Chiara’s face is being used to make deep-fake porn, there’s a reason,” I say. “Keep digging. Go deeper and figure out what the hell is going on. Figure out who the real Chiara Bellini is.”
I leave my brother slumped in his chair, relieved that this parcel has somehow been passed to him and not to me. I have enough on my plate.