Chapter 20 Luca
LUCA
Natalia stares at me, mouth agape.
Then she grins.
It’s a slow, lazy curve of her mouth, the kind of smile that makes you think you might be able to get away with anything. Her eyes are still hazy from sex, her hair a dark mess against the pillow.
“Luca.” She tests out the name. “That suits you. Though I’m going to miss Johnny.”
“Johnny sounded like a guy who sells fake IDs at the boardwalk.”
A laugh bursts out of her, soft and breathless, and close enough that I feel it in my chest. Then she’s kissing me, quick and warm, her hand on my cheek.
She says it again, slower this time. “Luca.” Fitting it into the space where Johnny used to be. “Well, it’s about damn time. Nice to finally meet you.”
I bark out a laugh. “Yeah. You too.”’
I get up and grab a towel from the bathroom. When I come back, I press it gently to her stomach, wiping her clean.
“Thank you,” she says. Quiet. A little formal for a woman who was screaming my name two minutes ago.
I toss the towel toward the bathroom and stretch out beside her. Settling back against my side, Natalia rests her head on my shoulder, her fingers tracing idle patterns over my skin. The afterglow is a warm, heavy blanket over both of us. I could stay here for a week. A year. A lifetime.
So.” She tilts her head up to look at me, her chin on my chest. “You finally remembered your name.”
“Apparently sex is good for the memory. Someone should put that in a medical journal.”
She snorts, the sound vibrating against my ribs. Then she settles back down, and the laugh fades, and her fingers go still on my skin.
“Did you… remember anything else?”
My hand tightens on her shoulder.
The question is casual. Almost offhand. But my breathing catches on it.
Every lie I’ve swallowed since my memories started coming back sits between us. She doesn’t know they’re there. I do.
Still fuzzy. Nothing solid. Just fragments. The words are right there on my tongue, same place they’ve been living for days.
But her skin is warm against mine. I can still taste her. And the easy deflection just won’t come up. Like my body has decided, independent of my brain, that there’s a limit to what I can do to this woman in one day.
I swallow. Once.
“Some things.”
She waits. Natalia’s good at that, I’ve noticed. She doesn’t push or fill the silence. She just holds it open and lets you walk through it on your own.
“The scars make more sense now.” I look down at my hands on the sheets. The calluses. The bandaged knuckles that knew exactly what to do in that bar fight. “The fighting. The reflexes. All of it.”
“What do you mean?” She tilts her chin and looks up at me.
“I think…” I start again, the words dragging themselves out of me. “I think I might be in the same line of work as your family.”
The silence that follows is a different animal entirely.
She doesn’t pull away. Doesn’t flinch. But something shifts behind her eyes. A door closing partway.
She sits up slowly, pulling the sheet with her, tucking it under her arms. She’s not looking at me anymore. She’s looking at the window, at the line of ocean beyond it.
“Nat?”
“I’m thinking.”
So I let her think.
Every instinct I have wants to fill the silence—soften it, say something stupid, make her laugh, drag us both back to thirty seconds ago. But I owe her this.
I keep my mouth shut, watching her process the one piece of truth I gave her while everything else I’m holding back sits in my gut like something already starting to rot.
“Will you go find them now?” Her voice is searching. “Your family. Now that you’re starting to remember.”
She crosses her arms to hold the sheet up. But her shoulders have pulled in too, just slightly, and her eyes are still on the window, not me. Like she’s already preparing herself for an answer she doesn’t want.
And it hits me that this was never about whether I’m dangerous. She already made peace with that.
She’s watching me remember who I was. And she’s waiting to find out if that guy is going to want to come back.
“No,” I say.
She looks at me.
“No.” I reach over and thread my fingers through hers, pulling her hand loose from where it’s gripping her own arm.
Her eyes drop to our hands, then come back up to mine.
“What I remember is blood and violence and a man I don’t want to be anymore.
” The words come out raw. “I want to stay here. With you. Figure the rest out later.”
She holds my gaze for a long moment, eyes searching. Her guard is down, and I see it all pass across her face—the reality of her situation, the engagement, the temporary nature of this whole damn thing. But she doesn’t say it. And I don’t either.
Instead, she just nods. A small, almost imperceptible movement.
“Okay,” she says quietly.
Just that. But the way she turns her hand over and holds mine back says the rest.
The knot at the base of my throat loosens. Not all the way. I’m not stupid enough to think one “okay” fixes everything we just stepped into, or everything I’m still not saying. But enough that I can swallow again.
I pull her hand to my mouth and press my lips to her knuckles.
She looks at our joined hands for a moment. Then she looks up at me, and the corner of her mouth curves.
I lean in and kiss her, slow and easy, and she makes a soft sound against my mouth and lets me pull her back down onto the mattress.
Her fingers curl into my hair. I roll toward her, and she tips her chin up, and for a minute the whole conversation dissolves, and there’s just her mouth and her hands and the feel of her in my arms.
“Luca,” she murmurs against me.
I could get addicted to hearing that. Might already be.
She pulls me closer, her fingers sliding into my hair, and the kiss shifts.
Deepens. Her back arches just enough to press her body against mine, and the sheet between us is suddenly very much in the way.
My hand finds her hip, her waist, the dip of her ribs, and she makes a sound against my mouth that has me seriously reconsidering the concept of a refractory period.
I drag my lips down her jaw. Her throat. The hollow at the base of it where her pulse is hammering.
“I could get used to Sundays like this,” I murmur against her skin.
She freezes beneath me.
“Shit.” Her hand presses flat against my chest. “It’s Sunday.”
I lift my head. “That’s what I just said.”
“No, I mean it’s Sunday. I completely forgot.”
“Sunday means…?”
“Ronnie. Her seafood shack is closed, we always hang out.” She looks at me, and I can see the guilt already starting to creep into her expression. “I’ll cancel. She’ll understand.”
“Don’t.”
“I can’t just leave after we...” She gestures between us.
“Had incredible sex and a major neurological breakthrough?” I grin at her. “Sure you can. Go. I’m a big boy.”
She hesitates, her lower lip caught between her teeth. “Are you sure?”
“I’m sure.” I give her a gentle nudge. “Go have fun. I’ll be here when you get back.”
That earns me a look. Soft and unguarded, like she’s not used to someone telling her to go do the thing she wants instead of the thing she’s supposed to.
She disappears into the bathroom, and the sound of the shower starts a minute later. I swing my legs out of bed, find my shorts, and head downstairs. The drawing pad is still on the counter where I left it.
I pick it up. Flip to a clean page.
While she’s getting ready, I draw.
Natalia in the ocean this afternoon. The first time she let the water take her, the sun on her face, her eyes closed in a moment of pure, unadulterated joy. I draw the shape of her smile, the way her hair floated around her like a dark halo.
I draw the memory of it, because it’s a memory I want to keep.
I’m working on the curve of her shoulder when the bathroom door opens.
My mouth goes dry.
The navy wrap dress is a fucking problem.
It’s not revealing, exactly. It’s worse. It suggests.
The whole thing is held together by one tie at her hip. One tug and it’s done. And I know exactly what’s underneath it because I had my hands on every inch of her twenty minutes ago.
I grip the edge of the counter.
The idea of anyone else looking at her in this dress sends something hot and primitive through me. Like I should drag her back to bed, lock the door, and keep this side of her for myself.
“You look...” I clear my throat. “You should leave. Immediately. Before I make you very late.”
She laughs, grabbing her purse and leaning in to kiss my cheek. Careful with the lipstick.
“I don’t care about the lipstick, Nat.”
I pull her in and kiss her properly, and she giggles against my mouth, fighting me until I let go.
“If you smudged my makeup—”
“You’re smudge-free. Go.”
I walk her to the door, my hand on the small of her back. She steps through and I hold onto the tie of her dress, letting the fabric drag through my fingers until the last inch slips free.
“Don’t wait up,” she says from the porch.
“No promises.”
I watch her car pull away, taillights disappearing into the twilight. The screen door slaps shut behind me, and the house goes silent.
I stay with the sketchpad a while. No agenda.
My hand moves and I let it, filling pages with nothing that matters.
The porch railing. Her coffee mug by the sink.
The shape of the dunes through the window.
The only sounds are the scratch of the pen and the hum of the refrigerator. It’s a good quiet. A settled quiet.
After a while, I put the pad down and head out to the back deck.
The sun is gone, but the sky is still bleeding color over the horizon. I drop onto the top step, the wood still warm beneath my hands, and let the salt air wash over me. The waves are a steady rhythm, a constant, soothing presence in the deepening dark.
This is it.
This is the feeling I’ve been chasing without knowing it. Not peace, exactly. Something more like arrival. Like I’ve been drifting for weeks, and I’ve finally, finally washed ashore.
I’m not waiting for anything. I’m not restless. I’m just… here.
And it’s enough.
I let my head fall back against the post, my eyes on the first few stars blinking into existence. A ghost crab scuttles below the porch, moving sideways with that frantic urgency, late for something important.
I breathe.
I could get used to this. I could build a life out of nights like this.
Natalia stealing bites off the cutting board while I cook. Her curled up against me on that couch making fun of some terrible movie neither of us is watching. The windows open, the ocean loud enough to cover the sounds she makes when I take her to bed.
A figure moves at the edge of the waterline.
Far down the beach. Just a shape at first, dark against the last strip of light on the water. Moving with purpose. Moving toward me.
I’m on my feet before I’ve decided to stand. Hands loose at my sides, weight shifting forward.
Could be nobody. A jogger. A neighbor.
My body disagrees. My body is already in a stance I don’t remember learning, every muscle wound tight, cold focus settling into my limbs.
I move down the steps, onto the sand, putting myself between the house and the approaching figure.
“What the fuck do you want?” I call out, my voice a low growl that gets swallowed by the surf.
The man breaks into a jog, his arm swinging out in a gesture that is so familiar it makes my stomach clench.
“What the fuck do you think I want, Luca?!” The voice hits me like a fist to the sternum. “What the hell is going on?!”
I know that voice.
Paolo.
The recognition hits me like a pressure change—sudden, total, the world going muffled and distant for one long second before it all comes rushing back in.
I grip my hair with both hands because some stupid part of my brain thinks if I squeeze hard enough I can stop what’s happening behind my eyes.
This isn’t fragments. Not flashes. The whole thing comes at once, like a curtain ripped down, and behind it is everything.
Me and Paolo. My uncle. At a scarred table littered with maps and timetables, a half-drunk espresso gone cold by his elbow. His palm came down on my shoulder, heavy and sure, his voice a sure, steady presence in my ear. This is what changes everything, Luca. I know you can do this.
The weight of his belief in me. The only person in my family who looked at me and saw something other than the screw-up. Planning the route. Buying the boat. The feeling of finally being trusted with something that mattered.
And underneath the maps, on the table, half-covered by a flight manifest.
A file.
I opened it.
Her face looked up from the page.
“No.”
It comes out flat. Strangled. Nothing like me.
No, no, no.
Paolo grabs my face in both hands, forcing my eyes to his. “Jesus Christ, Luca. You were supposed to check in. What the hell happened?” He gives me a rough shake. “Have you done it? Did you kill her?”
My ears are ringing. My pulse is everywhere at once.
I remember everything now.
I was sent here to kill Natalia Kozlov.