Chapter 27 Luca
LUCA
The word lands in the space between us, huge and raw and way too honest to take back.
Everything.
Natalia sways, one hand flattening harder against the wall at her back, like my answer hit her somewhere physical and she needs the plaster to stay upright through it.
And I hear how it sounds. Like I’m entitled to it. Like I haven’t just admitted I was sent here to end her life and now I’m asking for all of her.
Insane. Walk it back. Now.
“No,” I drag a hand down my face. “That’s not fair. I want a chance. That’s all. I want you to not walk out of here believing I was only with you because of what I was sent to do.”
She doesn’t move. Doesn’t blink.
“I came to that island for one reason. I know that. But from the second you pulled me off that beach, this stopped being simple.” My voice is going. I can feel it fraying. “And by the time I remembered, it was already real for me.”
Her eyes stay on mine, wide and wet and devastated, and I keep going because stopping now would be cowardice, and I’m done with that.
“What I feel for you is the only thing in my life that’s never felt like bullshit.”
She looks like I slapped her.
Then she shakes her head, small and unsteady. “I can’t.”
The word hits hard enough to knock the air out of me.
“Nat—”
“I can’t,” she says again, stronger this time because she has to be. “Maybe you mean all of that. Maybe it’s even true. But I can’t tell the difference anymore, and that means I can’t stay here.”
I want to argue. I want to find the one perfect combination of words that makes her see I’m not lying, not this time, not about how I feel. But the thing is, she’s right. She can’t tell the difference. Because I made sure she couldn’t, every single day I chose not to tell her.
I nod because I don’t trust myself to do anything else.
“Okay.”
The word feels like surrender, but I don’t have anything left.
She turns away.
“Natalia,” I say quietly, because I can’t let her walk out of here with no plan and no protection, “go to the private terminal at the airport. I’ll call ahead and make sure the plane is ready to take you back.”
She holds my gaze for a beat that lasts about nine years.
“Why are you doing this?” she whispers.
Because you’re about to walk out into Vegas alone and that thought makes me physically ill. Because helping you leave me is the last honest thing I can do for you.
Because I love you.
Of course I do. Of course that’s what this is. My ribs ache with it. My throat squeezes around it.
And I can’t say it. Not now. Not when every true thing I’ve told her is buried under weeks of lies. Not when those words would sound like one more play to make her stay.
So I swallow it. Add it to the pile of shit I should have said sooner.
“Because I meant what I said.”
Her mouth trembles once. Barely. Then she tightens it.
She moves toward the door, and every instinct in my body strains after her. To touch her. To stop her. To get on my knees, if that’s what it takes. But I stay where I am.
My hand curls into a fist at my side so hard my nails bite my palm.
“Natalia.”
She stops with her hand on the knob but doesn’t turn around.
“Get home safe,” I say.
It’s nothing. It’s pathetic. It’s nowhere near enough.
She opens the door and walks out.
The click when it shuts behind her feels like getting shot.
For a few seconds, I just stand there staring at the door, half convinced it’ll swing back open if I want it hard enough. That she’ll come back in furious and crying and tell me I left something out, that I owe her more, that she’s not done with me yet.
It stays shut.
My legs finally stop pretending they work, and I slide down the wall to the carpet.
Thirty floors below, the Strip is doing what it always does. Neon and money and a whole city built on the premise that what happens here doesn’t follow you home. Must be nice.
In the stillness, the truth of it settles in ugly and precise.
It’s not just that I lied. I already know that.
It’s how many chances I had not to.
The first time enough memory came back, I could have told her. I could have said, It turns out my name is Luca Andretti, and my father sent me here to kill you, and I’m not going to do it, but you need to know that before anything else happens.
I didn’t.
Instead I pulled her closer in the dark and breathed in salt and coconut from her hair and told myself tomorrow.
Tomorrow in her kitchen, with the windows full of gray morning light and coffee grounds dusting the counter.
Tomorrow on the plane, with her on the carpet between my legs and every lie I’d ever told her still sitting right there on my tongue.
Tomorrow in Anna’s room, with the afternoon light catching the silver in her hair and her whole face softening when she looked at us together—like seeing Natalia happy was the only thing she’d been waiting for—and I smiled back knowing I was only giving her half my name.
Every single tomorrow I let wanting her outweigh what she deserved to know.
I kept my mouth shut because I was terrified of exactly what just happened. Her face. Her voice. The door clicking shut.
That’s not protecting someone. That’s hoarding them.
Stealing extra hours of something I already knew I was going to destroy.
I slam my fist into the carpet. It doesn’t even hurt. Thick hotel carpet, too much padding, no real damage done, which feels about right for a guy who’s spent his whole life finding ways to dodge consequences and then acting shocked when they finally show up and flatten him.
I do it again anyway. And again. Until the side of my hand throbs and my breathing has gone ragged.
That’s when I notice my face is wet.
I force myself to stop.
There is no bottom to this. I could sit here all day and inventory every bad choice that got me to this floor, this room, this version of myself, and none of it changes the only thing that matters now.
Natalia told me she needs space. And if this were only about me, if this were only about what I want, I’d give it to her. I’d stay the hell away and let her hate me in peace.
But this stopped being only about me the second I told Dario I wasn’t going to do it.
My family wanted her dead before I ever washed up on that beach. Me backing out doesn’t erase that.
And Natalia is heading back to a house they already know how to find.
This won’t stay buried forever. Lorenzo may not know yet, but he will, and when he does, he is not going to shrug and call the whole thing off because I finally developed a conscience.
If I’m out, someone else becomes the solution.
I need to talk to my father. That conversation is coming whether I want it or not, and the longer I put it off, the uglier it’s going to get. But tracking him down right now doesn’t get Natalia through the night.
What gets her through the night is making sure she doesn’t go back to that house alone while my family starts reacting to the fact that I’m out.
“Fuck.”
She can have all the space she wants once I know nobody is going to put a bullet in her head in that house.
I can’t fix what she overheard today. But I can make sure she stays alive.
And right now, that outranks everything.
I wash my face in the bathroom sink. The mirror gives me back a man who looks like he’s been hit by a truck, which feels fairly accurate. I call the terminal and tell them to have the plane ready, wheels up as soon as Ms. Kozlov gets there. No delays. No questions.
Then I book myself on the next commercial flight to Norfolk.
I don’t know what I’m going to say to her when I get there. I don’t know if she’ll open the door. I don’t know if any of this is fixable or if I burned it down so thoroughly that all that’s left is ash.
But I know she’s not safe.
And I’m the reason she’s not safe.
And until I can fix that, the rest of it, the guilt, the grief, the look on her face, the flinch, all of it goes in a box.
And the box goes on a shelf, and I move.