Chapter 21
Cold. Hard. Concrete against my cheek.
The first thing that registers is the smell—mildew and old blood.
The second thing is pain, sharp and insistent, radiating from my temple in waves that make my stomach twist.
I try to open my eyes.
The world swims.
Fluorescent lights overhead—buzzing, flickering—cast everything in sickly yellow. I'm on the floor of a bank vault.
My hand lifts slowly—everything moves through molasses—and my fingertips find wetness at my temple. When I pull them away, they're dark with blood.
Fuck.
The room tilts as I try to sit up. Nausea crashes through me in a violent wave and I have to stop, forehead pressed to my knees, breathing through my nose until the urge to vomit passes.
Blood. Head wound. Basement.
The memories slot into place with cruel precision.
Guards. Shotgun. Being dragged from my car by the throat. The hit that came from my left—never saw it, just the sudden explosion of white-hot pain and then nothing.
But underneath those fresh memories, older ones claw their way up.
Ten days.
Ten days tied to a post in a warehouse that smelled almost exactly like this—mildew and blood.
But back then, there was another smell.
Fear.
My fear.
Rico was there. I heard his laugh even through the hood.
My father traded me like collateral, like I was worth less than the debt he owed Luca LaRiccia because my Aunt Arianna couldn't keep her fucking legs closed.
I was a sacrifice.
My hand shakes as I touch my temple again.
The blood is warm. Fresh.
But another memory superimposes itself over the present—another head wound, another place, another time someone decided a skull was worth cracking open.
Except that wasn't my head.
It was Emmaleen's.
Rico's fist wrapped around the steel sculpture. The sickening crack as he brought it down on her skull. The way her eyes went blank before she crumpled.
The shot.
Rico's head exploding.
I smile, pull myself up into a standing position, and spit blood onto the floor.
It was worth it.
And this will be too.
Just as that thought crystalizes in my mind—that grim acceptance of whatever comes next—the vault door swings open on well-oiled hinges that make no sound at all. The silence is worse than a creak would have been. More deliberate. More controlled.
I turn my head toward the movement, slow and careful, bracing myself against the wave of nausea that I know will follow. My vision swims for a moment, black spots dancing at the edges, but I force my eyes to focus.
And there he is.
Luca LaRiccia stands backlit in the threshold, a dark silhouette framed by the pale fluorescent light spilling in from the hallway beyond.
The contrast makes it impossible to see his face clearly—just the outline of broad shoulders, the sharp line of his silver hair, the stillness of a man who has never needed to rush.
He doesn't move. Doesn't speak.
Just stands there, waiting.
"I like that about you," I croak.
He huffs a laugh. It's the sound a man makes when he's already decided you're dead but finds your persistence mildly entertaining. "Like what about me, Giovanni?"
"How you can wait things out." I shift my weight, testing my balance.
The room tilts dangerously before settling back into place. My ribs scream in protest as I reach for the granite examination counter in the middle of the vault.
"I was counting on this preference of yours, actually. This... patience of yours." I grip the edge harder, knuckles going white as I find Luca's eyes.
Not green. Not blue. Something stranger, more unnatural than either. A weird yellow-brown that shifts depending on the light—amber one moment, almost gold the next, like something you'd see in a predator's skull mounted on a wall.
"Well?" he asks, voice perfectly conversational as he reaches down to his side holster and withdraws a Ruger with the casual efficiency of a man who's done this a thousand times before.
He checks the chamber with practiced fingers, the metallic click of the slide echoing in the space.
"What is it? What could you possibly have to say to me, Giovanni? "
Those strange amber-gold eyes lift from the weapon to pin me in place. "Did you come here to beg? To plead for your miserable life? Because I know what you did. I know exactly what you did."
The words hang in the air between us, heavy with certainty and threat.
I shake my head slowly, the movement sending fresh waves of pain through my skull and causing the world to tilt dangerously for a second. "No, Luca." I use his first name deliberately, not out of disrespect or some foolish attempt at intimidation, but from a place of familiarity.
Because whether he realizes it yet or not, whether he's ready to acknowledge what's coming, we are familiar now. Connected by something he doesn't understand yet. "You think you know."
Blood pools hot and metallic in my mouth from some cut. I spit it onto the floor between us because if I swallow any more of it, I'll probably puke, and I refuse to show that kind of weakness.
Not here. Not now. Not in this moment.
A moment that we'll remember forever. One that will be told in stories for generations to come.
I get to the point. "But… you're right."
His eyes squint. "Yeah? What am I right about, Giovanni?"
"I killed Rico." It comes out deadpan. But I keep going with urgency. Because he's about half a second from blowing my brains out. "He killed my woman, Luca. He broke into my fucking house and killed my woman!" I yell these words.
All the emotion I never show, comes out here. Right now.
"He raped her." I spit on the ground again, leaning in to this confession with everything I've got.
"Your son was a piece of fucking shit. A worthless fucking addict with no self control.
A sadist—of the worst kind, I might add.
He was a psychopathic torturer with no business skills, no people skills, and no discretion.
He was your only child, your sole heir. And I blew his fucking brains out and buried his body out in Bucks County. "
Luca raises the gun, points it at me, steps forward until the barrel is pressing against my forehead.
"You can do that," I say, my voice steady despite the cold metal pressed against my skull. Still looking him dead in the eyes. Refusing to blink. Refusing to flinch. "You can pull that trigger right now. Get your fucking revenge. God knows, I owe you, don't I?"
I pause just long enough to let the weight of that question settle between us.
"First my aunt—your wife—spreads her legs for your associate.
Humiliates you in front of the entire organization.
" I lower my voice. "Then little Giovanni Bavga escapes his sacrifice ritual when he should've died quiet and convenient in that warehouse.
Should've been the price that paid for Arianna Bavga's disrespect. "
I lean forward slightly, pushing my forehead harder against the barrel.
"Which brings us to this moment right now." My voice is casual, almost conversational. "Now that same little Giovanni Bavga is standing here, in your basement vault, in the heart of your fucking empire, telling you—confessing to you—that he blew your son's head off."
I let that hang in the air for a beat.
Then I ask the question that matters.
"Why, Luca?" I search his eyes, looking for understanding. For recognition. "Why the fuck am I telling you this?"
"You have a death wish."
"Yeah," I laugh, and the sound comes out hollow, edged with something dark and reckless. "Maybe. But... no."
I pause, letting the silence stretch between us for a heartbeat before I lock eyes with him again. Direct. Unflinching. The kind of eye contact that either gets you killed, or makes your point so sharp it can't be ignored.
"I'm telling you this because everything I think about Rico—every goddamn thing—I think about my father too.
Salvatore Bavga." My lip curls with disgust as I say his name.
"The great patriarch who can't even offer his own son up for sacrifice right.
Can't even execute the one fucking job he had to do to keep the peace. "
I reach up slowly, deliberately, and wrap my hand around the barrel of the gun. I press it harder into my own forehead, feeling the circular imprint dig into my skin.
"Killing me won't work, Luca. You know this." My voice drops lower, more certain. "It's not gonna piss him off. It's not gonna make him sad. Hell—" I let out a short, bitter laugh. "—he'll probably call you up himself and say, 'Sorry for the trouble. Let me know what I owe you for the cleanup.'"
Luca takes a breath. He knows it's true.
"If it wasn't true—if Salvatore did give a single damn thing about me—I'd already be dead.
Not dead here, right now, for this fucking spectacle I'm causing at your place of business.
Dead twenty-three years ago, when I was eight years old and tied to a post in a warehouse, starving for ten days straight while your son watched and laughed. "
"What do you want, Giovanni? Mercy?" It's Luca's turn to laugh. But it's not a good one. He. Is. Pissed. "You think coming in here, to my place of business, insulting my men, my son, is gonna what? Earn you respect?"
"No," I say. Sharp and final.
"Forgiveness?"
I actually scoff. "Forgiveness? No, Luca. I'm here telling you this because your son was a disappointment. Your son was everything you're not. Reckless. Impulsive. Cruel without purpose. And my father?" I spit blood again. "Salvatore Bavga is also everything you're not."
I lean back a little, breaking skin contact with the gun. A signal that we're past that now. I hope. "He's not ruthless, or precise, or patient, or quiet, or deadly. He is none of those things. He is nothing."
Luca sneers at me. "So? What's your point?"
This is it. The make or break moment.
The moment when I learn if I will die in this bank vault, never to be seen or heard of again. Made into a deepfake to taunt my family.
Or.
It's the moment Luca LaRiccia and Giovanni Bavga make history.
So I get to the point. Words spill out of my mouth in a procession that would make Emmaleen proud. The lie I told about Rico raping and killing her, that's the only one in this room right now.
Everything else is the truth.
Every fucking bit of it.
After I finish, Luca's finger rests on the trigger for five seconds.
Ten.
Then—slowly, deliberately—the gun lowers. "You've got balls, Bavga." His voice is flat. Unreadable. "Stupid fucking balls."
The gun slides back into the holster.
"But you're not wrong."