Chapter 6 - Luca
Her sweater lies across my desk, charcoal gray and impossibly soft, still warm from her body heat.
Three hours since she left it draped over her chair at the library.
Two hours and forty-five minutes since I retrieved it.
Two hours and thirty minutes since I first pressed it to my face like an addict needing a fix.
"I see you."
Her latest folded paper message weighs nothing in my palm, but those three words carry enough meaning to reshape my entire week.
She knows I'm watching. Knows and isn't running.
The vanilla-and-jasmine scent from the sweater mingles with the paper, creating something new. Something that belongs to both of us.
My phone buzzes. Marco, asking about tomorrow's shipment. I ignore it, too focused on what matters: Faith left this sweater deliberately. No one forgets clothing that expensive. She wanted me to take it. Wanted me to have something of hers.
Or she's baiting a trap.
Either option makes my cock harder than it should.
Eleven PM. The surveillance room smells like ozone and old blood, electronic heat mixing with traces of the tools I sometimes test here.
The monitors cast everything in blue light, making my pale skin look corpse-like in the reflection.
Appropriate, since I'm about to plan a murder.
The leather chair creaks as I settle in for what will be hours of digital excavation.
She saw me. Really saw me. Tomorrow she'll walk into the gala, into my world wearing a dress I haven't chosen, around men I haven't vetted, in danger I haven't eliminated.
The thought makes me want to lock her in my room until I've removed every threat. Or maybe just lock her in my room.
I start with the basics. Birth certificate pulls up immediately: born at Northwestern Memorial Hospital, seven pounds three ounces.
School records next. Straight A student through elementary, brief dip in middle school, then back to perfection by high school.
Medical files show standard childhood vaccinations, broken wrist at age nine from falling off a bike, anxiety medication prescribed at thirteen.
Thirteen. After whatever happened at twelve.
The death certificate loads slowly, as if the system itself hesitates to show me.
There it is, her mother's full name. Jenna Bailey Winters, died 2014.
Cause of death listed as "suspicious circumstances"—not homicide, not accident, not natural causes.
Just suspicious. What kind of death defies classification?
The juvenile records are sealed, locked behind legal walls that would stop normal people.
But I've never been normal, and the encryption they use might as well be tissue paper.
My chemistry background helps—understanding systems, breaking them down to components, finding the weak molecular bonds.
My fingers fly across the keyboard, breaking through layers of protection.
Someone wanted this buried. Someone with money and connections.
I dig deeper. Hospital records from that time. Jenna Winters worked as a nurse at Chicago Memorial, night shifts in the cardiac unit. Trent Neumann was on the hospital board. The connection feels important, electric in my fingers as I type. T.N. The initials from Faith's journal.
T.N. is Trent Neumann. The pharmaceutical executive. The one she's been circling.
The door opens without warning. Only family enters my workspace uninvited.
"Missed you at dinner." Nico stands in the doorway, still in tactical gear from whatever enforcement he handled tonight. Blood spatter decorates his left sleeve in a pattern that suggests close-range work. "Third time this month."
"Been busy." I don't look away from the screens as code scrolls past.
"I can see that." He moves closer, and I feel him stop when he sees what fills my monitors. Her driver's license photo, her library employment records, her mother's death certificate. "The blonde from the restaurant? The boss had eyes there. Said you made contact."
Of course the boss knows everything. Our oldest brother has this city wired like his personal nervous system. Nothing happens without his knowledge, including my first real interaction with her.
"Define contact," I murmur, pulling up Neumann's business records. Neumann Pharmaceuticals. Major contracts with hospitals across Illinois.
Nico pulls up a chair, settling in with the patience of someone who's waited through plenty of my obsessions. "The construction worker from Tuesday. The barista from last week. The businessman from Friday. All connected to her?"
"They looked at her wrong." I show him what I've found. "But this one—Trent Neumann—he did more than look."
"Neumann?" Nico leans forward. "I did security assessment for his company last year. Place was locked down tight, but there were irregularities. Missing inventory that didn't match the books. Settlements that got buried."
"So what’s the connection? Why is Faith getting close to him? I saw her name on some charity rosters—she volunteers at everything his family touches."
"She's hunting him," Nico breathes.
"Legally,” I hiss, nodding. “Through the system. That's what all her legal research is for."
The door opens again. Sofia enters still wearing an evening dress from whatever society function she attended tonight, looking like she stepped from a magazine.
"Boys plotting without me?" She drapes herself over a chair, but her eyes are sharp. "I'm hurt."
She glances at the screens and goes very still when she sees Neumann's photo.
"Trent Neumann?" Her voice drops an octave. "That piece of garbage tried to touch me once. Two years ago at the medical charity auction. Kept talking about how I reminded him of someone, kept trying to get me alone."
The temperature in the room drops twenty degrees.
My vision fractures into possibilities: Neumann's hands removed at the wrists, his fingers fed to him one knuckle at a time, his eyes taking a tour of other people's faces.
Sofia. My baby sister. The one we all protected after the massacre, and this fuck put his hands on her.
"Why is he still breathing?" My voice sounds like gravel in a blender.
"Alessandro handled it. Convinced Neumann that touching Rosetti women would be unhealthy. Made some deal about pharmaceutical distribution that kept him away from me. He backed off."
"Alex should have let me handle it." My hands curl into fists, imagining everything I would have done to Neumann for daring to touch Sofia. Everything I will do to him for whatever he did to Faith.
"Your girl's been patient," Sofia observes, studying what I've pulled up, quickly figuring out the scene. "Years of getting close. Teaching his kids at Sunday school, befriending his wife at charity events. She's been playing a long game."
"And tomorrow?" Nico asks quietly. "Neumann's coming to the gala. Major donor—two hundred grand this year alone. The boss can't refuse him without cause."
My blood stops moving. Tomorrow, Faith walks into my family's hotel ballroom. Tomorrow, Trent Neumann will be there. The man she's been hunting.
"She doesn't know he'll be there," I say slowly. " She has no idea she's walking into—"
"Into the perfect opportunity," Sofia finishes. "Think about it. Public venue, hundreds of witnesses, security cameras. If she's planning something legal, she needs evidence. Recordings. Witnesses."
"Or she might snap," Nico counters. "Seeing him there unexpectedly? People break."
They're both right. Tomorrow, everything collides. She'll walk into my family's world, not knowing that the man she's been hunting will be there. Not knowing that I'll be watching every breath she takes, trying to figure out if I need to protect her from him or him from her.
"What if he recognizes her?" Sofia asks. "She looks like her mother, right? If he killed the mother and then sees the daughter at our party…"
"He might panic. Do something stupid." Nico's hand drifts to his weapon.
"Not in my house," I growl. The thought of Neumann even looking at Faith makes my vision red. But there's something else, something Sofia said. "You said he kept saying you reminded him of someone?"
Sofia nods. "Kept talking about beautiful women who don't know their place." She shivers, and Sofia never shivers.
"I need to know her plan first," I say, surprising myself with the restraint. Usually, I'd already be selecting tools for Neumann's introduction to real pain. But she's been patient. She deserves to see her plan through, or to decide she wants something bloodier.
“Just stay out of it, Luca,” my brother says. The good disciplined army boy. “Walk away. It’s nothing to do with us, and our family doesn’t need you bringing shit on us.”
“Oh, let him have his fun,” Sofia says, smiling cattishly. “I want to see how this girl works. All that planning. Legal research? Getting close to his family without exposing her true identity? This girl might be more dangerous than you think."
"The patient ones always are," Nico agrees, standing to leave. "They're the ones who know how to make it really hurt. Not the body—anyone can hurt a body. But complete destruction? That takes patience."
After they leave, I sit alone with her history spread across my screens. The pieces finally connecting. T.N. is Trent Neumann. Her mother worked at his hospital. Something happened—something that ended with Jenna Winters dead and Neumann and his pharmaceuticals company walking free.
And tomorrow, my little Faith will walk into a ballroom with the man she's been hunting for half her life.
The question is: when she sees him, will she maintain her control? Her legal plan? Or will years of suppressed rage finally explode?
Either way, I'll be there. Ready to protect her from him. Or ready to hand her the knife if she decides legal justice isn't enough anymore.
I think about the Vincent Black Shadow waiting in the garage. Tomorrow, maybe I'll show it to her. Tell her about rebuilding broken things, making them powerful again.
The thought makes me smile that wrong smile that makes children cry.