Chapter 27 - Faith
The seventh step down to the basement makes me taste blood. My throat feels like crushed glass, each breath scraping raw tissue that Neumann’s hands destroyed just hours ago. But he’s down there now, chained, waiting, and all my patience ends today.
My bare feet find the eighth step. Cold concrete, nothing like the warmth of Luca's tears.
The Rosetti psycho cried. For me. Marco's words still echo: "He was sobbing when you stopped breathing.
Kept saying 'Please, Faith, come back.' Never seen him like that.
" The description haunts each heartbeat as I descend toward the man who killed my mother.
Marco hadn't asked if I wanted to go. Just disconnected the morphine drip when I demanded it, watched me struggle to stand with legs that shook like a newborn colt's, and said simply: "Your choice. Whatever happens down there."
The ninth step. My hand grips the railing so tight my knuckles ache, but it's nothing compared to the agony in my throat.
The medical room upstairs still smells like antiseptic and expensive leather in my memory, that IV drip that fed fluids into my arm because I couldn't swallow properly.
I'd woken to afternoon light, disoriented, fingers immediately finding the wounds on my neck.
Purple impressions of Neumann's hands, the same pattern my mother wore to her grave.
But I'm not in a grave. I'm alive because Luca broke down doors to get to me, because he breathed life back into my lungs while sobbing.
The man who smiles while discussing dismemberment, who handles violence like other people handle paperwork, completely shattered while holding my not-breathing body.
Tenth step. Voices drift up from below. Neumann trying to bargain, offering money, connections, anything. Luca's responses are cold, empty of feeling, like he's reading from a medical textbook. The contrast to the desperate tears Marco described makes my chest tight.
The basement smell hits me as I reach the bottom.
Bleach, the sharp tang of fear-sweat, and underneath it all, that dark cologne that's uniquely Luca.
The fluorescent lights buzz overhead, making everything stark and shadowless.
The concrete is ice under my feet, each step a small shock that keeps me present, keeps me from floating away into memory or morphine haze. This is real. This is happening.
Neumann is chained to a metal chair, looking smaller than the asshole from my nightmares.
His expensive suit is wrinkled, sweat staining the collar, making the fabric cling in unflattering ways.
The temperature down here makes our breath visible in small puffs.
He looks pathetic. Human. Not the godlike destroyer of my childhood memories but just a man who chose evil and dressed it in Armani.
But it's Luca who stops me cold.
He looks worse than Neumann. Beyond exhausted, past the point where stimulants could help.
His shoulder hangs wrong, clearly damaged from breaking down those doors to reach me.
The memory of him hitting that frame again and again, the wood splintering under his desperate assault, makes my eyes burn with tears I won't shed. Not yet.
Dried tear tracks still mark his face, and he hasn't bothered to wipe them away.
His white shirt clings to his chest with sweat, torn in places, blood staining the expensive fabric.
The top buttons are undone, showing the hollow of his throat where his pulse beats too fast. Even destroyed like this, he's beautiful in that dangerous way that makes my body respond despite everything.
He saved me. Broke himself to save me.
"You shouldn't be up," he says without looking at me, organizing tools on his table with movements that try for precision but betray his trembling hands.
"I needed…" I start, then have to stop, pressing my hand to my throat. The words feel like swallowing glass shards. I point at Neumann, then at myself, then at the tools, hoping he understands what I can't voice.
He finally looks at me then, and those eyes are empty of their usual calculation. Just exhaustion and something raw I've never seen before. Vulnerability. Like all his walls came down when I stopped breathing and he doesn't know how to rebuild them. Or doesn't want to.
"I know," he says softly, and his voice cracks on the words. "I know you need this."
"The daughter joins us," Neumann says, trying for his boardroom authority but achieving only false bravado that makes him seem smaller. "Come to watch your attack dog work? See how the sausage gets made?"
I approach slowly, studying this man who haunts my dreams. He looks old, gray threading through his hair, lines around his eyes. Just a man. The chains rattle as he shifts, trying to maintain his executive posture even while bound to Luca's chair.
"He cried for you," Neumann continues, lips twisting in mockery that makes my hands clench. "The famous Rosetti psycho, sobbing like a child. 'Please come back,'" he imitates what he must have heard from the guards or through surveillance.
I see it. The tiny flinch in Luca's shoulders, the way his hands shake harder, the vulnerability he can't hide anymore. Not from me. Not after I died in his arms. Not after he let himself break apart completely.
"Stop," Luca tells him, but there's no threat in it. Just bone-deep exhaustion that makes him look ancient despite being only twenty-eight.
I move to Luca, needing to touch him, to ground us both in something real.
My hand finds his arm, feeling the tremors running through him.
Not from violence or anticipation. From trauma.
From nearly losing me. His shirt is damp with sweat under my palm, his muscles tense like he's holding himself together by will alone.
"Tell me," I whisper, though the words scrape like sandpaper against my ruined throat. I have to stop, swallow blood-tinged saliva that makes me want to gag.
His eyes close, and suddenly he looks younger. Not the Rosetti enforcer but remembering when he was a traumatized teenager who never processed his loss. When he speaks, his voice cracks like that boy's would have.
"Found Dad in the dining room," he says, voice hollow as an empty church.
"Still alive but bleeding out. Moretti bullets everywhere.
I held pressure on the wounds but blood kept coming through my fingers like water.
Warm at first, then cold. He tried to speak but just…
" He has to stop, his whole body shuddering under my hand.
"Just gurgled. Blood in his throat. I couldn't save him.
Couldn't protect anyone. Dante lost his voice protecting us.
Sofia still has nightmares. I couldn't…"
His voice breaks completely, and I see it clearly now.
The parallel between us. Luca at seventeen, holding his dying father, helpless to stop the blood.
Twelve-year-old me watching my mother's face turn purple, helpless to stop her murder.
Both of us broken by that helplessness, shaped into what we are by the failure to save someone we loved.
"That's why," I manage, though I have to pause between words, my throat screaming. I hold up my hands, miming protection, then point at myself. "Why you kill threats."
He nods, still not looking at me, his body trembling harder now. "I can't fail again. When I saw you not breathing…" His hands shake so violently he has to grip the table edge until his knuckles go white. "It was my father all over again. Every failure. But worse because you make me…"
"Human," I finish, the word barely audible. "I make you human."
He laughs, the sound like breaking glass. "Human. Is that what this feeling is? This terror? This need to keep you breathing?"
"How touching," Neumann interjects, shattering the moment with his casual cruelty. "Two broken children playing house. Tell me, does he make you call him daddy when he fucks you?"
I turn to him, something cold and final settling in my chest. Not the hot rage that's driven me until now. Something quieter. Deadlier. The morphine is wearing off now, everything sharpening into crystal focus. Every nerve ending alive with pain and purpose.
"You killed…" I start, but my voice fails. I have to stop, hand at my throat, fighting through the agony to finish. "My mother."
"She rejected me," he corrects with a shrug, the chains rattling like accent marks to his indifference. "Just like you did. Just like they all do. Frigid bitches who think they're too good for what I offer."
No remorse in his voice. No recognition of the life he stole, the child he orphaned, the years of nightmares he created. I realize with perfect clarity that he'll never feel guilt. Never understand what he took from me.
"You smiled," I force out, each word agony. I have to stop, catching my breath, tasting copper in my mouth. "While strangling her." Another pause, fighting to continue. "You smiled."
"She was beautiful when she died. That moment when the light goes out, when they finally stop fighting and accept what's happening. Your mother had such lovely eyes. They went so still."
The words land casual as discussing weather, and I understand finally, completely, that the law will never touch him.
He owns judges, owns prosecutors, has enough money to buy his way out of any consequences.
Prison wouldn't reform him. Nothing would.
He'll always be exactly this. A man who finds beauty in murdering women who reject him.
"Show me," I tell Luca, though I have to point at the tools when my voice fails again. "I need… to be here. To see this."
Luca moves closer to me, and I feel his breath disturb my hair, smell blood and exhaustion and that dark cologne that makes my ribs tighten. His chest nearly touches my back as he reaches around me to the table, and I have to fight not to lean back into his warmth.
"You don't have to…" he starts, his voice rough with concern.
"Yes." The word comes out stronger than any so far. I move to his table of tools, studying the precise arrangement. Scalpels in ascending size, things I don't recognize but can guess at.
My hand hovers over them, trembling. Could I? Should I?
Every movement makes Luca shift behind me, his breath catching when our bodies almost touch.
I look at the tools, then at Luca. He's waiting. Just like he's been waiting—for me to decide what I need, who I'll become.
I wait for revulsion, for my mother's ghost to appear and shame me for what I'm about to do. Instead, I feel her presence like a hand on my shoulder, steady and approving. She fought back too, just not hard enough. Not with the right weapons. I'll finish what she started.
"You're making a mistake," Neumann says, but I hear the first thread of real fear in his voice now. "Your father's a judge. You're a good girl. This isn't who you are."
"No," I manage to rasp. "My choice."
I think of all the ways I imagined this moment. In my darkest dreams, I was violent, uncontrolled, savage. But standing here, feeling Luca's presence behind me like a dark guardian angel, I realize something.
I don't have to become a monster to choose one.
My hand hovers over the tools on Luca's table. My fingers brush the scalpel handle—cold metal, sharp enough to end this. For a moment, I imagine it. The weight in my hand. The satisfaction of being the one to make him pay.
But then I see my mother's face. Not as she died, purple and struggling. As she lived. Smiling. Kind. The woman who taught me that some lines, once crossed, change you forever.
I pick up the scalpel. Turn it in my hand, watching it catch the fluorescent light.
Then I hold it out to Luca.
"I'm not a monster," I tell Neumann, my voice rough but clear. "I'm your consequence. But I won't become you to destroy you."
Luca's fingers close around the handle, accepting what I'm offering. Not just the blade. Permission. Partnership. Trust.
"Tell me about the others," I rasp, needing to know before this ends. "How many?"
"Does it matter?" Neumann tries for defiance.
"Every one matters." I keep my eyes on his face. "Say their names."
And he does. Through gasps and protests, he confesses to raping seven women over twenty years. Each name a weight lifted from the world. Each confession proving what I already knew—he would never stop. Would never feel remorse.
"Your mother fought hardest. Scratched my face so deep I needed stitches. Had to tell people it was a skiing accident."
Something settles in my chest. Not rage. Certainty.
I look at Luca, really look at him. Exhausted, damaged, but waiting. Waiting for me to decide.
"For my mother," I whisper, my throat screaming with pain. "For your father. For everyone he hurt."
Luca nods once, understanding everything I can't say.
"Together?" he asks quietly.
"Always," I manage. "But this part… this is yours. I'll be right here. I'll witness. But I can't…"
"I know," Luca says, and there's something like relief in his voice. Like he didn't want me to have to carry this weight. "You can leave. You don't have to watch."
"No." The word comes out stronger than expected. "I stay. I chose this. I chose you. He needs to see that."
I move to the wall, positioning myself where I can see Neumann's face. My legs shake, threatening to give out, but I lock my knees and stay upright.
Luca approaches Neumann with the scalpel in hand, and something in his posture shifts. The exhaustion falls away. This is what he was made for. What trauma shaped him to be. And I'm letting him do it. Choosing him to do it.
"Faith," Neumann tries one last time, looking past Luca to me. "You're not like him. You're good. Don't let him—"
"I'm not good," I tell him, and mean it. "I'm just not you."
I watch Neumann's face as understanding hits him. I'm not going to stop this. I chose the monster over mercy. Twelve years of his freedom end here, because of what he did to my mother.
I don't look away. Don't cover my ears. Don't turn my back.
I witness.
When Neumann's eyes finally go still, I feel something inside me crack open. Not relief. Not satisfaction. Just… emptiness. Like I've been carrying this weight so long, I don't know how to stand without it.
Luca turns to me, blood on his hands, question in his eyes.
I cross to him and take his bloodied hand in mine. "It's done?"
"It's done."