Chapter 4 LUCA
LUCA
My jaw still stings where she cut me. She came right at me with a butter knife she grabbed off the dining table, hard enough to slice skin and draw blood.
Nobody touches me and gets away with it. But Nora Blake stood there with blood on the blade, panting, looking ready to die before she backed down.
The thick wooden doors keep the room shut tight, but right now I can hear feet stopping in the hall outside.
She has been here less than two days since Matteo dragged her off the plane from London. Most people would curl up and cry in a corner. Nora walks through a house full of armed killers like it is just an annoying delay.
It makes me want to push her until that tough act cracks.
Everyone breaks, I remind myself. It just takes time and the right leverage. She acts like she runs the world, but she has no idea what kind of people she is dealing with.
I have bigger problems first. The war is moving closer.
Adrian has a street map laid across the long table. Red marker lines cover the roads down by the eastern docks, marking every spot where Bellini’s trucks have been spotted.
Adrian taps his knuckle against the paper. "They hit our Marchetti warehouse two nights ago. Cleaned it out before our guards could react. Stole the crates and left no one alive."
"No survivors," I repeat, dragging my thumb along the map edge. I do not shout. I never shout when things go bad. "How many men were inside?"
"Three."
"And all three are dead."
"Yes."
Enzo sits in the armchair near the window with his arms crossed. He has not said a single word since we started, just staring at the floor with his jaw clenched.
"Who was in charge of the gate?" I demand, locking eyes on Adrian.
"Dante," Adrian grunts, shifting back on his boots.
"Is Dante still on his feet, or did they take him too?" I ask, keeping my voice flat.
Adrian looks down at the table. "He walked off early. He was supposed to trade shifts with Marco, but he forgot to log it."
I look right at him. "So three of my guys took bullets because Dante could not be bothered to check a work sheet."
"Pretty much," Adrian answers, rubbing the back of his neck.
I drum two fingers against the table. "Have him in the basement at sunrise. If he treats his job like a joke again, he loses a finger for every dead man Bellini put in the ground. Let us see how he writes his logs without them."
Adrian nods once, his face grim. "I will bring him in myself."
"Good." I point back at the street map. "Where are they going next?"
Adrian shakes his head. "Hard to tell. Bellini stopped using regular phones after we listened in last month. Now he uses paper notes and runners. It could be the boats. It could be our trucking yard up north. We are blind right now."
Enzo leans forward in his seat, rubbing his knuckles. "He is testing us. He wants to see which place you run to protect first. That warehouse was just bait."
"Bait for what?" I ask him.
"To see if you lose your cool and send all our men into a trap," Enzo mumbles.
He is right. Bellini wants me mad enough to rush in. But I do not rush. I wait.
Let him try, I think, watching the docks on the paper. If he wants a fight, I will end his family for good this time.
"Then we do not bite," I instruct, leaning back. "Put two more bodyguards on Sofia and Nonna. Keep the boats tied up until we find where his crew is hiding."
"He will think you are scared," Adrian warns, narrowing his eyes.
"Let him think whatever he wants," I snap back. "A man who thinks he is winning makes stupid mistakes."
Adrian sighs and points toward the ceiling. "And what about the British woman upstairs?"
I stop rolling the marker. "What about her?" I demand.
Adrian paces the rug. "If Bellini finds out Matteo took the wrong person, it turns into a mess. She runs a big company. People are looking for her. If Bellini hears her name, he will think we planned this to get money or leverage."
"Then Bellini does not hear her name," I say, throwing the marker down.
"That only works if she stays locked in her room," Adrian presses, looking right at me. "And she has been trying every door since she got here."
I don't answer that, mostly because he's right and I don't feel like admitting it out loud.
A faint creak presses through the crack beneath the heavy oak door. The soft scrape of knit fabric brushes against the hallway baseboard, followed by a shallow breath drawn and held tight against the dark.
I lift two fingers from the map. Adrian cuts off instantly, his jaw clamping shut mid-word while the library drops into dead silence.
I push back from the table and walk across the floor without making a sound. I grab the brass handle and pull the door open fast.
Nora is standing three feet away in the hall, wearing an oversized wool sweater that belongs to Sofia. Her hair is tied back in a messy knot, and her face stays completely still as our eyes meet. She does not jump. She just looks at me like she is waiting for a fight.
She crosses her arms. "I am looking for the damn bathroom."
"You have a bathroom right next to your bed," I point out as I step into the doorway.
She waves one hand down the dark corridor. "I took a wrong turn. Your house is huge, all the halls look the same, and it is a total fire trap."
I narrow my eyes. "You had your ear to my door."
She runs a finger along the wall frame without flinching. "I was looking at the wood panels."
I take a step toward her. "In the dark, in the middle of the night."
"It is nice wood," she replies with an eye roll. "People do not build doors like this anymore."
Behind me, Adrian shifts his weight on the floorboards, leather creaking as he tightens his crossed arms and glances toward me for an order.
Over by the window, Enzo sits completely frozen in the dark leather armchair, his jaw set and knuckles white around the armrests, not even blinking as his stare cuts straight through Nora.
I drop my voice low. "How much did you hear?"
"I do not know what you are talking about," she states, staring straight into my eyes.
I lean in close. "Nora. Do not test me."
She lifts her chin and holds my gaze. "Fine. I heard a couple of words. Docks. A warehouse. Some idiot named Dante who screwed up a work sheet. I do not know your big secret plan, so stop glaring at me."
"How convenient." I shake my head.
She glares right at me. "It is the truth. I know people in this house do not like the truth, but I do."
I watch her eyes. Her pulse beats steady in the hollow of her throat.
No flinch. No tremor in her jaw. She is a tiny thing compared to the monsters in this house, but she stares at me like she's daring me to put her down.
It's fascinating. Most people break when I look at them this way; she just sharpens.
"None of that business is for you," I remind her, taking another step forward.
"You told me this morning that those Bellini guys will shoot me if they see me." She holds her ground. "You cannot tell me people want to kill me and then get mad when I try to listen."
"So you sneak around my house at night to spy?" I crowd her back against the wall frame.
"I wanted facts," she retorts, not budging an inch. "Your clowns grabbed the wrong girl. If men with guns are coming for me, I need to know who they are."
I crowd her against the wall, cutting off the dark hallway until her oversized knit sweater brushes my chest. A dark, twisted curiosity coils in my gut.
It would be so easy to snap her neck right here and solve the problem of her mouth, but the defiance in her eyes is intoxicating.
She smells like warm vanilla and clean skin, completely out of place in a house built on blood.
You should end her, the quiet shadow inside me murmurs. A quick squeeze of the fingers. One clean snap, and no more questions. No more leaks. But watching her pulse hammer violently against her pale skin without a single step back makes something dark and hungry wake up in my chest.
"You are too close to me," she mutters, though she does not move away.
I plant one hand on the wall right beside her ear. "You are the one standing at my door listening to my war plans."
She glances at my cut jaw, then looks back up into my eyes. "If you are keeping me locked up here, you need to tell me what is happening."
"I do not owe you answers, Nora. You are a hostage, not my partner."
She digs her heels into the floor. "Then take care of this Bellini guy so I can get on a plane and go back to London."
"Go back to bed," I order, stepping away from her.
She turns on her heel. "Just tell me the truth next time and save us both the headache."
Without waiting for an answer, she heads down the dim corridor at an easy pace. I linger in the doorway, tracking her retreat into the shadows.
Adrian walks to the doorway beside me and watches her walk down the hall. "That is going to be a problem."
"I know," I mutter, rubbing the sore muscle in my neck.
Adrian glances at the stairs. "She did not back down once. Her hands were steady the entire time."
"I saw," I answer, staring at the empty shadows where she stood.
"She picked out the docks, Dante, and the schedule error without even trying," Adrian says as he walks back toward the table. "She figured out our problem in three seconds."
Far down the hall, a bedroom door clicks shut. The latch falls into place, solid and heavy in the quiet house.
"She is sharper than half the guys I pay to carry guns," I admit, watching the dark hallway where her door shut. "If Bellini gets his hands on her, he will kill her. But if she keeps pushing me, she is going to find out I am much worse."