Chapter 38 LUCA
LUCA
It has been a full week since Bellini fell, seven slow days since the smoke cleared and the gunfire finally stopped echoing off the estate walls.
The gardens smell like damp stone, crushed pine needles, and rosemary, the quiet kind of morning that slowly pieces itself back together without asking for permission.
Bruises are fading to sickly greens and split knuckles are finally scabbing over.
Someone has already swept the terrace gravel, neat and even.
Nonna stands at the head of the long outdoor table with a steaming coffee pot in hand, daring anyone to complain about breakfast.
"Sit," she commands without glancing up, and chairs scrape back at the same time as everyone scrambles for a seat.
Matteo drops into a chair like his legs gave out on purpose. There is a fresh bruise along his jaw, yellowing at the edges, and he pokes at it with two fingers before Nonna smacks his hand away with the coffee pot itself.
"Don't touch," she barks, planting the pot on the trivet with a sharp clatter. "You will make it worse."
Matteo slumps back and cradles his cheek. "It's already the worst it can be, Nonna."
Enzo snorts into his espresso, and Matteo kicks him under the table hard enough that the whole thing rattles. Nora sits right beside me, nursing a ceramic mug of black coffee with both hands, watching the boys make fools of themselves with that sharp, amused glint in her hazel eyes.
Sofia sits on Nora's other side with her hands wrapped around a mug she isn't drinking from, watching the exchange the way she used to watch storms from the window as a kid, curious and quietly relieved she isn't the one caught outside.
Adrian stands behind Sofia's chair with one hand resting on the wood near her shoulder. He still scans the tree line out of habit, but the whole table knows where his eyes always land first.
Sofia reaches back without turning her head, hooking her fingers through his. "Sit down next to me. You've been hovering all morning."
Adrian doesn't argue. He slides into the empty chair beside her without a word of protest, his fingers tangling naturally with hers on top of the table for everyone to see.
Sofia pushes her mug toward his side with her free hand. "Drink your coffee before it gets cold."
Adrian lifts the mug with his other hand, taking a sip exactly as told. No one at the table bats an eye at the display. After everything with the Bellinis, seeing the head of security wrapped around Sofia's little finger is just the family rule now.
"Look at the terrifying hitman, domesticated by breakfast," Matteo smirks around a mouthful of toast.
Nora takes a measured sip of her coffee. "Leave Adrian alone, Matteo. At least one man at this table has manners. You eat like an alley rat fighting over pub scraps."
"Shut up and eat your bread, Matteo," Adrian replies smoothly, not even looking up as he rests his thumb against Sofia's knuckles.
Sofia gives a tiny, satisfied smile against Adrian's shoulder, completely unbothered by Matteo's commentary.
I rest my arm across the back of Nora's chair.
Seven days of counting crates, wrapping gauze, and shoveling fresh dirt over Bellini's dead, and the chatter around this table still makes my jaw tighten.
Nora leans her shoulder into mine, warm and solid through my shirt.
Nonna sets down the hot skillet with a dull clank, her dark eyes locking straight onto my face before I can look away.
She sets a plate of warm frittata squarely in front of me. "You are going to see him."
"After breakfast," I murmur, my fingers tight on the warm porcelain of my espresso cup.
She taps the table edge with her knuckle. "Eat first. Whatever you decide, decide it on a full stomach."
Matteo slowly lowers his fork, his eyes darting between Nonna and me. "Decide what?"
"Nothing that concerns your breakfast," I grind out, leveling a flat look across the table at him.
Matteo mutters around a mouthful of pastry, his butter knife pointed across the table. "Everything concerns my breakfast. I take personal offense to family drama before nine in the morning."
Enzo tosses a crust of bread across the tablecloth, hitting him squarely between the eyes. "Shut your mouth and chew. Nobody asked for your commentary."
Matteo brushes crumbs off his denim jacket with a scowl. "Nonna gave the order, not you. Stop throwing food like a toddler."
"Act like one and get treated like one," Enzo fires back, grabbing another roll with a cold smirk.
Sofia ducks her head, pressing her lips together against a laugh, her shoulders hitching loose as she hides her grin behind Adrian's sleeve.
My cell phone rings on the edge of the stone table before the plates even clear.
I pick it up, noting the private line for the sanatorium outside Florence where Vittorio has been kept under guard since the fall of Bellini.
The head attendant’s voice is frayed on the other end, telling me my uncle refused his medication this morning and is demanding to speak with me directly.
"Give him the phone," I command, rising from the table as Nonna and Sofia both watch me with sudden stillness.
A rasping, ruined wheeze comes through the speaker. "Luca... come for me. One last time. Please." The line goes dead before I can answer.
Forty minutes later, I push open the door to his private sanatorium suite.
The smell of antiseptic, bitter almonds, and sweat strikes me hard.
Vittorio is tangled in the white bed linens, his face drained of color, his paralyzed legs limp beneath him.
On the bedside table sits a shattered water glass and a small, empty glass vial.
Vittorio hears my boots on the linoleum floor and turns his wild, bloodshot eyes toward the entrance. "You... you came," he wheezes, his clawed fingers hooking frantically into the sheets.
"What do you want?" I demand, closing the distance between us in three long strides.
He tries to lever his upper body off the mattress, but his dead legs drag behind him. With a wet gasp, he overbalances and crashes hard from the bed, his shoulder striking the cold linoleum right in front of my boots.
I drop to one knee beside him on the floor, grabbing his trembling shoulder to steady him. Convulsions shudder through his chest, rattle his throat, and leave gray foam at the corners of his mouth.
I reach into my pocket to call the doctors in the hall. "Stay still. Do not move."
He knocks my phone aside with a spastic heave of his arm, his fingers digging into the wool of my trousers. "No doctors," he chokes out, coughing violently until blackish bile flecks his chin. "It is... already in my blood. It is done, Luca."
"You took poison," I state, staring at the ruined man.
"I had to," he croaks, tears carving pale tracks through the sweat and gray pallor of his skin. "I could not live with the rot anymore. The quiet was eating my bones."
I hold his trembling neck upright so he does not choke on his own vomit. "You should have waited. I came to give you an exile. A quiet citrus grove in Sicily where you could finish your days in peace."
"I do not deserve citrus groves," he gasps out, his chest hitching in agonizing spasms as the poison shuts down his organs. "I betrayed our family. I let Bellini butcher our blood because of my broken heart."
He clutches my jacket with sudden, desperate strength, pulling my face down toward his rattling breath.
"I regretted it all, Luca," he weeps openly now, the agony twisting his features into pure torment.
"Every second of it. I hated myself every sunrise.
Forgive me... God, forgive me, I regretted it all. "
"I hear you, Uncle," I murmur, my hand tight on the nape of his neck as his strength begins to collapse like wet paper.
"One thing," he begs, choking on blood as his fingernails drag across my knuckles. "Grant me one final thing, Luca. Begging you... as a boy I raised..."
I keep my gaze locked on his fading eyes. "Tell me."
"Bury me beside Gabriel," he pleads, his voice cracking into a ragged sob. "Do not leave me in the family crypt among the men who hated him. Put my bones with Gabriel's remains. Please. Let us rest together."
A deep silence settles over the sterile room, broken only by the hitch of his dying lungs. The family had kept Gabriel Rossi’s unmarked grave secret for over twenty years in the old private plot behind the chapel.
"You loved him, and this family killed him, and you spent twenty years letting that poison turn inside you until nothing was left. I understand why you broke. But I don't forgive what you did with the pieces. Those are two different truths, uncle, and I can hold both."
He is crying now, silently, the heavy, ragged weeping of an old man who has carried grief until his ribs cracked under it.
"Give me your word," he begs through a cracked intake of air.
"Vittorio Moretti," I speak aloud into his ear, clear and solemn. "I will bury you beside him myself, Vittorio. In Gabriel's earth. You have my word as head of this family."
A shuddering sigh rattles through Vittorio's entire frame, and the fierce knot of agony between his brows finally smooths out. His grip on my coat slackens, fingers opening against the wool. He exhales once, slow and shallow, and then goes limp against the linoleum floor.
I reach down with two fingers and close his unseeing eyes. He looks smaller in death, shorn of the bitter secrets that poisoned two decades of our lives.
I stand up, adjusting my cuffs, and look at the attendants who have gathered at the open doorway, white-faced and trembling. "Prepare him for transport," I instruct them without raising my voice. "To the private chapel at the estate."
I walk back out into the bright Tuscan midday, the heavy weight of the past finally breaking into dust behind me.
I find Sofia on the veranda afterward, perched on the stone railing with her knees pulled up to her chest, watching Adrian debate a gardener about whether a boxwood hedge creates a blind spot.