Chapter 18
LUCA
The brackish water of the Mississippi River laps against the concrete piers beneath my port office, a low, rhythmic grinding that usually settles my mind.
It isn’t settling it today.
I sit at my dark wood desk, stripped of my jacket, my sleeves rolled to my elbows, scanning container manifests for the southern deep-water berths.
Ever since Russo’s men tested our perimeter at the docks, every shipment carries the foul stench of an internal leak.
But beneath the numbers, beneath the logistics of a family at war, my mind is anchored fifty blocks away, on the woman who stood in my study last night and dropped a grease-smudged satellite tracker onto my blotter.
My thumb unconsciously traces the rim of my scotch glass.
The heavy oak door to my office swings open without a knock. Silvano Moretti steps across the threshold, his tailored coat heavy over his broad shoulders, his weathered face lined with the sharp, cynical gravity of the Old Guard.
“You’re ignoring the council, Luca,” Moretti says, tossing a leather briefing folder onto the corner of my desk.
“Russo’s enforcers probed Berth 9 two hours ago.
They tested our response time on the border line, and you’re sitting here auditing freight manifests yourself instead of ordering an immediate retaliation strike. ”
“I audit the manifests because Berth 9 carries an internal leak,” I say, not raising my eyes from the log. “And I don’t launch strikes until I know which of my own capos sold the access code.”
Moretti leans over the desk, his calloused knuckles planted flat on the dark wood. “The capos are talking, Luca. The Old Guard is whispering that the Santoro girl has softened you. They say Don Valentino is too distracted playing house with his new bride to notice Russo circling our gates.”
I slowly raise my head. The temperature in the room drops to sub-zero. I lock my eyes onto Moretti’s until the older man imperceptibly stiffens.
“Tell the Old Guard that my marriage is not council business,” I rumble, my voice dropping into a flat, subterranean threat. “And if any capo whispers my wife’s name in a dark corner again, I will personally cut out his tongue and pin it to the board at Berth 9. Am I clear, Moretti?”
Moretti’s jaw flexes. He stares at me for two long seconds, searching my face for a flicker of hesitation. He finds none. He gives a single, stiff nod.
“Clear, Don Luca.”
He turns on his heel and exits, the heavy oak door clicking shut behind him.
Once the door closes, the quiet returns, heavy and suffocating. My left hand drifts across the desk.
Matteo was the brother who should have ruled. He had the light, the warmth, the effortless grace. I was the spare, the dark, calculated weapon built for the underworld’s wet work. When Matteo burned on that road, a piece of my soul died with him.
I swore over his cold grave that I would never again fail to protect someone who belonged to me. I would build a wall of iron and blood around my bloodline, and no one I loved would ever bleed again.
And now, Davide Russo is testing my borders. Hunting my wife.
I grip the steel edge of the watch on my wrist, the metal biting into my skin. Four minutes went missing the night my brother died, I think, a dark, ferocious resolve locking over my chest. Not one second goes missing for my wife. I unlinked the car tracker, I told her.
I gave her my live location. I gave her the illusion of victory.
But I didn’t pull my tail team. A Don doesn’t leave his wife unmonitored when a rival family is probing his borders, especially when that wife possesses enough surgical precision and ice in her veins to slip a six-man security detail whenever she pleases.
The encrypted radio on my desk buzzes, breaking the quiet with a sharp burst of static.
“Don Luca,” Gianni’s voice comes through, low and hurried. “We have a detour.”
I don’t look up from the manifest. “Report, Gianni.”
“The Donna’s sedan just left the St. Charles corridor,” Gianni says. “She didn’t head toward the hospital. She bypassed the medical district entirely. She just pulled into the rear courtyard of an unmarked historic mansion on Prytania Street.”
My pen stops mid-line. The black ink bleeds into the paper, forming a dark, jagged stain.
“Prytania?” I ask. “What building?”
“The old Beauregard brownstone,” Gianni replies, the tension in his breath clear across the frequency.
“It operates off the books, Don Luca. No sign on the door, no public listings. It’s an ultra-exclusive VIP hideaway.
High-end clientele rent the suites by the hour under cash aliases.
Affairs, politicians buying silence... off-the-record meetings. ”
The blood in my veins turns to liquid lead.
A private VIP brownstone. Rented by the hour. Off the books.
A violent, blinding red fog detonates behind my eyes. The rational, calculating Don who manages deep-water berths and Commission truces vanishes in a single, terrifying heartbeat. In his place stands a feral, possessive monster whose chest feels like it’s being crushed under a hydraulic press.
An affair?
My jaw clenches so hard my molars ache. Has she been meeting someone in secret? A lover from her past? A Santoro loyalist? Or worse—is she meeting one of Russo’s lieutenants to hand over port schematics in exchange for her family’s total freedom?
If there is a man behind that door touching what is mine, he won’t live long enough to hear his own bones break.
“Seal the perimeter,” I growl into the mic, standing up so fast my heavy leather chair slams into the wood paneling behind me. “Nobody enters that courtyard. Nobody leaves. If a single soul attempts to step out of that building before I arrive, put a bullet in their knee.”
“Understood, Don Luca. We’re in position.”
I shove the radio into my pocket, grab my suit coat, and pull my custom gun from the quick-release holster mounted beneath the desk frame.
The drive to the Garden District is a blur of rain-slick asphalt, flashing streetlights, and roaring horsepower.
I push the car to its limit down Tchoupitoulas Street, the heavy rain hammering against the windshield in deafening sheets.
The wiper blades sweep frantically back and forth, but they do nothing to clear the violent crimson haze coating my vision.
My hands grip the leather steering wheel with enough crushing force that the hide groans under my palms, my knuckles turned chalk-white.
Every red light I blow through feels like a taunt. Every tick of Matteo’s slow watch against my wrist is a rusty blade twisting in my gut.
Pick one of twelve chairs, she told me on our first morning. She looked me in the eyes last night, accepted my location, and smiled her cold, royal Santoro smile before leaving my study. She thinks she understands the cage I built around her. She thinks her contract is an impenetrable wall.
But she forgot one fundamental truth: I don’t track my wife to keep tabs on her.
I track her because she is my blood now, and no one survives taking what belongs to a Valentino.
If she thinks she can step out of my house and give herself to another man, I will tear this city apart brick by brick until there is nowhere left for either of them to bleed.
I slam the car to a halt in the narrow cobblestone alley behind the historic brownstone, the tires screeching against the wet slate as I block the wrought-iron rear gates.
Two black Valentino SUVs tear into the alley behind me, six armed enforcers spilling out into the torrential rain, their suit jackets unbuttoned, hands pressed against concealed leather.
I step out into the downpour. The heavy New Orleans humidity hits me like a wet towel, rain soaking through my white dress shirt, plastering my hair to my forehead.
I pull the slide of my gun back.
Click-clack.
A 9mm round chambers with a crisp, mechanical snap that echoes in the narrow brick alleyway.
“Enforce the rear exit,” I tell Gianni, my voice so low and lethal it barely carries over the rain drumming against the slate roofs. “If anyone tries to run, shoot to kill.”
“Yes, Boss.”
I don’t use the front entrance. I walk straight up the rear slate steps toward the heavy mahogany service doors. The Spanish moss hangs low from the live oaks above, tossing in the wind like frayed ropes. I plant my hand against the brass latch and turn it. It’s locked from the inside.
I don’t waste time picking it. I raise my booted foot and drive it straight into the frame beside the lock mechanism.
CRACK.
The solid oak splinters inward, the brass latch tearing free from the jamb with a screech of bent screws and shattering wood.
I step over the debris into the interior of the brownstone.
The foyer smells of expensive beeswax, crushed orchids, aged leather, and damp velvet, a suffocating scent engineered for discretion and high-priced secrets. Deep crimson wallpaper lines the walls, lit only by dim amber sconces that throw long, twisted shadows across the Persian runner carpets.
A man in a tailored gray suit, the private concierge, comes rushing out of a side office, his face pale with shock.
“Sir! What is the meaning of this—this is a private establishment, you can’t—”
Before he can finish the sentence, I bridge the ten feet between us in two terrifying strides. My left hand shoots out like an iron vise, wrapping around his throat and driving him backward until his spine slams into the flock wallpaper.
The picture frames rattle against the plaster. His breath explodes out of him in a wet gasp, his hands clawing frantically at my wrist, his knees buckling under my full weight.
I bring my face six inches from his, my dark eyes burning into his terrified pupils. I press the cold, square muzzle of my Sig Sauer directly beneath his jawline, forcing his head back against the wall until his throat is fully exposed.
“Listen to me very carefully,” I say, my voice a gravelly rumble that vibrates against his neck. “My name is Luca Valentino. You have three seconds to tell me which room my wife was escorted to, or I will turn this foyer into a crime scene.”
The man’s eyes bulge in pure terror. He stammers, his pulse hammering wildly against my palm like a trapped bird. “S-Suite... Suite 102! Down the main hall, to the right! Please—she just came in—”
“Is there anyone in there with her?” I demand, tightening my fingers until his air cuts off entirely and his face turns purple.
“I—I don’t know! It’s a private booking! Cash... off the books...”
I shove him sideways. He crashes into a mahogany side table, sending an antique ceramic vase shattering across the hardwood floor, groaning as he clutches his bruised throat on his hands and knees.
I don’t give him a second glance.
I turn toward the carpeted corridor, my weapon held low at my side, my leather boots making zero sound against the thick Persian runner. The air in the hallway feels heavy, claustrophobic, charged with a lethal energy that makes my blood sing for violence.
Suite 102.
Every instinct I possess as a Don, every lesson in tactical restraint, is gone. If she is in there with another man... if some arrogant fool thinks he can lay his hands on the Donna who sits at my table... I will tear his chest open before he can scream her name.
I reach the heavy oak door at the end of the hall. The brass numbers 102 gleam under the dim sconce light.
I stop. The world shrinks down to the sound of my own ragged breathing, the cold steel frame of the weapon in my right hand, and the slow, steady tick-tick-tick of the watch on my wrist.
I don’t knock. I don’t call out her name.
I raise the gun to eye level, lock my front sight on the center mass of the door frame, plant my left boot beside the latch, and kick the door open with pure, explosive force.
BOOM!
The lock shreds from the wood. The door slams back against the interior wall.
“Get your fucking hands off my wife!” I roar, stepping across the threshold with my weapon drawn, eyes blazing, heart roaring for blood, ready to execute whoever is inside—