Chapter 36 LUAN
LUAN
"She's not coming."
Erion's resigned voice cuts through the silence. The voice of someone who's already accepted disappointment as inevitable.
"She will come," Artan replies from where he stands by the window, looking down at the street below. "She's just a little late."
I wish Artan is right. Wish with an intensity that feels foreign and uncomfortable that Lily will come. That she's just running late, caught in traffic or hesitating outside the building, and not changing her mind. Not deciding that we're not worth the risk.
We're all gathered in my living room, the three of us positioned like pieces on a chessboard waiting for the game to begin.
She sent a message yesterday to Artan after he visited her at work. A simple text. "I'll come. Tomorrow at three."
I can barely recognize myself in this moment.
Luan Krasniqi, head of the Chicago Albanian mafia, pleading with a woman to hear him out.
Waiting and hoping like some lovesick fool from a romance novel.
About to reveal things I haven't told anyone, secrets I've kept buried so deep I sometimes convince myself they're not real.
Not even Artan knows all of it, and he's the closest thing I have to family now.
So this is what love is. This vulnerability. This fear. This willingness to expose every wound and hope the person seeing them doesn't use them as weapons.
The doorbell rings.
She didn't use the code.
She rang the bell. Like she's already breaking whatever intimacy we built over the past weeks. Like she's establishing distance before she even crosses the threshold.
We all stand simultaneously, the movement synchronized without planning.
Look at each other. Artan's expression is hopeful, his dark eyes bright with something close to faith.
Erion's face shows doubt, skepticism written in every line.
I feel resigned, braced for rejection like a blow I can see coming but can't avoid.
Artan moves first, always the one to step forward, to bridge gaps, to smooth rough edges. He crosses to the door with quick strides.
Returns moments later with Lily behind him.
She looks nervous, her hands clasped together in front of her body in a defensive posture. Frightened even, though I'm not sure if she's afraid of us or of what she might learn or of her own feelings. Her eyes move between the three of us, uncertain, assessing.
Her blonde hair is down around her shoulders, loose and slightly disheveled like she's been running her hands through it.
For a moment, we all just stand there in my living room, frozen in awkwardness. Like strangers again instead of lovers. Like we haven't touched each other, tasted each other, learned the geography of each other's bodies.
"Please. Sit." I gesture to the couch.
Lily sits slowly, carefully, perching on the edge of the cushion like she might need to flee at any moment. Her posture is rigid, defensive.
Erion clears his throat, the sound loud in the tense silence. "Do you want something to eat? Or drink? Coffee? Water?"
Then he laughs, the sound self-mocking and slightly bitter. "I'm doing what you always do. Trying to fix things with food. Trying to make people comfortable by feeding them."
Lily's mouth curves slightly, a ghost of a smile that doesn't quite reach her eyes. Small but genuine. She opens her mouth to speak, probably to say something kind, something that will ease the tension.
I interrupt. I need to. Need to get the truth out before she can dismiss us with gentle words and careful distance.
"You know who we are now. What we do for a living.
We've told you almost everything about our world, about the crime and the violence and the gray morality we operate in.
" My voice is steady, factual, offering information without defense.
"We left out one thing. One big, terrible thing. The fact that I killed my father."
Lily's eyes widen, blue irises expanding with shock, but she doesn't speak. Doesn't move. Just stares at me with an expression I can't quite read.
"It's a terrible truth to admit," I continue, forcing myself to hold her gaze even though every instinct wants to look away.
"But I also kept it from you because I thought knowing would put you in danger.
That if you knew, you'd become a target.
A liability. Someone who could be used against me.
I was wrong. Not telling you hurt you worse than the truth ever could. And I never want to hurt you again."
I take a breath that feels like inhaling broken glass. This is it. The moment where everything either breaks or begins to heal.
"I always had a difficult relationship with my father.
Since I was a child, since before I have coherent memories, he would beat me.
Not discipline. Not punishment. Just violence for the sake of violence.
Savagely. Without restraint or mercy. It got worse after my mother died when I was twelve.
Like he blamed me for her death somehow. "
"I was there," Artan adds quietly from where he's leaning against the wall, his eyes haunted by old memories. "I saw it happen. The beatings. The cruelty. But I couldn't do anything about it. No one could. He was the head of the family. Untouchable."
I nod acknowledgement of Artan's witness.
Continue pushing through the story like walking through fire.
"The only person who tried to interfere, who would step between us when she could, was my sister.
Mira. She was ten years older than me. She'd look after me after the beatings.
Clean the blood. Bandage what needed bandaging.
Tell me stories to distract me from the pain. "
Lily's eyes are already wet, tears gathering but not yet falling.
"My father was a dark, twisted man. Evil in ways that have nothing to do with the mafia or organized crime.
He had no scruples when it came to making money.
No lines he wouldn't cross. No atrocity he wouldn't commit if it was profitable.
That didn't sit well with me. I was supposed to inherit the clan, to take over when he stepped down or died.
For years, I thought once I took over, I'd change things.
Make the business cleaner. More ethical, if such a thing is possible in this world. "
I pause, gathering strength for what comes next. This is the hard part. The part I've never said out loud to anyone.
"Then I found out two things, just a few months ago, that changed everything.
First, that my father was involved in human trafficking.
Moving women and girls across borders. Selling them.
Some of the victims were underage, children, some as young as twelve or thirteen.
That alone was enough for me. I decided right then to stop him.
By any means necessary. Even if it meant killing him myself. "
The room is heavy with the weight of that admission. With the reality of what I'm capable of.
"And I found my sister's journal," I continue, my voice getting quieter, more strained.
"My father told me she'd abandoned us. Abandoned me.
Said she wanted nothing to do with this life, that she'd started fresh somewhere else and didn't want contact.
I believed him. I was angry at her for years for leaving me alone with him. "
My throat tightens with emotion I thought I'd buried.
"The journal started as an agenda. Appointments. But the later entries became personal. More like a diary. Private thoughts she never meant anyone to read."
I can see the pages in my mind, her handwriting getting more frantic with each entry, the words becoming messier as panic set in.
"In one of the last entries, she wrote that she was afraid she might be pregnant.
Which shocked me because I didn't even know she had a boyfriend.
She'd never mentioned anyone. The very last entry was chaotic.
Conflicting thoughts written in fragments.
Sentences that started and stopped. She was terrified.
She wrote that our father had found out about the pregnancy.
That he was taking her to have an abortion.
He threatened her. Told her that if she didn't agree, if she tried to keep the baby, he'd kill everyone she loved. Her lover. Me."
Lily's hand moves to cover her mouth, her fingers pressing against her lips like she can physically hold back sound.
"So she agreed. She went with him. She had the procedure." My voice breaks slightly on the last word. "Something went wrong. Both Mira and the baby died. And he just told everyone that she'd left. That she'd chosen to abandon the family. I believed that lie for years."
The room goes completely, utterly silent. The kind that presses against skin like physical pressure.
Lily is crying now, not bothering to hide it or wipe the tears away. Silent streams down her cheeks, her face twisted with grief for people she never met. For tragedies that happened before she entered our world.
Erion looks stricken, his face pale, his usual sardonic expression completely gone.
Suddenly there's a crushing sound that makes us all flinch.
Artan's fist connects with the floor-to-ceiling window with devastating force. Once. Twice. Again and again, each impact accompanied by a roar that sounds barely human.
Pure fury. Pure anguish.
The glass spiderwebs under his fists, cracks spreading outward in complex patterns. His knuckles are bleeding, skin split open, blood smearing across the glass with each hit. But he doesn't stop. Doesn't seem to feel the pain or notice the damage.
I'm frozen, shocked by the intensity of his reaction.
Erion moves toward Artan with quick steps. "Vella, stop. You're hurting yourself."
Lily stands abruptly.
"Lily, don't," Erion warns, genuine fear in his voice now.
She shakes him off with surprising strength. Keeps moving forward with determination.
She approaches Artan from behind, not hesitating despite the violence radiating from him. Wraps her arms around his torso from behind. Pins his arms to his sides with her smaller frame, using her whole body to restrain him. Holds him with everything she has.
He struggles for a moment, muscles tensing, trying to break free to continue his assault on the window. Then suddenly goes completely still, recognizing her touch even through his fury.
"She didn't leave," Lily murmurs against his back. Her voice is soft but clear, cutting through the chaos. "Artan, listen to me. She didn't leave you. She didn't abandon you. She was stolen from you. It wasn't her choice."
Artan's knees buckle like strings have been cut.
Lily holds him as they both sink to the floor together, her arms never loosening, her body becoming his anchor to reality.
"She didn't leave you," Lily repeats, the words becoming a mantra, a prayer. "She chose you."
Over and over. The same truth delivered with gentle insistence until it can penetrate the grief.