Chapter 8 #2
The four men pile into a second vehicle behind us. This is how it works in this world—no one travels alone. Every trip is a convoy, and every movement is calculated.
When we get to my father’s estate, nothing has changed.
Same iron gates. Same dead-eyed guards stationed at the entrance, with their hands resting near their weapons. The driver slows to a stop, window rolling down, but the guards don’t move or wave us through.
One of them steps forward, looking into the car with suspicion.
“State your business,” he says, flat and dismissive.
Anger flares hot in my chest.
“Are you fucking serious?” I lean forward so he can see my face clearly. “Open the fucking gate before I call my father and tell him his men are too stupid to recognize his own daughter.”
Recognition flickers across his face. Then fear. He quickly steps back, stammering an apology while waving frantically at the other guard.
The gates swing open with a slow, mechanical groan, as if even the machinery is reluctant let us in.
We roll in, tires crunching over the gravel driveway. Same blacked-out windows staring down from the main house like dead eyes. Same thick brick walls and manicured hedges, trying to convince the world they’re keeping people out when they’re really keeping everything in.
We pull up to the entrance, the SUV smoothly coming to a stop with a soft rumble. The driver turns off the engine and gets out first, then circles around to open my door as if I’m royalty instead of a pawn being moved between two would-be kings.
I step outside. The house looks the same as ever—cold and imposing, a monument to power built on blood and broken bones. The kind of place that absorbs light and spits out shadows.
The four De Luca men immediately flank me, forming a protective barrier that feels more like a cage.
My father’s men, stationed at every corner and corridor, watch with a cold assessment that makes my skin crawl. I know that feeling well. I grew up under it. Learnt to walk with my head high and my face blank because showing weakness here was like painting a target on my back.
Nothing has fucking changed.
The marble floors shine under low lighting.
Portraits of deceased men line the walls, ancestors who built this empire on the backs of others, taking what they wanted and calling it legacy.
I used to stare at those paintings as a kid, wondering if any of them loved their children more than they loved their power.
I know the answer now.
My father’s office is at the end of the hall, beyond the sitting room where my mother used to wait for him to come home.
That’s where she’d sit with a glass of wine that often turned into a bottle, pretending she didn’t know where he was or who he was with.
I still see her there sometimes, a ghost of a woman who gave up fighting a long time ago.
I move further into the house with the four De Luca men following close behind.
When I reach the door to my fathers office, I stop and turn to face them.
“You wait here,” I say.
I turn back around when they follow, anger flaring hot in my chest.
“I said wait here.”
The one nearest to me stiffens, the same bastard who eye-fucked me in Lorenzo’s foyer. Up close, he’s even worse. Cold eyes that hold too much curiosity.
“We have orders not to let you out of sight,” he says.
I tilt my head, standing my ground. Spine straight. I’ve faced worse than him. Hell, I’ve survived worse than him.
“You think my father’s going to slit my throat in the middle of a meeting?” I ask, voice dripping with disdain. “Back the hell off before I make sure Lorenzo hears about how his men don’t know the difference between protection and babysitting.”
The silence stretches, taut as a wire ready to snap.
Something dark flickers in his eyes, something that makes my stomach turn. The others peel away one by one until it’s just him. The creep. He holds my gaze a second longer than necessary. Then finally, he retreats.
I push the door open and walk inside.
Walking into this room is like walking back into a version of myself I prefer not to think about.
The little girl who used to sit outside this very door, knees pulled to her chest, waiting for her father to notice her.
Waiting for him to call her in, to ask about her day.
That seven-year-old who believed that if she was good enough and smart enough, he might love her the way fathers are supposed to love their daughters.
She died in this room. Killed by a man who saw her as an asset before he ever saw her as a child.
My father neither stands nor shows any sign of warmth or affection. He simply gestures to the chair across from him with one hand, casual as if I were a business associate rather than his daughter.
“Sit,” he says.
I don’t. I won’t give him the satisfaction of obedience. Not anymore.
His fingers tap once on the wood before he leans back, studying me with the same detached interest he’d give a balance sheet.
“How’s married life?” he asks.
The question is so absurd and grotesquely inappropriate considering everything he’s done that I almost laugh.
Instead, I raise an eyebrow. “Cut the shit.”
He smirks as if this is amusing and I’m entertaining him.
“What does Lorenzo want?” he asks.
There it is. Right out of the gate. No pretending he cares about me beyond what I can do for him. Straight to the point. My chest aches with that old, familiar rage.
“Why?” I bite out.
“Because I need to know what game he’s playing.”
“He’s not playing anything.”
Another condescending smirk. “Everyone plays, Bella. Some just do it better than others.”
“Is that all you brought me here for was intel?”
His eyes are cold, calculating. “You live under his roof. You sleep in his bed. Don’t pretend you don’t hear things.”
All he sees is what advantage I can give him, a piece that I am on his fucked-up chessboard.
“Any word on Matteo?” he asks, like a shark circling its prey, looking for a weakness.
“No,” I say.
It’s not a lie; every lead has gone cold.
Every whisper ends in nothing. Lorenzo’s hunt has taken him across cities, ports, and old contacts.
I’ve seen the board in his office twice more since the first time, when I stumbled in drunk and reckless.
Each time, it’s more cluttered and more desperate.
Pins are scattered across maps with no pattern.
Names are crossed out. Dead ends are stacking up.
He’s chasing a ghost, and it’s eating him alive from the inside out.
“Nothing at all?” my father presses, leaning forward slightly.
I shrug, keeping my voice flat. “If I had something, you’d be the last person I’d give it to.”
A muscle jumps at his jaw, the only sign I’ve hit a nerve.
“Careful,” he warns.
“I am.”
I hold his stare because I know he’s planning something. This isn’t curiosity; it’s calculation. He wants something from Lorenzo, and I’m the thread he’s trying to pull to unravel it all.
But I won’t give him shit.
Even when I know Lorenzo wouldn’t do the same for me, even when he shuts every door behind him and locks them all, keeping me out of that part of his life, and even when he treats me as a means to an end—just a body in his bed and a name on a contract. Still, I won’t betray him.
Not to this man who killed the boy I loved and handed me over to a stranger without hesitation.
“Is that all?” I ask, voice cold as ice.
He observes me before he nods. “For now.”
I turn to leave, every muscle in my body crying out to get away, to put space between myself and this place that still has a hold on me.
I step into the hallway. The four guards straighten up immediately, falling back into formation around me.
The creep’s eyes lock with mine, lingering just a second too long.
I ignore him, wanting to get the hell out of here.
To get back to the life I’m fighting hard to survive, one brutal day at a time.