Chapter 15
Chapter Fifteen
Isabella
Rain always knows when to show up. That may sound dramatic as shit, but I don’t care.
It starts just after noon, quiet at first, a soft tapping against the bedroom window that slips beneath my skin and smooths out the noise in my head.
Then it builds, as it always does. By the time I cross the room and stop in front of the glass, the sky has opened wide and bled itself empty over the estate.
Sheets of rain pour over the gardens in thick streaks across the hedges and the stone balustrade, turning the world beyond the window into a blur of bruised gray and drowning green.
The sky looks battered, swollen with clouds, blackened at the edges, as though even Mother Nature reaches a point where she cannot hold her shit together for another second and has to let it all fall.
I stand with my arms folded tightly over my chest and just breathe.
This room still smells of Lorenzo.
That’s why I am in here. His scent clings to everything. To the sheets tangled at the foot of the bed. To the pillow beside mine. I can still feel the ghost of him in the heat he left behind. In the dangerous comfort of knowing that when he is in this room, it no longer feels so fucking cold.
I press my fingertips against the cool glass and watch another violent stream of water race down the pane.
I don’t know when he’s coming back.
Tonight. Tomorrow. Three days from now. Maybe even longer.
No matter how cold Lorenzo tries to act, I see the truth hiding beneath all that control.
The weight in his eyes. The tension pulled taut through his body.
He doesn’t know if he can kill Matteo. Killing an enemy is easy, but killing your own blood is a different kind of violence.
And something tells me Lorenzo knows that if he puts a bullet in Matteo’s head, it will take a piece of himself with it.
I close my eyes for a second and listen to the rain hammer harder against the glass, each hit sharp enough to sound personal. When I open them again, my gaze drifts to the garden below.
The roses bow beneath the weight of the water, their heads hanging as if even beauty grows tired of holding itself upright on this estate.
The hedges have deepened to a darker, richer green, soaked through until they look almost black at the base.
The marble glistens under the storm, slick, cold, and far too clean for a place built on blood.
Everything outside shines with that polished kind of ruin, the sort that looks beautiful from a distance until you get close enough to see the cracks.
A knock sounds at the bedroom door.
I don’t turn around right away. “What?”
The door opens only a fraction, and Rafe steps into the doorway.
He doesn’t come in, just stands there at the threshold.
His expression is carved from stone, the sort of face that never gives a single fucking thing away.
He is one of Lorenzo’s quieter men, which only makes him more dangerous than the loud bastards swaggering around downstairs.
Men who talk too much usually need the noise.
Men such as Rafe do not. Silence is enough when everyone already knows what you are capable of.
“Mrs. De Luca.”
The title still catches in my ribs no matter how many times I hear it.
“What is it?”
Rafe hesitates.
It is no more than half a second, maybe less, but it is enough for dread to slide its cold fingers down my spine. Enough for my body to go still, as prey does when the forest suddenly falls quiet.
“You have a visitor.”
I step forward, already knowing there is not a single version of that sentence I will enjoy.
“Who?”
“Your brother.”
The room goes cold around me.
Of fucking course. My father couldn’t get what he wanted by phone, so he sends the next worst thing. Luca, the crueler version of himself. Younger. Smoother. Better dressed. Less patience. Less mercy. Same rot beneath the surface.
My father is violence dressed up as power. Luca is violence dressed up as charm. Men see my father and know to fear him. Luca smiles first, just before he guts you.
I let out a slow breath through my nose and force my hands to uncurl from where they have been clutched against my arms. My nails have dug half-moons into my skin, hard enough to sting.
“Where is he?”
“In the downstairs sitting room.”
“Is he alone?”
Rafe’s face doesn’t shift, but I catch the answer in the stillness before he gives it. “No. He has men with him, but they’re out the front. Not in the sitting room.”
I should have known that. Luca never goes anywhere without his men, even when he is only paying a family visit, he arrives as if he is one insult away from war.
I hold his gaze for a second before nodding.
“Thank you, Rafe. I’ll come down now.”
He steps aside and opens the door wider for me.
I move past him without another word, my spine straight, my face blank, every piece of me pulled tight into control, that old habit of walking into a room strong, letting men think they had not touched me, even though it felt as if they had their hands wrapped around my throat.
“Would you like me to wait with you in the sitting room?” Rafe asks.
“No, thank you. I should be fine.”
By the time I reach the stairs, my expression is set. Cold. Polite. Untouchable. The same mask I’ve worn to survive dinner with my dignity mostly intact.
The sitting room is dim when I step inside, lit by the gray wash of stormlight bleeding through the tall windows. The fire is unlit. The room feels too grand for what it is about to hold, with polished wood and expensive silence, as if wealth can hide the rot of men like those my family breeds.
Luca stands by the drinks table. He reaches for the crystal decanter first, pouring himself a whiskey as though this were a Serrano house.
As though Lorenzo’s name means nothing here.
The amber liquid glints in the cut glass as rain batters the windows behind him, and something ugly drags its nails down the inside of my chest.
He doesn’t turn around when I enter.
I hate that he is here.
I hate the easy arrogance in every movement, the smug certainty that has clung to him as naturally as skin.
Luca has spent his whole life moving through the world, convinced it will part for him, and most of the time it does.
Men fear him. Women avoid his gaze unless they want to be hunted. Even the silence bends around him.
When he finally glances over at me, there is no warmth on his face.
My brother is handsome in the same vicious way a knife is beautiful. Sharp edges. Polished surface. Built for damage. The kind of man people admire from a distance, right up until they are close enough to notice the blood on his hands.
He lifts the glass and takes a slow sip, watching me over its rim.
“What do you want?” I ask, not bothering with formalities.
Luca’s gaze sweeps over me from head to toe, before he sets the glass down with a soft click, and walks straight toward me.
Every nerve in my body goes taut as he stops close enough that I can smell the whiskey on his breath and catch the clean spice of his cologne beneath it.
My body goes on alert from the inside out. Not fear, exactly. Something older than that—instinct, memory, and survival—because I know this game of letting silence do half the work while fear does the rest. It’s intimidation dressed up as conversation.
Too bad for Luca. I was built in the same fucking fire.
“Are you here alone?” he asks.
I let my gaze drift past him on purpose toward the doorway, then bring it back to his face as though I have all the time in the world.
“Why?” I ask. “So you can be the asshole you usually are if Lorenzo isn’t here?”
One side of his mouth curves into a cruel smile.
“Still sharp as ever,” he says.
“Still unpleasant as ever.”
For a moment, neither of us moves.
Luca keeps his eyes on mine, and I keep mine on his because in this family, looking away first has always meant losing. Then he shifts forward another inch, crowding me on purpose. It’s a small move, yet it says everything. Pressure. Dominance. A reminder.
His shadow falls over me, dark against the storm-lit room, and I can almost hear my father’s voice in the silence. I lift my chin and hold Luca’s gaze without blinking.
“He’s here,” I say, the lie leaving my mouth as smooth as silk.
It’s a necessary lie. If Luca knows Lorenzo is gone, he will push harder. He will test every boundary in this room. He has always been at his cruelest when he thinks there will be no consequences, and I didn’t survive being born a Serrano by being stupid enough to hand a man like him an open door.
So I lie. And I do it well.
Luca studies me for a beat too long, and I know he is trying to decide whether I am bluffing or whether Lorenzo is somewhere in the house.
“What do you want, Luca?”
He studies me for a moment.
“We want information,” he says, lowering his tone. “We want to know what your husband is doing.”
I clasp my arms tighter over my chest. “As I told our father, I don’t know anything.”
Luca tilts his head. “Do you expect Father or me to buy that shit?”
“I don’t particularly care whether you believe it or not.”
His smile sharpens. “You live in this house, so you hear things.”
I say nothing.
Luca watches me too closely. “You’re not that stupid. Father agreed to this marriage for this kind of leverage.”
I lift my chin and let the bitterness rise, clean and sharp, through my throat.
“No. I was traded for a reason. Our father wanted his name associated with De Luca blood.”
Luca’s expression doesn’t change. If anything, it hardens, every cruel line of his face settling into place with an ugly familiarity.
“Then be useful,” he says.
A laugh bursts out of me before I can stop it.
“Useful,” I repeat. “God, that’s all any of you ever want from me.”
I look him dead in the eye and give him the same answer I gave our father, only this time more slowly. “As I said to father, I don’t know anything.”