Total pages in book: 98
Estimated words: 95046 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 475(@200wpm)___ 380(@250wpm)___ 317(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 95046 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 475(@200wpm)___ 380(@250wpm)___ 317(@300wpm)
But underneath those fresh memories, older ones claw their way up.
Ten days.
Ten days tied to a post in a warehouse that smelled almost exactly like this—mildew and blood.
But back then, there was another smell.
Fear.
My fear.
Rico was there. I heard his laugh even through the hood.
My father traded me like collateral, like I was worth less than the debt he owed Luca LaRiccia because my Aunt Arianna couldn't keep her fucking legs closed.
I was a sacrifice.
My hand shakes as I touch my temple again.
The blood is warm. Fresh.
But another memory superimposes itself over the present—another head wound, another place, another time someone decided a skull was worth cracking open.
Except that wasn't my head.
It was Emmaleen's.
Rico's fist wrapped around the steel sculpture. The sickening crack as he brought it down on her skull. The way her eyes went blank before she crumpled.
The shot.
Rico's head exploding.
I smile, pull myself up into a standing position, and spit blood onto the floor.
It was worth it.
And this will be too.
Just as that thought crystalizes in my mind—that grim acceptance of whatever comes next—the vault door swings open on well-oiled hinges that make no sound at all. The silence is worse than a creak would have been. More deliberate. More controlled.
I turn my head toward the movement, slow and careful, bracing myself against the wave of nausea that I know will follow. My vision swims for a moment, black spots dancing at the edges, but I force my eyes to focus.
And there he is.
Luca LaRiccia stands backlit in the threshold, a dark silhouette framed by the pale fluorescent light spilling in from the hallway beyond. The contrast makes it impossible to see his face clearly—just the outline of broad shoulders, the sharp line of his silver hair, the stillness of a man who has never needed to rush.
He doesn't move. Doesn't speak.
Just stands there, waiting.
"I like that about you," I croak.
He huffs a laugh. It's the sound a man makes when he's already decided you're dead but finds your persistence mildly entertaining. "Like what about me, Giovanni?"
"How you can wait things out." I shift my weight, testing my balance.
The room tilts dangerously before settling back into place. My ribs scream in protest as I reach for the granite examination counter in the middle of the vault.
"I was counting on this preference of yours, actually. This... patience of yours." I grip the edge harder, knuckles going white as I find Luca's eyes.
Not green. Not blue. Something stranger, more unnatural than either. A weird yellow-brown that shifts depending on the light—amber one moment, almost gold the next, like something you'd see in a predator's skull mounted on a wall.
"Well?" he asks, voice perfectly conversational as he reaches down to his side holster and withdraws a Ruger with the casual efficiency of a man who's done this a thousand times before. He checks the chamber with practiced fingers, the metallic click of the slide echoing in the space. "What is it? What could you possibly have to say to me, Giovanni?"
Those strange amber-gold eyes lift from the weapon to pin me in place. "Did you come here to beg? To plead for your miserable life? Because I know what you did. I know exactly what you did."
The words hang in the air between us, heavy with certainty and threat.
I shake my head slowly, the movement sending fresh waves of pain through my skull and causing the world to tilt dangerously for a second. "No, Luca." I use his first name deliberately, not out of disrespect or some foolish attempt at intimidation, but from a place of familiarity.
Because whether he realizes it yet or not, whether he's ready to acknowledge what's coming, we are familiar now. Connected by something he doesn't understand yet. "You think you know."
Blood pools hot and metallic in my mouth from some cut. I spit it onto the floor between us because if I swallow any more of it, I'll probably puke, and I refuse to show that kind of weakness.
Not here. Not now. Not in this moment.
A moment that we'll remember forever. One that will be told in stories for generations to come.
I get to the point. "But… you're right."
His eyes squint. "Yeah? What am I right about, Giovanni?"
"I killed Rico." It comes out deadpan. But I keep going with urgency. Because he's about half a second from blowing my brains out. "He killed my woman, Luca. He broke into my fucking house and killed my woman!" I yell these words.
All the emotion I never show, comes out here. Right now.
"He raped her." I spit on the ground again, leaning in to this confession with everything I've got. "Your son was a piece of fucking shit. A worthless fucking addict with no self control. A sadist—of the worst kind, I might add. He was a psychopathic torturer with no business skills, no people skills, and no discretion. He was your only child, your sole heir. And I blew his fucking brains out and buried his body out in Bucks County."