Total pages in book: 80
Estimated words: 76501 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 383(@200wpm)___ 306(@250wpm)___ 255(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 76501 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 383(@200wpm)___ 306(@250wpm)___ 255(@300wpm)
His face twists into pain. “You’re lying now. It was real.”
“You have to let me go. My father’s dead, my brothers are dead, Perico’s dead. Everyone I love is gone, except for my friends. They’re all I have left. Please, Luca.”
“No,” he says, stepping toward me, the rings clasped hard in his palm. His knuckles turn white. “There has to be another way.”
“Luca, enough.” Don Valverde stands and leans forward, hands on the desk. “That’s enough, both of you.”
Luca turns to his father. “You can’t let her go off and sacrifice herself. We need her. The Russians are going to get exactly what they want—”
“I said, enough.” Don Valverde stares at his son and Luca stops speaking, but he’s vibrating with rage, like a volcano on the edge of bursting. “Kacia, if this is what you want, I will not stop you. My son will not stop you either.”
“Father—” Luca snarls, but Don Valverde interrupts.
“If we force the girl to stay, the Greeks will walk. If we kill her, the Greeks will walk. Our only hope is to let her go explain the situation to them. They know the Russians. They understand how these things happen.”
“I won’t accept that.”
“Your father’s right,” I say, backing toward the door, even though each step is like a knife into my heart. “You have to let me go. If you’re serious about saving lives, about keeping your men alive and all the Greeks alive, then you have to let me go. You can’t force me to stay here. I’ll scream my throat raw. I’ll make sure the Calimeris know what you’ve done.”
Luca says nothing. He stares at me like his body is breaking to pieces. I want to go to him, cradle his head in my hands, feel his lips against mine, but this is the right decision. If they let me go, maybe they can salvage the deal with the Greeks. Maybe I’m not that important after all.
And maybe I can save Adrienne from the Russians, even if it costs my own life.
Because what am I worth if everyone around me dies?
“Kacia,” Luca says, whispering my name.
I want to tell him I’m sorry. I want to tell him last night was the best night of my life, that I want to stay here with him, that it shatters me like nothing I’ve felt before to walk away, but I feel like this is my only option. I can’t be weak, not right now. I have to be strong for him, for me, for Adrienne.
I turn and leave, and the rage-filled roar that follows me into the hall echoes in my mind like a swarm of angry hornets trying to crack my skull in half.
Chapter 22
Luca
The room is dark and smoky. Doesn’t matter how many laws the city passes against smoking indoors, made men are going to have cigars puffing away in their joints no matter what the cops think.
It feels like a dream I can’t wake up from.
Yiannis sits across from me swirling a glass of wine. Peter sits beside his father, scowling at me like he’d rather watch two rats fight over a slice of pizza in the subway than be anywhere near here. I don’t blame the Greek prick—I’m not exactly pleasant right now.
I smell like whiskey and look like shit.
“She got on a plane yesterday,” I tell Yiannis and force down another drink. It sits in my gut, hot and heavy, sour and burning all at once.
“And you just let her go?” His eyebrows arch. “You two seemed like a match made in heaven.”
“Lucky girl,” Peter says, crossing his arms. “Hitched to the man that killed her family.”
“But you do know what this means for your arrangement, don’t you?” Yiannis sighs and sips his drink. “You know, there’s a lot I hate about you Italian fucks, but you do know your wine. Why’d you let the girl go, Luca?”
“I had no choice.”
“You always have a choice.”
I bristle at that. The fucker has no clue what happened and I don’t want to hear his self-help rah-rah bullshit. “My father believes the crime lords might still go through with the deal if we did the right thing and told them the truth as opposed to what I wanted, which was to keep the girl locked in my basement.”
Peter laughs. “Do the right thing? The fucking Valverde Famiglia, do the right thing? I don’t think that’s possible.”
“What my son means is the crime lords will never believe it.”
“Doesn’t matter,” I tell him, doing my best not to stand and break his asshole son’s teeth. The only thing holding me back are the big Greek goons sitting nearby, smoking their cigars, drinking their drinks, and holding their guns like babies in their laps, but that’s not going to last long. I’m a desperate man, a broken man, with nothing left to lose. “Kacia is gone, she’s out in LA, and the Russians either have her or she’s just not coming back. Either way, she and I are through.”