"Where are we?" she asked.
"In my bunker."
Her brows pulled together. "Why?" she asked. "What’s going on?"
He turned away from her and walked toward the large table again.
"Luca?" she called again.
She watched him, her heart beginning to beat faster as unease crept in. Then she saw what he picked up.
Two guns. Her breath caught. Luca carried them back without a word and placed them carefully on the table between them.
Her stomach dropped. "Luca..." she whispered.
He took his time, sitting down across from her with a calmness that felt completely out of place against the tension building in the room.
Only then did his eyes meet hers. "Do you remember the promise you made me," he asked, "when you finally agreed to be with me, Vee?"
"Yeah?" she answered. Her mind raced, trying to connect what he was asking to what was happening now.
Why bring that up? Why now?
"And what was that?" he asked.
"The only way out is death."
"We’ve come to the end of the road, Vee," he said quietly. "And I am a man of my word."
"Luca...Is this because of Cassidy?" she asked quickly, her mind scrambling to make sense of it. "You don’t still trust me. You think I would... you think I would want to be with someone else?"
"I think," he said slowly, "that you are with me because I gave you no choice."
The tears came immediately, stinging her eyes before slipping down her cheeks. Veronica shook her head instinctively.
"No," she whispered. "No, that’s not true."
But the look on his face was cold. Distant in a way she had never seen before. All the arguments, all the tension between them—it had never felt like this. This was final.
Her mind raced, searching for anything—to hold onto, to shift the direction of what was happening. But instead, her thoughts went somewhere else entirely.
Someone else.
"My sister?" she asked suddenly.
If this was it—if this was really happening—then there was only one thing that mattered.
She was willing to accept whatever came next. But not at the cost of Valentina. Luca followed her line of thought instantly.
"On that table over there," he said, nodding slightly toward the far side of the room, "there is a cheque with her name on it."
Veronica’s eyes flicked briefly in that direction.
"She gets every single dime in all accounts in my name," he added.
"What... what..." Veronica’s voice faltered completely now, confusion cutting through the fear. Her brows pulled together as she tried to process what he was saying, how it connected to everything else.
"I don’t understand."


VERIFYCAPTCHA_LABEL
Comments
The readers' comments on the novel: Undressed By The Mafia God