"If you have hurt her in any way..." Luca began.
"Oh, I haven’t." David smiled. "I waited patiently so you could watch. So I could see the humiliating pain on your face."
Luca’s jaw tightened. For five days, he had imagined a thousand ways David could die. None of them had been enough. Not one. The human imagination, he was discovering, had limits. "The agreement was that you would let her go once you had me."
"And I will," David replied. "But not before watching you suffer and she watches you die."
Luca gave a small nod. "Deal’s off then, Vitale. She has to walk."
"You have no chip here, Luca. Don’t pretend you do."
Luca looked down briefly at the cuffs, then back up at him. "You would be surprised what I can do with nothing."
David’s smile faltered. Even chained, exhausted, and half-mad with fear for Veronica, Luca could still make men remember he was by himself scary. "You killed my sister...You gave her a horrifying death. I will not make it easy for you. I do not plan to."
"Bianca earned her ending." Luca’s voice dropped lower. "And so will you."
David leaned in. "You will keep your mouth shut," he whispered, "and watch me fuck your wife—"
Before the words were even fully out of his mouth, Luca drove his forehead into David’s nose with a sickening crack. Blood burst instantly, splattering across David’s mouth, his shirt, and the dusty ground between them.
David staggered back then he laughed hysterically. "This is going to be the most delicious thing I have ever done in my entire life." He shoved Luca forward and into his car parked a few feet away heading to their final destination.
*****
Marco entered Bastione territory with nothing to defend himself. No gun. No backup close enough to save him if the pirates decided dumping him into the nearest body of water with his throat open. Which, knowing the Bastiones, was not entirely outside the range of acceptable manners.
They were pirates, after all.
Despite the war brewing between them, despite the fact that Renato Bastione—the heir himself—was currently being held by Luca in New York, Marco had no choice but to walk into their territory and ask for a deal.
A brilliant plan, really. If he survived it.
Bianca’s financial records had led him here. At first glance, the transaction trail had looked useless. Tiny transfers, layered purchases, all broken apart that most men would have skimmed over them. But Marco had learned the hard way that quiet money often screamed the loudest.
He would never again dismiss any transaction as meaningless. Not after the coffee shop. If he had not dismissed Bianca’s repeated trips to that café in New York, if he had looked harder, questioned why a woman like Bianca Vitale kept wasting time in a place that sold mediocre coffee and had no business being part of her routine, they might have found Tony sooner. They might have seen the shape of the trap before it closed around Veronica.


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