Marco exhaled slowly.
Luca had tried. That much was true.
Now it was his turn.
And whatever choice he made next would either damn him or define him.
The girls were opposites of Luca and Marco. Where the men were forged in shadow, compromise, and bloodline loyalty, the Scalese girls were all light and stubborn goodness.
He stood alone in the corridor, staring at nothing, his mind scrambling for a solution. A way out. A way to get Valentina to safety without detonating everything around him. Every path he traced ended the same way.
There was only one answer.
Marco would have to betray the familia he owed his life to.
The realization settled into him slowly, heavily. He had been a soldier since he was barely old enough to shave. Luca’s shadow had always been there. The Genovese name had fed him, protected him, given him purpose. Going rogue was suicide.
If he had known this was how it would go, if he had known this was how it would be, he would never have suggested the vile idea in the first place. Never would have opened his mouth. Never would have turned a young girl into a bargaining chip.
Valentina’s face flashed through his mind. The way she tried to smile when she was terrified. The way she trusted him, inexplicably.
"Fuck," he muttered under his breath.
Somewhere along the line, he had crossed from loyal to damned.
******
As usual, Dante sent Luca his weekly dose of sin.
It arrived precisely at ten. Luca didn’t bother looking up when the door opened. He already knew why it was opening. This ritual had existed long before Veronica, long before everything had started to feel...off.
This one was voluptuous. That was the word that came to mind. Curves that seemed engineered to distract. Dante had an eye for packaging. Luca would have admired that once.
Usually, he didn’t fuck these drop-offs. That wasn’t their purpose. They came, they sucked his dick to take the edge off, and they left with an envelope.
But Luca was wound so tight now he felt like he might snap.
Veronica had lodged herself under his skin, burrowed into places no one had ever reached. Every thought circled back to her.
He needed distraction.
The woman stepped fully into his office, closing the door behind her. She wore a dress that could quite easily pass as a rag if one were feeling charitable. Fabric clung where it shouldn’t, dipped where it definitely shouldn’t. The only parts truly covered were her breasts and crotch, and even those looked negotiable.
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