Of fucking course.My father couldn’t get what he wanted by phone, so he sends the next worst thing.Luca, the crueler version of himself.Younger.Smoother.Better dressed.Less patience.Less mercy.Same rot beneath the surface.
My father is violence dressed up as power.Luca is violence dressed up as charm.Men see my father and know to fear him.Luca smiles first, just before he guts you.
I let out a slow breath through my nose and force my hands to uncurl from where they have been clutched against my arms.My nails have dug half-moons into my skin, hard enough to sting.
“Where is he?”
“In the downstairs sitting room.”
“Is he alone?”
Rafe’s face doesn’t shift, but I catch the answer in the stillness before he gives it.“No.He has men with him, but they’re out the front.Not in the sitting room.”
I should have known that.Luca never goes anywhere without his men, even when he is only paying a family visit, he arrives as if he is one insult away from war.
I hold his gaze for a second before nodding.
“Thank you, Rafe.I’ll come down now.”
He steps aside and opens the door wider for me.I move past him without another word, my spine straight, my face blank, every piece of me pulled tight into control, that old habit of walking into a room strong, letting men think they had not touched me, even though it felt as if they had their hands wrapped around my throat.
“Would you like me to wait with you in the sitting room?”Rafe asks.
“No, thank you.I should be fine.”
By the time I reach the stairs, my expression is set.Cold.Polite.Untouchable.The same mask I’ve worn to survive dinner with my dignity mostly intact.
The sitting room is dim when I step inside, lit by the gray wash of stormlight bleeding through the tall windows.The fire is unlit.The room feels too grand for what it is about to hold, with polished wood and expensive silence, as if wealth can hide the rot of men like those my family breeds.
Luca stands by the drinks table.He reaches for the crystal decanter first, pouring himself a whiskey as though this were a Serrano house.As though Lorenzo’s name means nothing here.The amber liquid glints in the cut glass as rain batters the windows behind him, and something ugly drags its nails down the inside of my chest.
He doesn’t turn around when I enter.
I hate that he is here.
I hate the easy arrogance in every movement, the smug certainty that has clung to him as naturally as skin.Luca has spent his whole life moving through the world, convinced it will part for him, and most of the time it does.Men fear him.Women avoid his gaze unless they want to be hunted.Even the silence bends around him.
When he finally glances over at me, there is no warmth on his face.
My brother is handsome in the same vicious way a knife is beautiful.Sharp edges.Polished surface.Built for damage.The kind of man people admire from a distance, right up until they are close enough to notice the blood on his hands.
He lifts the glass and takes a slow sip, watching me over its rim.
“What do you want?”I ask, not bothering with formalities.
Luca’s gaze sweeps over me from head to toe, before he sets the glass down with a soft click, and walks straight toward me.
Every nerve in my body goes taut as he stops close enough that I can smell the whiskey on his breath and catch the clean spice of his cologne beneath it.
My body goes on alert from the inside out.Not fear, exactly.Something older than that—instinct, memory, and survival—because I know this game of letting silence do half the work while fear does the rest.It’s intimidation dressed up as conversation.
Too bad for Luca.I was built in the same fucking fire.
“Are you here alone?”he asks.
I let my gaze drift past him on purpose toward the doorway, then bring it back to his face as though I have all the time in the world.
“Why?”I ask.“So you can be the asshole you usually are if Lorenzo isn’t here?”
