Page 68 of Sicilian Savior

“What are you talking about?” I lied, though it wasn’t quite a lie. I hadn’t worked with the Vitalis.

Victor stepped forward and lifted his hand to strike me.

Luca cried out, “No!” then wrapped himself around my legs.

Victor held his hand in the air, narrowing his eyes as he warned me. “I know it was you. It had to have been you. Somehow you made a deal with them to get Luca back. At first, I thought they had him and they took him that night, and I didn’t care, honestly. I was too busy running for my life to stop and search for the kid. But they wiped out my organization, and they still wouldn’t stop hunting me. It didn’t make sense. That was when I found out they hunted me because Rico Vitali thought I killed his brother, Franco. I didn’t know what to make of it. It didn’t make sense. I never made a move against them. I’d never be dumb enough to kill Rico’s baby brother. I’m not stupid. So, I got in touch with an old friend, Joey Ricci, to find out what the hell was going on, and that was when I found out they didn’t have Luca, and I decided to find out where he was. Something didn’t add up.” He narrowed his eyes. “And I found him in the United States.”

I wanted to ask how he’d found us, but I knew better.

“I bet you’re wondering how I found you, huh? You did a good job at disappearing, Lucia.”

I swallowed but maintained my silence.

Victor dropped his gaze to Luca’s light-up shoes. “He never takes the damn things off. He’s six now. He’s too old for those things, but he always insists on wearing them. After you stole him the first time, I decided to utilize that, so I put GPS trackers in them. And lucky for me I did. All this time, I’d assumed he was with the Vitalis, so imagine my surprise to find him living in Mountain Springs.” He stepped closer to me. “With you.”

Luca’s shoes? That’s how he found us?

“And then I pieced it all together. You worked with someone in the Vitali family and had them take Luca back for you. I still don’t know why or how, but I know you did it. This is your fault.” He stuck his finger in my face.

His eyes, once confident and strong, looked crazed and bloodshot. The collapse of his empire and life on the run had shredded the tethers of Victor’s sanity.

“Victor,” I soothed. “I didn’t have anything to do with—”

The back of his hand blew across the side of my face. I yelped as Luca cried out.

“Don’t lie to me, you traitorous bitch. First, you divorce me and make a fool out of me, and then, you think you can steal my son and leave me to the wolves? Go live happily ever after with that man I saw you with outside? Never. You ruined me. I don’t know how you did it, but you’re going to pay for it.”

The only thing he’d said tonight that gave me a little glimmer of hope was that he didn’t know how we’d done it. That meant he didn’t know I had a stealth team of assassins behind me. He didn’t know that Knox was a one-man wrecking ball who was most certainly heading his way. To Victor, Knox was just some guy I’d hooked up with, and the Vitalis had given me Luca in exchange for information, or whatever it was his mangled mind thought. But I finally understood what Knox had meant when he’d said he’d endured the torture because he had no doubt his team would find him. I had no doubt Knox would find me. Like Knox had done all those months in captivity, I just had to hold on. Be smart. Try to stay alive.

Victor slipped a hand around Luca’s shoulder and pulled him back against him.

“Victor,” I warned. “Don’t hurt him. He’s your son.”

“Oh, I’m not going to hurt him,” Victor said, but the tone of his voice warned me of his evil intentions.

“You see,” he went on, “Rico Vitali is hunting me for payback for killing his brother. Even though I didn’t do it, and I’ve tried getting a message to them explaining the truth, they don’t believe me. They insist I was the one behind his death, and they won’t stop hunting me until they get their pound of flesh. So, since I can’t convince them I didn’t do it, I’ve come up with a deal to offer him to even the score. Flesh and blood for flesh and blood. That’s their motto. He gets Luca, my flesh and blood, to do with what he will, and our quarrel ends there.”

“You wouldn’t,” I breathed.

Victor’s lips lifted to reveal the charming smile he’d used on me the first day we met. “Oh, I would. They don’t know that I don’t give a shit about the boy. They’ll think I’m making some grand sacrifice to even the score. Rico can kill Luca, or sell him, or whatever the hell he wants, and we’ll be even for Franco’s death.”

“You’re crazy,” I said, glancing to Luca, who looked up at me with tear-filled eyes. He may be too young to understand everything his father had done, but he wasn’t too young to understand that his father meant to kill him. My heart broke over the pain Victor’s careless words caused him. I wanted to reach out and pull him into my arms, comfort him, and reassure him I’d never let that happen, but I couldn’t. Instead, I stood firm.

“I was crazy to pick you up out of that shithole restaurant and slap a diamond on your finger,” Victor went on. “All you had to do was warm my bed and decorate my arm. Instead, you set in motion a chain of events that led to me being outcast and crumbling my organization.”

Anger flared in his eyes.

“I’m sorry, Victor. I shouldn’t have left you,” I said, hoping that maybe, just maybe, I could win my way back to his side. At least bide some time until Knox could find me. “Let’s start over. Let’s just put the past behind us and try again. I still love you, Victor. I’ve missed you.”

His eye twitched, and his stubbled lips puckered before he shouted, “Lies!”

“It’s not,” I tried again. “It took me some time to realize it, but I made a terrible mistake leaving you and breaking up our family. Luca and I both miss you terribly. Please, give me a chance to make it up to you.”

I stepped toward him, and for one moment, I saw his eyes soften. A desperate man looking for something, anything, to connect to.

“Please, Victor. Let’s figure this out together. We can start over. Build up from scratch and put you back on top. With me at your side, we can accomplish anything. Just like we used to.”

He ran a hand through his hair, glancing at me and then the gun tucked in his waistband.