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Caterina
My heart is in my throat when I hear the knock at the door the next night that tells me Luca has arrived.
I’ve dressed appropriately for his visit, in long wide-legged black pants, a black silk blouse, low heels, and my mother’s pearls, the lady of the house accepting the don for a visit. I’m sure my mother would be very pleased if she could see me now.But of course, she can’t, because she’s dead. A victim of the pointless war our family waged with the Bratva.
“Caterina.” Luca nods to me as he walks in, polished and handsome as ever. His face looks a bit more worn these days than it used to, but after what’s happened recently, it’s hardly a surprise.
“Come in.” I close the door behind him, gesturing for him to follow me to the living room, where I’ve already got drinks poured for us both. The consummate hostess. “You still like whiskey, I hope.”
“As long as it’s not Irish.” Luca grimaces, and I almost laugh. Almost. It’s still a little too soon.
“It’s scotch,” I reassure him, handing him a glass. “Macallan 26.”
“Ah well, there’s been no trouble with the Scots.” Luca takes a sip of it. “So far as I know. Do they even have crime families?”
“I have no idea,” I tell him diplomatically, taking my own glass and perching on the edge of the loveseat. It’s remarkably uncomfortable, like most of the furniture in this house. I make a mental note to start redecorating soon. It’s my house now, after all, with no one’s tastes but mine to cater to.
Luca is looking around the room, not sitting quite yet. “How do you like living here on your own?” he asks suddenly, turning to look at me. “Is it lonely?”
“A little,” I admit. “The house feels a bit like a mausoleum, with so many deaths recently. But it’ll start to feel like my own in time, I’m sure. Once I put some personal touches on it, and—” I notice a shadow cross Luca’s face and stop short. “Are you alright?”
Luca’s mouth tightens, and he lowers the glass of scotch, facing me fully. “I wouldn’t start picking out new furniture just yet.” He pauses, looking very much as if he doesn’t want to say whatever is going to come out of his mouth next. “You’re going to be leaving here soon, Caterina.”
I stare at him, startled into silence for a moment.You said you weren’t going to punish me,is my first thought, but I bite it back. After all, he’s the don, and if he’s decided that taking my family estate is a fair payment for what Franco did, it wouldn’t be unusual. It’s not the worst price to pay, either. This is my childhood home, but it’s not exactly as if I have a great deal of warm and fuzzy memories here. I could get a new place of my own, a loft in the city, maybe. A fresh start.
But Luca is still looking at me with a deeply sad expression on his face as if he’s not finished telling me the bad news.
“Why?” I ask simply. “Is it because of Franco? Is that why you’re taking the estate?” I want to hear him say it aloud, even if I’m certain that’s what’s happening here.
Luca looks startled. “What? No, Caterina, I’m not taking the estate. Of course not. I would never take your home. I told you—”
“Then what?” I interrupt him, suddenly not caring if it’s rude. My pulse is speeding up, warning bells going off in my head, screaming that whatever this is, it’s not what I think. Not anything that I’ve imagined. “Just tell me what’s going on, Luca.” I laugh a short and bitter sound. “After everything I’ve been through lately, I can take it. Whatever it is.”
Luca hesitates, and then he slowly sets his glass down on the table, directly on the wood. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I think that he should have put it on the coaster, but I can’t bring myself to say something so banal right now. Something terrible is about to happen. I can feel it crackling in the air. Something that I hadn’t considered.
“Caterina—” Luca’s expression is grim now, dark, his jaw tense. “Viktor named his price for peace between our families at our last meeting. After Colin Macgregor’s death.”
My heart is pounding so hard now that it hurts. “And?”
“The price that he named was you,” Luca says, as gently as he can manage. “Viktor demanded you as his wife.”
The room tilts, and I hear a ringing in my ears, my fingers going numb. I barely register the splash of scotch across my skirt as the glass drops, the wetness soaking through the fabric, cold against my thighs.
Before Franco’s funeral, I’d thought of what price Luca might exact for his betrayal. Whathemight demand to make up for his best friend’s traitorous actions, with only me left to punish for it, and for the things my father did to him and Sofia as well. I’d imagined him demanding my family estate, as I’d thought he was doing at first tonight. I’d thought of him banishing me from Manhattan for what my father and Franco did, ordering me to leave the city and make a home on my own, somewhere else, or demanding that I pay a fine to the Family.
Any of those things would have been well within his rights as don. All of them have been done to others, though deep down, I suspect that Luca disapproves of dons who treat widows and their families in that way. But this?
I’d never expected this, although I suppose somehow I should have.
Viktor had wanted me, after all. Luca had moved up my marriage to Franco for exactly that reason, to get me safely within the bonds of holy matrimony so that Viktor couldn’t press his suit or have me kidnapped and forced into marriage. I’d assumed that as a widow, with my innocence long gone, that Viktor would no longer have an interest in me.
Clearly, I was wrong.
My hands are shaking, knotted together in my lap as I think of the implications of this. The Bratva is terrifying and cruel, the boogeymen of my childhood, our enemies for decades. And Viktor is the head of them all.
“I can’t,” I whisper, my voice trembling. “I can’t do it, Luca. Please, there must be something else. I’ll do anything else.”
“I know that you might have hoped that you could marry for love, Caterina, but—”
