Elena's POV–
I didn't flinch when Luca's glass shattered.
Didn't blink when the amber liquor splashed across his knuckles, dripping down to stain the blueprints spread across the table.
But I felt the ripple in the air between us — like a current humming too loud under the skin.
"My uncle," he said again, quieter this time. Like repetition might change the meaning. "My own blood."
Marco stood near the doorway, stiff as a gun barrel. He had the face of someone who'd seen death too many times to react to it — but even he looked shaken. Not by the threat, but by who made it.
Luca didn't take his eyes off the photo.
"Get out," he muttered.
Marco hesitated, just a second.
"I said get out."
Marco obeyed.
The door clicked shut behind him. And now it was just the two of us, standing in the middle of a room built for war — bookshelves lined with strategy, maps rolled and yellowing in the corners, bullet holes in the back wall no one had ever patched. The Moretti war room. I imagined his ancestors pacing like he did now, restless, too angry to sit.
"I didn't know it was Vito," I said.
Luca turned sharply. "Don't lie to me."
"I'm not."
"You knew the shooter."
"I recognized him," I corrected. "From before. Doesn't mean I knew he'd be here."
His eyes narrowed. "Before when?"
I walked to the photo. The man was slumped on the marble, eyes open, blood pooling beneath his head. He didn't look like a killer anymore. Just another dead boy in a war too old for either of us to survive.
"Four months ago," I said. "In Vienna. He was tailing someone I knew."
Luca crossed the room in two strides. "You saw him tailing someone, and didn't think to bring it up?"
"You want me to catalog every ghost I've seen in your world?"
He didn't answer. Just stared. Something sharp behind his gaze.
"He wasn't Bratva then," I added. "Or if he was, he was deep under. No tattoos. No gear. He looked... civilian."
"No one in that family's a civilian," Luca said darkly. "They're born holding knives."
I shrugged. "Sounds familiar."
That one landed. His jaw ticked once. "You think we're the same?"
"I think we were both raised to believe everyone else is expendable."
His silence said enough.
The tension stretched between us, taut and electric.
I moved to the window, fingers grazing the glass. Outside, the Moretti estate looked peaceful. Lit in amber floodlights, groomed hedges, guards patrolling like clockwork. A fortress.
And yet someone had made it inside.
Someone had known exactly where I'd be. Which room. Which hall. At what moment I'd turn my head away just long enough.
Someone close.
"What was he doing in the west wing?" I asked.
Luca didn't answer.
So I turned.
"What aren't you telling me?"
His shoulders were tense, eyes locked on the fireplace like it held the answer. "He wasn't aiming for you."
I raised a brow. "You just said—"
"I thought he was. But that shot? First one? It was too high for your head. Too clean to miss on purpose."
I frowned. "So who was it meant for?"
He looked at me.
And I felt the chill roll in.
"The priest," he said.
My stomach turned.
The priest who married us.
He'd ducked out minutes before the shot. Said he needed a moment. Said his chest was tight.
He'd never come back.
"He was already dead," I whispered.
Luca nodded.
"Why?"
He hesitated. Then crossed to the sideboard, pulling out a locked drawer. From it, he withdrew a thin black folder. Tossed it on the table.
"Marco pulled this off the body."
I opened it slowly. Inside: surveillance shots. The priest — Father Nicola — in grainy black-and-white, handing a flash drive to someone in an alley. The timestamp was from last week.
"He was leaking," Luca said.
"To who?"
He didn't answer.
Because we both already knew.
My father.
The silence between us snapped like a bowstring.
I slammed the folder shut. "You were using our wedding to smoke him out."
Luca met my eyes, unapologetic. "I didn't know until this morning."
"But you suspected."
"Yes."
"And you didn't think to tell me?"
His voice was low. "Would you have believed me?"
I didn't answer.
Didn't need to.
Because he was right.
I walked to the fire, stared into it, my chest burning with something too tangled to name. Rage. Betrayal. Maybe even guilt.
I had come into this house thinking I'd control the game. Be the lion in sheep's lace.
But Luca had teeth I hadn't counted on.
"I saved you once," I said quietly. "You think that makes us even?"
He looked at me, eyes unreadable. "No."
"Good. Because it doesn't."
I turned then, walking past him toward the door, but he caught my wrist. Not hard — not enough to hurt. Just enough to stop me.
"Elena."
I froze.
He let go just as fast. "You're not a hostage here."
I turned my head, slowly. "Aren't I?"
He didn't respond.
Just watched me go.
I didn't sleep.
Not because I was scared — fear was a luxury you learned to live without when your bedtime lullaby was gunfire.
I stayed up because my mind wouldn't stop.
The shooter. The priest. The fact that the man who'd once bled on my scarf was now my husband, and looking at me like he didn't know whether to kiss me or kill me.
I stared at the ceiling in the guest wing, one hand curled around the knife I kept under the pillow, and thought about the letter in my pocket.
It had arrived a week before the wedding. No return address. Just four words in neat cursive.
"Don't marry him. Yet."
The wax seal?
Orlov Bratva.
The same as the shooter's tattoo.
So maybe Luca was wrong.
Maybe I was the target.
But what neither of us seemed to understand yet… was why.
Flashback – Three Years Ago
My father stood in the study, a glass of Chianti in one hand, my future in the other.
"I can't protect you if you keep disobeying me," he said.
"I don't need protection."
He smiled then, thin and tired. "You sound like your mother."
I looked at the photo on the desk. My mother, smiling in Sicily. Before the blood. Before the betrayal.
"She's dead because of you," I said.
His eyes sharpened. "She's dead because she trusted a Moretti."
Present Day
At dawn, I sat at the piano in the east hall and played softly — an old melody my mother used to hum while brushing my hair.
I hadn't touched a key in years.
The notes felt foreign. Fragile.
But behind me, I heard footsteps.
Luca.
He didn't speak. Didn't interrupt.
Just listened.
And for the first time since the bullet tore through the hallway, I felt the silence between us start to change.
Not softer.
Just heavier.
More honest.
And I didn't know if that was better or worse.