Page 68 of Crown of Blood

"That's the cruelty of this disease. The certainty without the clarity."

We step outside into the cool night air, and I take a deep breath, trying to clear the scent of antiseptic from my lungs. The Bentley waits at the curb, Alessio standing beside it like a statue.

"It's been her whole life," I continue as Luca guides me toward the car. "Just her and me against the world. My father was never in the picture."

"Never?" Luca's voice sharpens with interest.

"I never knew him. Mom said he wasn't ready to be a father." I shrug, the old hurt dulled by years of acceptance. "It was always just us."

Luca's silent as we slide into the back seat of the Bentley, the leather cold against my bare legs. As the car pulls away from the curb, the exhaustion of the day—of witnessing Luca's business methods, of seeing my mother, of the emotional whiplash between fear and tenderness—finally overwhelms me.

The tears come without warning, hot and silent down my cheeks.

I expect him to ignore them. To maintain the cold distance of the dangerous man I married. Instead, Luca pulls me against him, one arm around my shoulders, hand cupping the back of my head against his chest.

"Let it out,little rabbit," he murmurs into my hair. "No one can see you but me."

The permission breaks something in me. The sob tears from my throat, raw and painful, as weeks of tension and years of grief pour out against the expensive fabric of his suit. He holds me through it, one hand stroking my hair with surprising gentleness.

"I'm sorry," I gasp between sobs. "I don't usually—"

"Don't apologize for feeling," he interrupts. "Not to me."

I look up at him, tears blurring my vision. "How can you be this person now, after what you did tonight? After what I saw you do to Arben?"

His thumb brushes a tear from my cheek. "They're not different people, Bianca. Just different sides of the same coin."

"The man who threatens to slit throats and the man who holds me while I cry?"

"Both are me," he says simply. "Both are real."

I swallow hard, suddenly needing to fill the vulnerable silence between us. "She used to braid my hair every morning before school," I whisper. "Even on her worst days… when the bills were piling up, when she was working three jobs… she always made time for that. She said a girl should face the world with her armor on, and for her, that meant neat braids and clean clothes, even if they were secondhand."

Luca's quiet for a moment, his hand still stroking my hair. Then, surprisingly, he speaks.

"My mother used to sing to me in Italian," he says, voice low as if sharing a secret. "Old folk songs her grandmother taught her. Teresa would join in sometimes. Once, they tried to teach me to make pasta—rolling the dough and cutting it by hand."

I try to imagine a young Luca, hands covered in flour instead of blood, and the image makes my chest ache.

"What happened?" I ask, sensing there's more to the story.

His body tenses slightly. "My father came in. He was... displeased. Said I was wasting time on women's work when I should be learning the business." Luca's voice drops even lower. "That night, he took me to meet with an associate who had been stealing from us. Made me watch as they beat him. Then handed me the knife for the final lesson."

I go still against him. "How old were you?"

"Thirteen."

My heart twists. "That's horrible."

"That's preparation," he corrects. "For the world I was born into. For the man I needed to become."

I think of my mother's gentle hands braiding my hair, teaching me kindness even in hardship. Of Luca's father forcing a blade into his child's hands, teaching him violence as a first language.

Two childhoods. Two paths.

Both leading somehow to this moment, to us tangled together in the back of this luxury car, his suit damp with my tears, my body cradled against a killer who touches me like I'm something precious.

The ringing of Luca's phone cuts through the silence. He answers with one hand, the other still wrapped around me.

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