Page 52 of Crown of Blood

I turn to leave, the folders and velvet box in my hands.

"Luciano," he calls, stopping me at the threshold. I look back to find him suddenly smaller in his chair, the weight of decades bearing down on his shoulders. "Your mother would be proud of you."

Fuck.

In fifteen years, he's never said anything like it.

"Elena saw something in you I couldn't," he continues, raising his glass a tilting it at me. "A king, not just a soldier."

I say nothing, suspicious of this sudden sentimentality.

"Protect your wife, Luca," he says, using the shortened name my mother preferred. "But remember—in our world, what we love most becomes our greatest weakness."

I leave without responding. In my pocket, my fingers close around the velvet box. Whatever game my father is playing, whatever web he's weaving around Bianca, I won't let her become another Elena.

Another sacrifice on the bloody altar of Ravelli ambition.

She's mine.

And what's mine, I protect.

Chapter Thirteen

Bianca

Iwaketosunlightstreaming through a crack in the blackout curtains, painting a golden stripe across Luca's side of the bed.

It takes me a moment to gather my thoughts, to remember the night before.

Luca had returned late, eyes haunted by ghosts I couldn't see. He didn't speak when he entered the bedroom, just stripped down to his boxers and slid beneath the sheets beside me.

No demands on my body. No claiming me with possessive hands.

Just his arm circling my waist, pulling me against his chest until I could feel his heartbeat.

I'd waited for his hands to wander, for his mouth to find my neck the way it always did. Instead, he'd simply breathed me in, his face buried in my hair, his fingers tracing circles on my back until we both drifted to sleep.

It was the first night since he returned that he didn't take me. Didn't mark me. Didn't remind me I was his in the most primal way possible.

After three nights of his absence, I had expected his usual hunger, his need to reclaim what belonged to him. Instead, there was something different in his touch, something almost…tender.

And somehow, that felt more intimate than anything we'd done before.

Now, I stretch out across the empty sheets, the silk cool against my skin. My hand brushes something tacky and I sit up, blinking away sleep as I stare at the dark smear on the pristine black bedding.

Blood.

Not much—just a few drops that have dried to a rusty brown.

And it's not mine.

I scan the room, suddenly alert. Luca's jacket hangs over the back of a chair, his watch and phone on the nightstand. The bathroom door is closed, steam curling underneath as the shower runs inside.

Slipping from the bed, I move toward his discarded clothes. His white shirt is crumpled on the floor, and when I lift it, I see more blood—a fine spray across the cuff. Maybe not noticeable to someone who hasn't spent years scrubbing stains from hotel sheets, but to me, it might as well be a neon sign.

The shower turns off. I drop the shirt and back away, climbing back into bed just as the bathroom door opens.

Luca emerges wearing nothing but a towel slung low around his hips, water beading on his tattooed chest, hair slicked back from his face.

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