Luca’s eyes narrow. “Then we’re not dealing with street rats. We’re dealing with someone with real reach.”
“She was right all along,” he murmurs. “This war didn’t end with my father. It started with him.”
Turk’s radio crackles to life. “We’ve got movement near the old Fremont tunnel entrance. Convoy—three black SUVs. Southbound. Heat signature confirms one passenger in the back… female. Restrained.”
Luca’s blood turns to fire.
“Confirmation?” he snaps.
“Positive visual on the bracelet. It’s her.”
A deadly calm settles over him like a storm before the slaughter. “Then this ends now.”
He looks at Turk. “Call in the heavies. We hit them hard; we hit them fast lets—lock Vegas down.”
Turk’s already on the move, phone to his ear, shouting orders to every Moretti underboss within city limits.
Luca turns to his soldiers. “Gear up. Body armor. Full sweep. This isn’t just extraction. Now we take everything.”
He slides into the SUV, slams the door, and for a moment—his rage falters.
Because staring back at him from the other seat is Daniel.
His son. His blood.
Those eyes—dark, haunted, too damn knowing for a child—lock onto his. And in them, Luca sees Giuliana. Her defiance. Her fire. Her love.
He exhales slowly, the weight of legacy pressing down on his shoulders. The rage is still there, but it bends beneath something else now.
Resolve.
He leans forward, placing a steady hand on Daniel’s shoulder. “I’m going to find your mother,” he says.” “And I’m going to bring her home. That’s a promise, Daniel. And in this family…”
He squeezes once.
"…we don’t break promises."
Then, without hesitation, he holds out his hand, pinky extended—just like Giuliana used to do when she wanted to make something unshakable. A pinky pact.
Daniel blinks, then slowly hooks his smaller pinky around Luca’s.
"Pinky promise," Luca says, voice rough, eyes never leaving his son’s. "That means it’s unbreakable."
Daniel nods, something steady sparking behind his fear.
Luca pulls back, straightens, the weight of that small promise sinking into his bones.
“Drive,” he commands. “And if anyone gets in our way… bury them.”
—
Turk glances over his shoulder. “You want me to pull Sophia in?”
Luca’s jaw hardens. “Already ahead of you. Too many details only she had.”
Turk nods, the weight of something unsaid thick in the pause. "She’s hiding out at a no-name motel, three blocks from the Strip—Room 12. Fake ID, cash payment."
Luca’s eyes narrow, jaw tightening as the pieces fall into place.