Page 126 of Mine Again
“Uberto would have had access to those same circles,” I murmur. “You must have had a solid pseudonym.”
He nods once.
“And Uberto never figured out it was you?”
His mouth twists, amused. “At one point, he even hiredThe Venomto help him on a high-stakes job.”
“The Venom?” I echo, brows lifting.
He chuckles darkly. “The name stuck early. Simple. Lethal, in a digital sense. No theatrics. Fast, silent, and effective.”
He looks out toward the sea.
“In the hacking world, everyone knows… ifVenomgets into your system, you’ll never even know it until it’s too late.”
A chill prickles my skin.
“Clean. Elegant. Untraceable. That’s the kind of legacy I built,” he says quietly, though his pride is unmistakable.
A sound escapes me, half chuckle, half disbelief.
“So you were working for the man who was trying to find you.”
“There’s some irony in that,” he admits.
Then he adds, “But Uberto was never the enemy. Nor were the De Marcos. Their problem was with my father. Mother and I were collateral.”
“How magnanimous of you,” I say sharper than I intended. “Where is your father now?”
He shrugs. “Probably still in the Bahamas. I set him and my mother up there when we disappeared. I haven’t spoken to either of them in years.”
“Oh.”
He pauses, his gaze unfocused. “I just couldn’t. Not after what my father did. Betraying the De Marcos for decades and thinking he’d never pay for it. He got arrogant. He thought the rules didn’t apply to him anymore.”
Luca’s voice drops, and I can feel the tension roll off him.
“He didn’t think about what it would cost the rest of us. About the fallout. That it would tear everything apart.”
His gaze connects with mine. “It tore you and me apart. And that’s not something I’ll ever excuse or let go of.”
I’m not sad that he’s no longer in touch with his parents. I liked his mother, Leonara, but his father? He was too much like my own. No wonder they were friends.
“Why didn’t you settle in the Bahamas?” I ask, because clearly, wherever we are, it’s nowhere near warmth and sunshine.
“I wanted to be as far away from my father as possible,” Luca says. “Plus, nobody would expect a Sicilian to hide out somewhere cold.”
“No, they wouldn’t,” I murmur, just as an icy gust slices over the lookout. The chill settles into my bones.
I look out across the rough sea. “So did you go farther north or south of the Bahamas?”
He grins. “Is this your subtle way of asking where we are?”
I shoot him a look and lift my brows, too cold and too wrung out to play games.
His grin lingers, and his voice softens. “We’re on the west coast of Canada. Queen Charlotte Islands.”
I shudder at the wordCanada.
