Page 52 of Killing Emma

“Are you hungry?” Luca breaks the long, drawn-out silence that’s settled between us ever since Jude had shown up. There was tension between the two, and I saw the way Jude looked at me.

I’m a problem, and I was relieved when he left for good.

“Not really,” I tell him, my stomach rolling.

“Okay,” Luca’s voice is tinged with disappointment.

“Who was he?” I ask as I follow Luca up the basement steps.

“Who?” Luca turns to me as he flips the stairwell light off, and then closes the basement door.

“Manny,” I say carefully, forcing the name out. “You said he was your partner for a long time…”

“You just answered your question,” he chuckles, raking his fingers through his hair. He’s changed and showered twice now, and his hair is still damp from the final time.

“No, I mean like, who is he?” I don’t know if I’m making any sense, but Luca seems to pick up on what I’m asking.

“My mentor, Victor, had a brother—well, I don’t know if Ivan was his brother by blood or not—but his brother had a protégé, too, and it was Manny. Our partnership was decided for us. I’ve known him since I was a kid. He was kind of like a brother, I guess.” He frowns, and then shrugs.

“And you…” my voice trails off, because I still haven’t come to terms with how easily Luca killed his brother.

“Look, there are things about myself that I don’t understand,” he says, letting out a sigh. “I’m dangerous, Emma.”

I nod, not sure why I’m not alarmed by what he’s saying. “So, you get angry, and you just… kill someone.”

“Okay, well yeah, but Manny had it coming,” Luca reasons, like I’m crazy for thinking anything else about it. “He tried to touch what’s mine, and I don’t appreciate that. Not to mention, he royally fucked the video on your camera, so the right kind of eyes will know that we fudged it. It’s messy. He’s always been messy. It’s probably for the best.”

He talks like this is seriously not a big deal.

I roll my lips against each other. “And me? What about me?”

“What about you?” He laughs, tilting his head at me.

“What happens after twenty-nine days?” I force the question out because we never came back to it in the cleanup. I said I didn’t want to kill Jared, and then that was that, but no one has talked about what happens to me when the time runs out.

Luca’s jaw sets. “I guess you’ll show your pretty face off to the world and give them all the middle finger.”

That’s not the answer I expected. “And you? What will you do?”

“You, if you’re in the mood,” Luca chuckles, his eyes lighting up in a way that makes my heart flutter. “You’ll have to show face without me though. I don’t want the glitz and glam that you’ll get reappearing like you have.”

My lip curls. “I don’t want that. Maybe I should tell someone—”

“No.” He cuts me off. “That’s a bad idea. You need to stay gone for the next twenty-nine days. The hit can be offered to someone else, and I have a bigger problem to solve right now.”

“Manny’s death?”

“Yeah.”

“Is someone going to try to kill you for it?” I ask, not even phased by the fact murder is seeming to come up in daily conversation. I’m not sure anything could phase me at this point.

“Ivan will want blood if he finds out the truth.” His bluntness is appreciated, and something has shifted in the way he looks at me—and I’m not sure if it’s a good or bad thing. But maybe it’s just the fact he doesn’t have to kill me anymore. “He already hates me.”

“Why?”

“He thinks I’m responsible for my mentor’s death, and he’s hated me ever since. I think he’s already tried to off me a couple of times through the…” He stops. “It doesn’t matter. I’ll take care of that, and it won’t be an issue. We just have to lay low and stay hidden until we tie up the loose ends.” He makes it sound so easy.

And I don’t keep picking it apart, because I’m too tired. I already know now that my husband, a man that I never thought was capable of being violent, hired someone to kill me so he could have my inheritance.

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