Page 33 of Ruthless Vow

I think about this for a moment, how best to put it concisely. “If I hadn’t, it would have been a bloodbath. More would have died.”

“So what?”

“I didn’t want that.”

“Just Leo, then. Because you think he killed your father.”

“Just Leo.”

“Except you didn’t kill him,” Luca points out, his tone contemplative.

“No comment,” I say.

He gets up from the chair and leaves the room. I get to my feet and sit on the side of the bed, waiting for a count of twenty before he returns. To my shock, he carries in a TV. Without another word, he sets it on the chest of drawers and hooks it up.

“Leo’s orders,” he says when he catches me staring. “He said he didn’t want you losing your mind from boredom. Said he wants your mind intact until he gets his answers.”

Well, that’s comforting.

He leaves the room again, and this time when he returns, he carries a stack of murder mysteries. He sets them down beside the TV.

“I know you like these,” he says. “I figured you could read when you’re not watching TV.”

“Have you read any of them?” I ask.

He grins. “All of them.”

No surprise there. Luca’s a bookworm with eclectic taste. I’ve seen him reading pretty much every genre. For the last month, he’s been doing a reread of the Harry Potter books.

He leaves again for a minute and when he comes back he has a laptop in hand. He puts it down beside me on the bed and opens the lid.

“Leo gave me the password. It works for every doc except this one.”

I blink, unsure why Leo would give Luca the password, unless… “Are you doing admin for him?”

“No fucking comment,” he grits out.

My mouth opens. Closes. I got nothing.

“And you better not make a fucking comment, either.” He taps the top of the screen. “What’s in this folder? What are you protecting with a different password from all the others? Something important, I’m thinking.”

“Have you mentioned this to Leo?”

“Not yet.”

“That’s probably for the best.”

His eyes grow cold. “You’re not going to tell me what it is?”

“Oh, I’ll tell you, Luca. Go ahead and take a look. The password is your name. First and last. All caps. Zeroes instead of Os.” LUCAR0MAN0

His brows draw together and a sliver of confusion slides behind his gaze. Then he enters the password.

“What the fuck?” he mutters.

I watch as he opens up documents within the folder, his jaw tight. It takes a minute. It’s got a lot of content: spreadsheets, contracts, documents, photos. It takes another few minutes as he reads and processes exactly what he’s seeing.

“Salvatore wanted me to keep that confidential. I’m sure you understand why,” I say. He thought that revealing any of the folder’s contents should be Luca’s choice, when and if he ever felt ready.

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