Page 4 of Luciano

It was time.

I made my way downstairs. The house was quiet. The air dense. I suspected my father had told everyone to stay clear of me. He knew how anxious I was.

The front door swung open at my approach. I was met with two guards who led me to the awaiting car.

I stepped into the black SUV. Carlos, the driver, straightened as I slid into the backseat. I gave him a silent nod, then gestured to the four guards standing nearby.

Without a word, they got into two separate SUVs, ready to follow.

The convoy moved out. The driver didn’t need instructions. He already knew the destination. My father always instructed them.

I settled into the leather seat, my hands resting lightly on my knees. My expression blank, but my heart felt… strange.

What was this feeling?

I tried to chase it down, to put words to it—but I couldn’t.

Carlos cleared his throat, interrupting my thoughts. He stole a glance at me in the mirror before speaking.

“So… you ready for marriage, boss?” he asked casually.

I looked at him, meeting his eyes in the mirror.

“As ready as anyone can be for binding their life to someone else’s,” I replied evenly, watching as his eyes went wide.

He hadn’t expected me to answer.

I almost never did.

He went quiet after that.

Chapter 3

Luciano.

When I arrived at Ava’s mother’s house, the door was unlocked. I stepped inside, the stale scent of dust and neglect made my nose it. I moved through the house quickly, checking room after room, a growing sense of urgency gnawing at me, causing my heart rate to spike until it was beating like a bass drum in my chest. It didn’t ease until I found her in the backyard, sitting on the damp earth at her mother’s resting place. Her back was straight, her shoulders tense. I felt a strange pull in my chest.

“Make sure no one comes back here. If she runs, no one but me touches her,” I instructed Carlos and the two guards behind me. “No one lays a hand on her,” I repeated.

For a moment, I stood back and watched her.

My father was a ruthless man—cold, calculated, and lethal. But when he spoke about killing Ava’s mother, it was the only time I ever saw something close to regret in his eyes. She had humiliated him, he’d said. Not just by laying with the son of his enemy—though that alone was an insult—but by running afterward, as if she hadn’t vowed to belong to him in front of God.

My father didn’t tolerate defiance. Not from his men, not from his enemies, and certainly not from the woman he claimed.

She broke a sacred rule—a covenant our world enforced with blood. This wasn’t just about her. To the families, to his men, it was a test. If he let her go, if he allowed her to live, they’d see it as weakness. They’d think they could cross him and walk away untouched.

So he did what was necessary. Not because he wanted to. Because he had to.

Ava knew my father had killed her mother, yet she stayed in that house with him for two years. Condemned to misery, and yet she never screamed. It captivated me. I wasn’t sure if it was fortitude or delusion on her part—but whatever it was, it drew me in. There was something resolute—almost pathological—about the way she endured. Survived.

And she was mine. I had known long before I ever laid eyes on her that Ava was mine.

Her mother married my father to buy vengeance for her dead husband and protection for herself and Ava. He waged a war against the Colombians in her name—then she betrayed him.

When she cheated, then ran, she sealed Ava’s fate. And when she died, Ava was left to settle the debt—because in our world, obligations don’t die with the debtor. They’re inherited. They must be paid in full.

But she wasn’t just a payment. Not to me.

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