Page 64 of Luciano

“I recently heard about your mother,” she said, tone deceptively light. “Do you think about it much? What happened to her? What Luciano’s father did?”

The air shifted.

Ava blinked, her smile fading. “All the time.”

My jaw tightened.

“For years,” Ava continued, voice even but tight, “I pretended she just… ran away. Like he told me.” She glanced at me. “Easier to be angry than mourn.”

Aria tilted her head. “You ever think about revenge? Like Luciano got for his mother?”

Her voice dropped slightly, like she was letting Ava in on a secret. “Did he tell you about La Stanza del Giudizio? The Judgment Room? And all the souls that haunt it because of him?”

She tapped her long red nail against her chin. “Shouldn’t you help your wife avenge her mother, Luciano?”

I didn’t speak.

“But how would that work,” she mused, still smiling, “considering Luciano loves his father. He wouldn’t kill him for you.”

Ava turned to me. “What’s the Judgment Room?”

I stared at her.

Didn’t answer.

Saint, who’d been just watching with glassy eyes, sat forward. “Aria—stop.”

Aria didn’t even look at him. “She should know what he did to the men responsible for his mother's death. What he’s capable of. What he won’t do for her.”

Saint stood without another word, scooped Aria up—one arm under her thighs, the other around her back—and walked straight out of the restaurant.

She didn’t fight it.

Just smirked over his shoulder, eyes on me the whole time.

And Ava?

She was looking at me.

Curious.

Not scared. Not angry. Curious. Just like the first day I met her.

Chapter 28

Saint

We were barely through the front door before I lost it.

“Go to bed, Aria. Don’t say a word to me,” I snapped, tossing my keys onto the marble table so hard they bounced.

She stopped halfway down the hall and turned, arms crossed like she hadn’t just walked into a fucking war meeting pregnant and smug like she ran the world.

“Don’t start with me tonight, Saint.”

I laughed—short and ugly. “You came to the restaurant after I told you not to be there. Then you tried to sow discord into another person’s marriage. It wasn’t your right to tell Ava what you did. What the fuck is it going to take, Aria, for you to listen to me? You want to get shot? Have our children grow up hearing stories about the mother they never met?”

She didn’t say anything. Just stared at me like I was overreacting. Like I was the crazy one.

---