Page 83 of Luciano

“Not now. It’s not the right time,” I said.

“But I still want to see it.”

She sat up, the sheet slipping from her shoulders. My shirt hung from her body, barely buttoned. She didn’t look afraid.

“Please,” she added, soft, lips pouting.

I should’ve said no again.

But her voice did something to me. Softened me.

I didn’t want her to see that room.

I never meant for her to know it existed. Never meant for her to know that part of me.

Something I couldn’t describe burrowed under my ribs and ached.

What I did in there felt private. It was where I let the darkestparts of me breathe.

She wasn’t supposed to see the monster in me.

I cursed Aria for ever mentioning it.

I’d kept it hidden for a reason.

But I didn’t deny her.

I got out of bed, in my pajama bottoms, she was wearing the shirt. I led her down there—not sure if I was ready to expose myself, but doing it anyway.

Chapter 38

Luciano

"Why take their heads?" she asked. "Why not just shoot them?"

I watched her carefully as I answered. "I read something once. About an old myth—Scythian warriors. They believed the soul lived in the head. That cutting it off didn't just kill a man—it erased him. Took everything. Power, memory, legacy. Gone."

My fingers flexed at my side, remembering the weight of Tomaso's skull in my hands. "A bullet ends a life. A severed head ends a lineage."

Her eyes never left the heads as she nodded slowly, like that made perfect sense. Then her gaze drifted to the security monitors mounted in the corner, showing every angle of the basement.

"Can I watch?" she asked suddenly.

The question shocked me—but it did. "Watch?"

"Yes. The footage. Of you. Doing this." Her fingersreached out and touched the hacksaw I used handle, testing its weight. "I want to see how you move. How you look when you're taking them apart."

Something dark and dangerous sparked in the space between us.

Again, I thought to say no to her. I shouldn’t have even recorded what I'd done in the first place,—but doing so was proof that they were gone.It stopped the screaming in my head. It was proof that I had avenged my mother.

They brought everything on themselves when they took us—when they left me alive. They wanted to die and I could watch them doing so over and over again.

Hearing them confess to what they'd done was proof I wasn’t just a monster.

I was… a product of cause and effect.

And I was going to let her watch them because part of me needed her to know that. Needed her to see the arithmetic of my violence and understand—

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