Page 102 of His Dark Vendetta

The pool of blood that haunted my dreams closed in around her, and dread transformed into fear. It tightened around my chest, and the panic that ensued snapped my brain out of idle and into overdrive. It raced through time and space, landing on our first night together.

“I asked if we were safe. I asked if we should use protection.”

She blinked and shook her head. “I—I thought you were talking about STDs. I’ve been on the shot for so long, I didn’t?—”

I cried out, the pained noise squeezed from my lungs by the cruel twist of fate.

She reached for me.

I backed away before the firmness of her fingers convinced me this was reality and not another one of my fucked-up dreams. “This isn’t happening,” I shouted, and my hands flew to my hair.

Siobhán’s eyes glistened bright blue, and tears spilled onto her pale cheeks. Her image faded into a familiar, horrifying scene straight out of my nightmares.

Pale and starved, my mother lay on a bed, screaming through my bloody birth. My father stood over her with his sleeves rolled up, holding her hand as the doctor tried to save her. The ever-present pool of blood surrounded her. It crept toward her face, and the doctor and my father dissolved into red.

I blinked rapidly, desperate to clear the images from my mind. “This isn’t happening,” I said again and tore my eyes away from the hurt in her face and her quivering lip. But the images that replaced her made me stagger.

It wasn’t my mother lying on that bed anymore. It was Siobhán, her belly swollen with our baby, her scars stretched and jagged across her stomach. Her too-thin arms and legs had grown skeletal, her body trying to give our baby what it needed to survive. And failing.

She looked at me from her deathbed with the same haunted expression my mother wore the day I came into this world and she left it—scared but resigned. I took her hand. She smiled, the adoring smile she saved for me. Then the light left her eyes, and the smile faded. Her body went still. Pale, cold, lifeless. History repeating itself, and it was all my fault.

My hands fell from my hair and landed on my heart, the stabbing pain there so powerful it threw me off balance. I stumbled back and grabbed hold of the dining room chair. It skidded across the floor as I tried to steady myself.

A black hole expanded in my chest at the thought of losing Siobhán. It trapped all the air. I couldn’t breathe.

I killed her. I killed them both.

“Mio Dio,” I whispered. “Cosa ho fatto?”

“Luca,” Siobhán said through pained sobs. “Luca, I’m so sorry.”

Tears poured down her face. But she was already dead, and I killed her.

“Siobhán—” My voice cracked around her name. I gasped for air. I couldn’t breathe. I had to get out.

She reached for me. I waved her away and stumbled toward the door.

“Luca, please. Talk to me,” she sobbed, hysterical.

“I can’t.” I braced myself on the doorjamb. “I…”

She grabbed my arm, trying to pull me back from the brink, but I had to escape the nightmare.

“Please,” she cried.

“I can’t.” I flung the door open, yanked my arm out of her grasping fingers, and hurried down the stairs.

“Luca!” Siobhán’s pained sobs followed in my wake. “Luca!”

Blood rushed in my ears. My chest burned from lack of oxygen, and stars danced across my vision. I doubled over, propping myself upright with my hands on my knees until air finally made its way back into my lungs and I could breathe again.

I climbed into my car and gripped the steering wheel, clinging to it like a tether to reality. I rested my forehead between my white knuckles and tried to regain control, but my eyes turned, fear driving my primal instincts to survive.

Siobhán’s lifeless body remained fixed in my vision. I stood over her, begging her not to leave me. Like Marco left me. Like my father. Like my mother. But with each desperate plea, her body faded, consumed by the red void until I stood alone in the darkness. Utterly alone.

ChapterThirty-One

Luca

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