Page 134 of Alpha-Ex Wedding Ruse
“Victor?” My voice was barely a whisper, heavy with shock.
Luca took the ice pack from my hand and enclosed my palm in his much larger one. “I’ve spent the last twenty-four hours feeling like absolute shit. Because if I had truly believed in us—believed in you—Victor never would have had the chance to get between us. You wouldn’t have had to spend five years alone, paying off your father’s debt. You wouldn’t have raised our son without me.” His voice caught on the last word. “As much as I’d like to put all the blame on him—and I do, because he’s as sick as they come—this was my fault, too. I gave him the opening to manipulate everything, and he did exactly that.”
I reached for his face, my thumb brushing along his jaw. “Luca, don’t do that to yourself. Don’t take responsibility for his madness. You don’t control your brother, or the twisted things he’s done.”
“I know, but—”
“No buts.” My tone softened, but I didn’t let him finish. “Maybe the last five years were meant to teach us something. But I’m done letting them define us. We can either keep punishing ourselves for the past or choose to move forward. And I’m choosing to move forward, Luca.”
He covered my hand with his own. “I promise you, Victor will never touch you—or us—again. And I swear, I will always be here for you and Ollie. The past will never repeat itself.”
I believed him. Every word. Not because I was desperate to, but because the weight of his sincerity left no room for doubt. The rumors about him being mixed up in rogue deals only proved the lengths he was willing to go to protect me.
We stayed like that for a few moments longer, but I could see he was elsewhere. His gaze had gone glassy, like he was staring at something far away—or someone. His jaw worked, tension flickering over his features as though he was holding back a storm.
“Hey.” I cupped his face in both hands, tilting his head toward me. “You don’t have to bother about Victor anymore.”
“It’s not just Victor.” He let out a long, heavy breath, then added. “My mother showed up.”
My eyes widened. “Your mother?”
He gave a short, humorless nod. “Believe me, I was just as shocked.”
“Wh-why?”
“Same thing I’ve been asking myself all day. She was standing outside my building, like she had every right to be there. Said she wanted to talk. Said she had a lot to tell me.” His hand raked through his hair again, the movement sharp, threaded with restrained fury.
“And what did you say?”
“What is there to say? She lost the right to talk to me when she abandoned her children twenty-one years ago.”
My heart broke for him. I could picture it perfectly—Luca, faced with the woman who’d shaped his deepest wounds, trying to hold himself together while she acted like she had the right to claim him.
“Luca, aren’t you a little bit curious?”
“No.” He turned to face me, palpable anguish in his eyes. “I know what you’re going to say, Leila. That maybe I should hear her out. That there might be more to the story. But you didn’t live through what I did. You didn’t wake up every morning for months thinking she’d come home, only to be disappointed all over again.”
His fingers tightened around mine, and I squeezed back, trying to anchor him.
“You’re right. I didn’t. But—”
“She made her choice,” he cut in. “And I made mine. I don’t need her explanations, or her guilt, or whatever the hell she thinks she owes me now.”
But even as he said it, I could see the conflict in his face—the little boy who still missed his mother warring with the man who’d learned to survive without her. My heart ached for both versions of him.
I stayed quiet, just holding his hand and letting him work through the storm in his head.
When the rigid tension in his shoulders finally eased slightly, I spoke. “Do you know why she left?”
“Does it matter? The bottom line is she chose to walk away from her children. Nothing justifies that.”
“You’re right, Luca. Nothing justifies a mother leaving her child. I would never do that to Ollie. But…” I hesitated, my voice softening, “I would want to know. Why a woman who claimed to care about me so much could walk away so easily.”
He stared at me for a long moment, considering what I said. His expression melted into uncertainty—like he understood, but wasn’t sure he really wanted to know. And at the same time, he did.
“I can’t,” he whispered. “I can’t go through that again, Leila. I’d let that wound close up. I can’t reopen it again.”
The raw vulnerability in his voice made my chest tight.
