Chapter 7 - The Choice Luca Made
I woke to beeping.
For several seconds, I thought I was working.
Then I tried to sit up.
Pain corrected me.
“Don’t.”
Luca.
He sat beside my hospital bed.
Same black clothes.
Different man.
His hair was disordered. Stubble shadowed his jaw. His eyes looked like he hadn’t slept in days.
“How long?”
“Thirty-one hours.”
“My father?”
“Safe.”
“Dominic?”
Luca looked away.
“Gone.”
I understood.
“You chose me.”
His eyes returned to mine.
“What?”
“You could have chased him.”
“Yes.”
“But you stayed.”
“There wasn’t a choice.”
Something warm and painful moved through my chest.
For Luca, revenge had defined twelve years.
Yet when the moment came, he let the man responsible for his father’s murder escape because I was bleeding.
“Come here,” I whispered.
He hesitated.
Then leaned closer.
I kissed his cheek.
Nothing more.
It felt more intimate than anything Ethan and I had ever shared.
My father entered later that afternoon.
We stared at each other across twelve stolen years.
There was no magical reunion.
Too much had happened.
He apologized.
I got angry.
He cried.
I cried harder.
Then we began again.
One conversation at a time.
Dominic remained missing.
Ethan survived surgery and was taken into custody.
This time, federal investigators joined the case.
Samuel’s files exposed enough corruption to bring down businessmen, police officers, and officials.
Luca voluntarily turned over financial records from companies he controlled.
That surprised everyone.
Including his own people.
His right-hand man, Victor Moretti, confronted him outside my room.
“You understand what this could cost?”
“Yes.”
“Contracts. Properties. Men.”
“Yes.”
“Your entire empire could change.”
Luca looked through the glass at me.
“Maybe it should.”
I pretended not to hear.
But I did.
Over the following weeks, Luca dismantled the parts of his organization tied to extortion and illegal operations.
It wasn’t instant redemption.
Life didn’t work that way.
There were investigations.
Lawyers.
Consequences.
But he stopped pretending his father’s legacy required him to repeat his father’s world.
Then one morning, I found a newspaper on my hospital tray.
DELuca Enterprises Announces Independent Compliance Restructuring
Below the headline was a photograph of Luca leaving a federal building.
Maya whistled.
“Your boyfriend is having a very expensive moral awakening.”
“He’s not my boyfriend.”
“Sure.”
“Maya.”
“You kissed him.”
“On the cheek.”
“Scandalous.”
I threw a napkin at her.
When I was discharged, Luca offered me a ride.
I declined.
He smiled.
“Good.”
“Good?”
“You’re driving yourself?”
“Maya is.”
“Even better.”
I narrowed my eyes.
“Are you ever going to behave like a terrifying crime boss around me?”
“Would you like me to?”
“No.”
“Then probably not.”
I laughed.
Three weeks later, I returned to St. Catherine’s.
Walking through the emergency department doors felt like reclaiming something Ethan had tried to take.
My life.
My work.
Myself.
That evening, a bouquet waited at the nurses’ station.
Not roses.
Sunflowers.
The card said:
Dinner? You can still say no. — L
I smiled.
Then every light in the emergency department went out.
Backup generators should have activated immediately.
They didn’t.
Maya looked at me.
“That’s not good.”
My phone buzzed.
A photograph appeared.
Luca.
Bound to a chair.
Blood on his face.
Behind him stood Dominic.
The message beneath it read:
May you like
You saved him once.
Come alone if you want the chance to do it again.
