“What’s so funny, faccia di merda?”I demanded.
He kept laughing, head lolling forward before he lifted it again.His voice came out rough and accented.
“Just the fact that you’re all so fucking stupid,” he slurred.“Why am I even here, golova chlena?”
I glanced over my shoulder at Salvatore, who looked ready to explode, then at Bruno, who was trying not to laugh behind his hands.
I turned back and slapped Luca hard — once, twice, three times.
“Come on, ragazzo, you should know why you’re here.”
“I don’t,” he groaned.“Enlighten me.”
“Well,” I said, walking to the side table and picking up a pair of pliers, “you’re here because you decided to mess with the wrong people today.”
Luca’s eyes tracked the tool as I waved it in front of his face.
“I know who you are,” he said, voice low and defiant.“I’ve never associated with you.”
“Ah, but you have,” I replied.“Your fucking boss did.Nicola crossed me once, and I never got the chance to teach him his lesson.”
I grabbed Luca’s hand and pressed the pliers against his index nail, close enough to make him flinch.
He swallowed hard.“What my boss did has nothing to do with me,” he growled.“Nicola always did what he wanted — he didn’t ask us to get involved.”
Bruno chimed in from behind me.“Then what the fuck did you do for him?”
Luca hesitated.His lip trembled slightly before he answered.
“I only started working for Nicola after he was sent to jail,” he muttered.“My job was to look for someone.The day I visited him in his cell, he asked me to keep an eye on his fiancée — Ariana.”
Everything in me went still.
I looked sharply at Salvatore, then at Bruno.They both seemed to realize the weight of it at the same time I did.
If Nicola had people watching Ariana after he was imprisoned...then why the fuck wasn’t she with him?
“What happened next?”Bruno pressed.
Luca lifted his bruised face again.“All I know is that they weren’t together anymore by the time I started working for him.”
“What?”The word slipped out before I could stop it.
My chest tightened, but I forced myself to keep my expression cold.
She shouldn’t matter anymore.She shouldn’t still affect me.
But she did.
And that was exactly what terrified me most.
Luca began to laugh again — a slow, lazy laugh that didn’t match the tension in the room.He sighed and looked up at us, amusement gleaming in his bruised eyes.
“The fuckbrain was a woman beater,” he said casually.“Of course she’d leave him.Eventually.”
For a moment, the words didn’t even register.Then they did — and my stomach dropped.
Despite how hard I tried to stay detached from anything that concerned Ariana, the realization hit me like a punch to the chest.If Nicola had been a violent bastard...then Bruno’s earlier assumption was right.The attempted murder charge — it wasn’t random.It was her.
