Merciless Vows by Faith Summers

13

Lucca

Fucking fuck.

This girl is screwing with me again, and I’m allowing her to get under my skin.

I, of all people, shouldn’t allow such shit. I’m not known as Merciless because I’m fickle or because my emotions can easily be swayed.

This woman, though, did a number on me, and she continues to do so.

Clearly, that cousin of hers must have given her more insight about me.

That was the risk I took when I allowed her to have contact with family. However, I have nothing to hide and that’s why I owned up to what I am.

Murderer, enforcer, hitman, grim reaper, you can call it what you like; it’s still the same shit.

I am still the same guy.

I am still death.

It was that other word that got to me.

Rapist.

I’m not that. Not in the least, and I don’t need to be.

That word, though, conjures up the bad memories of those I couldn’t save.

I march down the corridor and down the steps leading back to the dining room, where Marylin and the kitchen staff are preparing the engagement meal.

What a fucking joke. A façade of shit.

Marylin looks at me as I walk by and rushes after me.

“Lucca,” she calls, but I don’t stop walking. And she doesn’t stop coming after me either. “Lucca.”

I only stop because I want her to stop.

“Get rid of the dinner,” I say. “Bag it up and send it to the shelter.”

“I guess it didn’t go so well with Aria.”

“No.”

“Lucca—”

“I don’t want to talk about it.” I’ve said enough, and I won’t be saying any more.

Very few people know the burdens I carry. She does, though.

She nods respectfully, and worry wrinkles her face when I turn down the left passage and continue down the path. She knows where I’m going and knows where I’m going isn’t going to be good for me.

It’s the same as being in this house. Being here hasn’t been good for me since that fateful night that will always be engraved in my mind.

I walk across the outdoor balcony and cross over to the dark side of the manor.

This is the section of the house where the ghosts live.

It feels different from the rest of the place. The air feels different but the same to me as that night. The sensation slows my pace, and now I take my steps cautiously with one foot in front of the other like I’m that thirteen-year-old boy again.

I take the steps down to the master living room the same way; this is where I feel my mother, my two sisters, my father, and my baby brother the most.

I always feel like they are all here and not the graves they’re buried in by the lake. Maybe it's because of how they died.

I was the eldest boy, and Clarrie, the eldest child. She was sixteen. That’s why they did the same to her as they did to my mother. They raped and killed her.

I found my mother and sister naked on the ground with bullet wounds to their heads.

Days later, I heard Damien talking about it, confirming my thoughts of what must have happened and why they were naked.

That’s what you call murdering rapists.

Jessa was only five, so they gave her a bullet to the head. The same as my brother, who was just six months old.

My father was hung from that beam across from me. They gouged his eyes out and shot him several times. So much blood covered his body, he was barely recognizable when I saw him.

It’s been fifteen years, and I still don’t know who killed my family.

I still don’t know who took them from me and the trail ran cold years ago for anyone who has ever wanted to help me find out.

When I moved back in years ago, I had the room fixed up the way my mother liked to keep it. This was the family room we’d gather in in the evenings.

My mother always liked keeping the book she was going to read us that week on the stool by the piano. I come down here every Friday to change the book like I used to back then. It was my job to choose the story even though I stopped going to most of those gatherings by the time I was twelve.

When I wasn’t home, most evenings saw me galivanting with Timothy.

But that night, I went to see the girl who had managed to fascinate me with her music and her soul.

Aria De Marchi.

I escaped the massacre that evening because I went to see her one last time.

The night before was when her father caught me watching her through the window of the music school. She was playing the violin, practicing for the play.

That music school was where Aria and I first met, even though our father's lives were entwined.

The school was near the woodland creek Timothy, and I played in with the other kids.

My father would often take me there, too, when he took his birds out. He was into falconry. That’s what we were doing that day when I first heard her play the violin. She didn’t see me then, though. I watched her until her father came to pick her up.

When I realized whose daughter she was, I tried to keep my distance. It didn’t work. We met anyway, and it screwed me over.

The night my family were killed, I’d left them to give a girl a rose from my mother’s garden and a kiss. It was Aria’s birthday. That was the main reason I went. She didn’t know I was saying goodbye, though.

Her father discovering my secret would have meant trouble for my family, and I didn’t want that. As it turned out, it didn’t matter either way.

The gruesome scene of what awaited me when I got home will forever be etched in my mind.

I’m still screaming inside.

Damien found me the next day, huddled in the corner, a mess.

I’m still a mess.

That night was still goodbye for me. I couldn’t bear to see her because I hated myself for not being with my family in life and in death.

At thirteen, chances are I wouldn’t have been able to stop what happened to them, but I don’t know. I always wondered if I could have been able to do something, no matter how small. Anything.

Save little Jessa, save my baby brother, save them all.

I didn’t see Aria again until after Timothy’s death. By then, over twelve years had passed, and she didn’t recognize me until I saved her.

She wouldn’t have known I was the devil come to wreak havoc in her life.

Her lips on mine were what heaven must feel like, the place I won’t be going to.

But I had a taste that night.

How ironic and fucked up it is that the one woman who had such an effect on me is the one I can never truly have.

I glance over at the book I left on the stool this week. It’s Gulliver’s Travels, Jessa’s favorite. She liked the little people in the story. Over by the sofa is the stuffed rabbit she took everywhere.

I still keep it all the same.

I walk away from the tomb with a heavy heart and head down the passageway to where I keep the best wine. Grabbing a bottle, I make my way back inside the tomb, sit on the sofa in the spot I used to sit, and I start drinking straight from the bottle.

It always feels like I should be here.

Dead or alive.

I’m never sure what the ghosts think.

* * *

“Lucca,” the low rumble of Damien’s voice pulls me from my deep slumber.

I stir and open one eye then the other, seeing him standing before me.

What a place to fall asleep.

“Hi,” I say.

He glances at the empty wine bottle beside me and his brows knit with worry.

“You slept in here all night?”

“Yeah. I must have lost track of time.”

“Come, let’s grab some coffee and talk.”

I push to my feet and pick up the bottle. With a sigh, I join him, falling in step as he walks out the door.

I pause to lock the door behind us until my next visit.

Damien rests a hand on my shoulder.

“It’s okay, boy, you’re okay. I wish you’d change that room up or something, though. Or better yet, sell the place. It feels like a grave to me.”

“I know. It feels the same way to me too. I don’t think my mother would forgive me if I sold it. She’d miss her roses too much.”

When he took me in, he made sure the place was kept up. I think he wanted me to sell it when I could. I don’t have any plans to.

“You and those roses. I get it, though. I do. Come.” He beckons, and we make our way back over to the world of the living.

He makes coffee, mine stronger than his, and sets my cup down before me.

“What’s going on?” I saw him yesterday. It’s unusual to see him two days in a row, and we’ve got our weekly meeting with the Pakhan tomorrow night.

“Jon found some stuff on Raphael and messaged me when he couldn’t get in touch with you. When I couldn’t reach you either, I thought I’d come by first thing,” he explains.

My interest instantly piques, and I mentally kick myself for not checking my phone. I left it in my office charging. “What did he find?”

“Something big. He found more conversation between Raphael and the State’s Attorney with regard to the charity. It’s about the homeless charity, Lucca. There were some missing girls. Jon managed to hack his systems and found emails between Raphael and an undisclosed recipient listing the names of the girls and their value by age. It seems he was selling them. Flesh trade. That’s why the State’s Attorney was killed.”

Fuck me.

Nothing is supposed to surprise me anymore, but that’s surprising—Raphael De Marchi was involved in human trafficking.

Motherfucker. I remember the big campaign he had going last year for the homeless and the battered women’s charity. It seems he was using them all along for other means to benefit his ass. That fucker even got an award from the city for his charitable work, but what he was stealing were people‘s lives.

The flesh trade means I was right that he’s working with someone outside the Brotherhood. . The Yurkov don’t deal in the flesh trade.

The list of potentials Raphael could be working with is still endless, but knowing the flesh trade is involved narrows it down somewhat.

One of the Mexican cartels comes to mind, but in our circles, I could also be looking at the Triads, too, or another group of that caliber. Or, Raphael could have simply reignited alliances with the Italians.

“Fucking hell. This guy never ceases to amaze me.”

“Me neither. Jon said he’s going to keep looking into it. Lucca, if it’s flesh trade, the Pakhan won’t care about that. He might not deal in it, but he’s not against it.”

“Noted.”

“I just don’t want you to waste your time when there are other things to take care of— like the business. We need everything sorted out well beforehand, so the transfer is smooth. That business is what keeps the De Marchi family going and the Baldacci's. Neither are going to like that you will own it, or worse, give it to me.”

As he says that, I wonder what Sienna Baldacci said to Aria. I’m sure they would have spoken about all they could in the time they were allocated.

“That’s none of our concern. They know their place, and they wouldn’t dare come to me with shit about what I own. It will be my business to give to who I choose, and you know my loyalty is to you.”

He reaches across the table and taps my hand. “My thanks to you, moy syn. It’s exciting to have the opportunity, and I’m trying to tell myself that this is our vengeance. Bringing the devil down is my retribution. But you know what’s fucked up about everything? It won’t bring my boy and his family back.”

I nod because I understand that. “I know, Damien.”

“I know you know, and you’ve seen enough death, but nothing can compare to the loss of a child. My boy, his wife, and my grandson. I’ll never forget seeing the three of them lying in that morgue.” He pauses for a beat and draws in a ragged breath. “Galina’s family didn’t want her to marry Timothy. They didn’t want her to be so involved in the Bratva, and I assured her father she would be safe with us. I live with regret every fucking day.”

I need to heed those words from his heart, and that is why I can’t allow Aria to get under my skin.

Business is business, and that’s all it’s going to be when it comes to her.

No matter how she made me feel in the past, it shouldn’t have mattered then, and it can’t matter now.

Her father’s destruction will be hers too, and being with me is darkness and death.

That is my destruction for her.