Merciless Union by Faith Summers

2

Lucca

15 years ago

There she goes.

As her father’s car pulls out of the driveway, Aria looks back at me.

From behind the wall, I can just see her long black hair brushing over the sleeves of her red dress.

Her father’s sleek black car drives away, picks up speed as he turns the corner, and that’s it.

She’s gone.

Today won’t be like the days we’ve shared for the last couple of years. It’s goodbye forever.

I knew though this day would come. Me and mine aren’t supposed to associate with people like her.

Father might own the manor now, and he might be a brigadier, but it doesn’t change anything.

Once a servant, always a servant. And Raphael will always look at me as scum.

Yesterday he made it very clear as he chased me down the river and stoned me with the rocks along the riverbed that he’d kill me if he ever caught me watching his daughter again. That was the warning from the devil.

The last stone to leave his hand was actually a rock. I fell down when it struck me in my back and cut my stomach on the jagged rocks of the riverside.

I thought Raphael was going to kill me right then when he caught up to me, but all he did was spit in my face and issue one last warning.

“Stay away from my daughter, you filthy little shit,” he’d threatened. “If I catch you looking at her again, there’ll be hell to pay.”

In his eyes, I knew if I didn’t heed the warning, it wouldn’t just be me who suffered.

My father would too. My whole family would. Raphael spat on me again and walked away.

I knew I’d have to heed the warning, and by doing so, I’d have to sacrifice the girl—his daughter. I wouldn’t be able to see her again.

Her father stoned me just for watching her play the violin.

The bruises on my back and the ache in my body is like nothing I’ve ever felt.

Not even when I got beaten up by that gang of boys last summer did I feel like this, like shit.

Being beaten up by a group of boys I managed to fight off is different from a big hulking man who had no qualms in beating up a thirteen-year-old boy.

He’ll get his one day. I swear it. One day I’ll get my own back, no matter how long it takes me.

Raphael De Marchi may be powerful now because he has the backing of the Bratva leaders—our Pakhan Grigori and his son Pasha. But the day will come when I will rise in power. My father has their support, too, and that will be to my advantage when the time comes.

Until then, this is what I have to do. Hide in the shadows and never see Aria again.

I say never because while she might be the devil's daughter, she doesn’t belong in our world. I do, and I know it’s time to sever the connection I have with her before it’s too late.

I hope she won’t forget me.

Today was a big risk I knew I shouldn’t have taken. I wasn’t going to come. I wasn’t even at school today, and I planned to spend the evening with my family. When they saw how badly injured I was yesterday, they kept me in, and Mother tended to my wounds. I told them I fell off my bike, and I’ve been telling everyone the same thing, including Aria.

I only risked seeing her because today is her birthday, and it was supposed to be special for more than one reason.

I promised her a rose from my mother’s garden and a kiss.

Our first kiss.

Both happened, and after I took her to the woods as usual. As if we didn’t just change the friendship we’d had for the last four years.

I’m three years older, and I know I should know better. So, this is me saying goodbye. It feels better than not seeing her at all. I’m sure when she comes out to find me tomorrow and doesn’t see me, it will break her heart. Then as the days go by, she’ll look for me.

She’ll probably go to the woods, too, searching for me everywhere until she’ll eventually stop and probably hate me.

She never knew who I really was. She never knew my real name, and now she’ll never know.

To her, I’ll always be Peter Pan, and the time we spent together will be a memory in Neverland.

Our years of friendship will just be a dream she’ll forget one day.

I stare at the empty trail the car left behind for far too long. Her car is long gone now, far away from me.

It was already getting dark. Now it’s darker.

There’s nothing left here for me now. This is the last time I will hide behind this wall, watching Aria drive away with her father. I wouldn’t come back here again after today.

With a heavy breath and a heavy heart, I get on my bicycle and ride home. My parents don’t like me coming home too late. They’ll be happy to see me home earlier than usual. I might even be in time to listen to the book my mother will be reading this week.

It’s Gulliver’s Travels. The only job Mother has ever given me is to choose the story for the week, whether I’ll be home to hear it or not.

Normally, I’d head to the creek to play with Timothy and Jon. I couldn’t go yesterday because of my physical injuries. I won’t be going again today, but this time it’s my heart that’s injured.

It takes a little over an hour to get on to the road leading down to my house because my back still hurts from where Raphael struck me. The blanket of night has fallen, now covering my surroundings with darkness, but there’s something off in the air the closer I get.

I narrow my eyes as I ride up to the gates of the estate and see they’re wide open. They are never left open for longer than a few minutes to allow cars to go in and out of the premises.

There are no guards anywhere either. There are always guards to open the gates.

My heart squeezes when I ride in, and in the sliver of the moonlight, panic surges through me when I see my father’s guards lying dead on the ground with blood all over their bodies.

That’s when I ride faster toward the house.

What the hell happened here?

Is my family hurt?

My brain is ripped apart with worry as I think of my mother, sisters, and the baby. Father wouldn’t have let anything happen to them.

When I get to the end of the driveway and see Erik, Marylin’s husband, and my father’s head guard lying on the porch with blood all over his chest, I jump off my bike and rush to his side. Marylin is our housekeeper and nanny who had looked after us well before Father took over the manor. Erik is exactly like her.

He opens his eyes, and I’m surprised he’s alive. There’s so much blood on his chest. He sputters it too when he sees me and reaches out a trembling hand.

“Get out of here, boy!” he gulps. “Don’t go inside.”

“Erik,” I gasp. “What happened?”

“Don’t go inside, Lucca. Run away.” He shakes his head, then freezes like someone switched something off inside, and he stopped working.

As the light leaves his eyes, I know he’s dead.

Fear ravages through my mind, and I lift my head to look beyond the door.

It’s so quiet, too quiet.

Whatever happened here is over, and Erik just said don’t go in.

How must I do that?

How must I run away when I don’t know if my family is safe?

Disobeying the warning, I walk through the door and find more dead bodies of members of the house staff on the floor. With tears in my eyes, I race to the living room, where my family always gathered to read.

I go the quickest way through the library and run down the corridor.

When I get to the entrance of the living room, everything in my body stops to an abrupt halt when my eyes land on the man hanging from the beam in the ceiling

across from me.

Blood covers his body from his head to his shoes and drips onto the floor in blobs.

He’s wearing my father’s shoes.

But… that can’t be my father.

It can’t be.

I make the mistake of walking up to him, and that’s when I see his eyes.

His eyes have been gouged out.

I scream and stagger backward, tripping over something.

As I land on the ground with a heavy thud slipping in blood, I see it wasn’t something I tripped over; it was someone.

It was Jessa, my five-year-old sister. I start to sob when I look at the bullet hole in her head and the blood covering her face.

I’m about to move toward her when I catch sight of my mother and Clarrie, my older sister, lying on the ground naked.

Naked with blood covering them too.

“Mother,” I gulp and move over to where she lies.

The horror in my heart is so overwhelming I can barely move. And just when I do, I see my brother lying on the ground next to the fireplace.

My baby brother, Liev. Six months old.

He’s dead.

They shot him in his head too.

It’s him I go to instead, and when I see his head, I scream and scream and scream then vomit.

Grief numbs my heart, and I back away to the corner of the room, shaking as I fall apart. Everything inside me dies.

Tears blind me, and so does darkness as I faint.

* * *

Voices bring me back from where I went.

For a moment, I remember the horrible nightmare I had where I saw my family dead, but the voices of men give me hope.

“Is there anyone alive?” I hear someone say, and that’s when I open my eyes and see that nightmare was real.

I’m still here in this room, and they are here too—my family.

They are still dead.

Someone killed them, murdered them.

As footsteps echo in the passageway, my lips part, but no words come.

I look toward the door, wondering if the enemy came back.

If they have, I won’t run. I’ll let them kill me too. I should have been here to save my family. I should have died with them.

Who I see coming through the door is not an enemy, however. It’s Damien, father’s best friend.

He sees my father hanging from the beam first before he sees me huddled in the corner in the room.

“Lucca!” He rushes over to me and crouches down to take my hands.

I can’t talk, though.

He looks around at the demise of my family with tears in his eyes.

When he sees my brother, the tears run down his cheeks, and he shakes his head when he looks at my mother and sister next.

Then he does something I couldn’t do when he pushes to his feet and reaches for the blanket on the side my sisters use to snuggle with. He spreads the blanket over my mother, Clarrie, and Liev.

Another man comes into the room. One I don’t recognize. Since he looks Russian, I assume he must be part of the Bratva.

He, too, looks around the room at the demise, but his gaze is trained on my little sister on the ground.

“Take care of them,” Damien tells him.

“But—”

“Fucking do it, do it now, Miska.”

Damien comes back to me and reaches out a hand. “Come to me, boy. We have to leave now.”

I shake my head. “No, I won’t leave them. Damien, please no.”

“You have to come with me, Lucca. This is no place for you—they’re… dead.”

I shake my head once more, refusing to accept what he’s saying to me, although I can see for myself he’s right. My family is dead.

“I can’t leave them. I can’t leave them. I can’t leave them.” I keep repeating the same words over and over again, falling into a state of what feels like madness.

Damien picks me up and carries me away as I break.

We walk away, and the man stares after me. He watches me cry like a baby.

My father’s eyes are the last thing I see before Damien takes me away and the man closes the door.

Father used to tell me men don’t cry. They hold their tears inside and use what made them weep to make them stronger.

I stare at the closed door and vow strength. Not the prior weakness that wanted me to die too.

I will find strength and find whoever did this.

And I will kill them all.