## Part 3 – The Secret Buried Fifteen Years Ago

Luca took me to his penthouse overlooking Manhattan.

The place looked less like a home and more like a fortress disguised as luxury.

Floor-to-ceiling windows revealed the glowing skyline below while armed security guarded every entrance.

“You knew they were coming,” I whispered.

Luca loosened his tie slowly.

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Because I’ve been tracking them for weeks.”

I stared at him in disbelief.

“You’ve been tracking people trying to kill me?”

“Why would you do that?”

For the first time since meeting him, Luca hesitated.

That frightened me more than his gun ever could.

Finally, he walked toward a locked drawer and removed an old photograph.

When he handed it to me, my blood turned cold.

It was a picture of my mother.

Standing beside Luca’s father.

“You knew her?” I whispered.

“No,” he replied quietly.

“My father did.”

The room tilted around me.

Luca explained everything slowly, each revelation more devastating than the last.

Fifteen years earlier, my mother had worked as an accountant for the DeMarco organization.

But she discovered evidence proving several powerful politicians and businessmen were laundering money through the family empire.

When she threatened to expose them, she disappeared.

Officially, her death had been ruled a car accident.

Unofficially?

She had been murdered.

I struggled to breathe.

“My father tried to protect her,” Luca said.

“Instead, he got her killed.”

Tears burned my eyes.

“How do you know all this?”

“Because before he died, he confessed everything to me.”

I sank onto the couch, shaking violently.

All my life, I had believed my mother died randomly.

Meaninglessly.

But she had been killed because she knew too much.

“And now they think you know where the evidence is,” Luca continued.

“I don’t!”

“They don’t believe that.”

A horrible realization struck me suddenly.

“That’s why they’re hunting me.”

I looked up at him slowly.

“Why are you helping me?”

For several seconds, Luca said nothing.

Then he answered with brutal honesty.

“Because my father destroyed your family.”

His jaw tightened.

“And because the moment I saw you, I knew I would burn this city to the ground before letting them touch you.”

The confession stole the air from my lungs.

Not because it sounded romantic.

Because I believed him.

## Part 4 – Falling for the Devil

Over the next several days, Luca refused to let me leave the penthouse.

“You’re safer here.”

“I’m not your prisoner.”

“No,” he said quietly.

“You’re my responsibility.”

The problem was, I stopped wanting to leave.

Behind closed doors, Luca became someone entirely different from the monster described by newspapers and rumors.

He cooked pasta from scratch at midnight.

He played old Frank Sinatra records while drinking expensive bourbon near the windows.

Sometimes I caught him staring at the skyline with unbearable sadness in his eyes.