Chapter 42: I’m Not Jealous

Vee crossed her arms, heart hammering. “I just need to talk to him,” she said, forcing her voice to stay steady. “By myself this time. Last night I couldn’t get my point across because it was a battle of wills and testosterone. Let me go alone and convince him.”

Luca let out a short, humorless laugh. “Convince him?” He turned slowly, a smile curling at his lips that didn’t touch his eyes. “Or do you want to resume your little fuck fest?”

Her brows shot up. “What? What do you—oh.” Realization dawned. She stared at him, incredulous. “Luca?”

“What,” he challenged.

“You’re jealous.”

“I’m not jealous,” he snapped immediately. “I’m furious. Did you not hear me? This is my sanctuary.”

“Why are you yelling at me? If you didn’t want problems, then you shouldn’t have brought me here!”

“You are impossible to talk to,” Luca said, exhaling hard. “Absolutely impossible.” He ran a hand down his face. “You are not meeting him anywhere private. You better get your point across this time because any more bullshit like this and the police will need a microscope to find the only remaining part of his body.”

“This is not my fault, Luca,” Vee said, and this time she didn’t raise her voice.

“No!” Luca barked, then stopped short, his hands clenching at his sides. He dragged in a sharp, unsteady breath. “I’m… I’m not… fuck!” He turned away, pacing again. “I’m not blaming you. This business with your father was supposed to be a simple business deal. Deals I have done hundreds of times. I grant a favour, I collect the debt. Clean. Predictable. But none. None has ever been this complicated. So, no. I don’t blame you.” He stopped, shoulders tight. “I blame me.”

Vee saw it then, the war behind his eyes. She stepped closer, slowly.

“You didn’t buy me at that auction because you wanted me indebted to you,” Vee said.

Luca turned sharply. “What are you talking about?” His dark and searching gaze bored into hers.

“You bought me because you didn’t want anyone else to have me. You didn’t want anyone else to look at me.” She swallowed, then kept going. “You bought me because you wanted me. You’re obsessed with me. Aren’t you, Luca?”

“Obsessed?” Luca repeated slowly. “That’s a big leap.”

“Then prove to me that you are not,” she said, stepping into his space now. “Let me meet with Cassidy. On our own turf. On our own terms.”

Luca exhaled slowly, eyes dropping to her mouth.

“I’m asking you to trust me.”

Luca reached out, stopping just short of touching her. “If I let you do this,” he said, low, intense, “and he so much as breathes wrong—”

“I know… I know… you’ll chop off his balls and feed it to him,” Vee teased.

“Go with your phone,” he said.

“You still have my phone.”

“It’s up in my bedroom. If I call you once and you do not pick up, I am sending an army.”

She snorted. “Coming from the man who claims not to be obsessed.”

That earned her a small chuckle.

“Luca?” she called.

He stopped but didn’t turn immediately. He closed his eyes once, steadying himself, then faced her with a knowing smile. “You are about to ask me something you know I will say no to.”

“What?” she asked, playing innocent.

“The sudden calm in your voice,” he said. “You do it every time you want to ask for something difficult.”

“Oh.” She hesitated, then exhaled. “Well, I was thinking… can I talk to my sister? On the phone, or something. Maybe a video call.”

“No.”

He turned to leave again.

He had to. He knew that. If he lingered, if he let the silence stretch, he would start explaining, or he would change his mind.

*****

Meanwhile, across town, Marco was living through a personal apocalypse disguised as babysitting.

Valentina Scalese was a force of nature. Eighteen, caffeinated by existence alone, and powered by a curiosity that refused to nap. She moved through the house like a spark looking for something flammable, and unfortunately, she had decided Marco was it.

This was not how his life was supposed to go.

He had planned a quiet morning. Coffee. Silence. Maybe a cigarette. Instead, he was calculating escape routes.

He knew better. He absolutely knew better.

The breakfast room was the shortest path to the kitchen, but it was also Scalese territory. Valentina liked to camp either there or the living room. He should have taken the long way around. He should have slipped out through the back corridor.

But hunger had made him careless.

He had barely stepped into the breakfast room when it happened.

“Marco?” Valentina called.

His shoulders sagged just a little before he turned, already exhausted. “What?!”

She grinned, entirely unbothered. “Well, since we had so much fun yesterday watching movies, I was thinking we could do something else even more fun today.”

Fun.

Fun was popcorn exploding across his scalp because a fictional monster had jumped out of a fictional closet. Fun was her shrieking and slapping his bald head repeatedly. Fun was pretending he enjoyed romantic comedies where everyone talked too much and nobody carried a gun.

His mother had hit him less in his entire childhood.

None of this escaped his mouth.

“No!” Marco barked, already turning away as he headed into the kitchen.

“Marco?” Valentina scraped her chair back and followed, bare feet slapping softly against the tiled floor. “Why?”

“I’m busy today,” he said, opening cabinets with more force than necessary.

“Doing what?” she pressed, leaning against the counter. “You’re just as trapped here as I am.”

Marco snorted. “I still have things to do. I’d rather pick the hairs in my nose.”

“Ew!” Valentina recoiled dramatically. “I did not need to know that.”

“And I do not need to do anything else today except read the newspapers,” Marco shot back, pulling eggs from the pantry and setting them on the counter.

“You know you can do that on your phone, right?” she said.

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