My stomach tightened.
“You know me?”
“I know Marcus Vale’s daughter.”
Hearing my father’s name inside that room nearly shattered my control.
“My father was a good man.”
Luca rose and crossed toward the window, where moonlight spilled across the floor. “Good men can still keep dangerous secrets.”
My hand moved toward the knife.
His eyes followed it immediately.
“Take it out if that’s why you came,” he said calmly. “But decide first whether you want revenge or answers.”
For four years, I had imagined confronting the man I blamed for destroying my family. I had imagined fear in his eyes, perhaps guilt.
There was neither.
“I came for the truth,” I said. “You had my father killed.”
Luca turned his back on me.
He actually gave me the perfect opening.
“If I wanted Marcus dead,” he said, staring through the window at the frozen grounds below, “you wouldn’t have made it through my gate tonight.”
“Then deny it.”
“I didn’t kill your father.”
The certainty in his voice unsettled me more than anger would have.
I stepped closer. “Then why did his investigation lead to your company? Why was your name in his files?”
That finally changed Luca’s expression.
He turned slowly.
“Because Marcus came to me.”
My breath caught.
“Six weeks before he died,” Luca continued. “He arrived alone. Frightened. Your father had discovered something, Nora, and whatever it was scared him enough to ask a man he hated for help.”
“That’s impossible.”
“I thought so too.”
The room suddenly felt smaller. My father had spent his final weeks telling me everything was fine. He had kissed my forehead, complained about work, reminded me to change the oil in my car.
He had never mentioned Luca.
“What did he want?”
Luca’s gaze hardened.
“Not money. Not protection for himself.”
He walked toward a locked cabinet beside the fireplace and entered a code. Inside was a weathered brown envelope.
My name was written across it.
I recognized the handwriting immediately.
My father’s.
My knees nearly gave out.
“He left that with you?”
“He told me to give it to you only if you ever came looking for me.”
I stared at the envelope but couldn’t touch it.
“Why?”
Luca stepped closer, and for the first time that night, the billionaire everyone feared looked genuinely troubled.
“Because your father knew you’d eventually discover he’d been lying to you.”
My throat tightened. “About what?”
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