“About who you really are,” Luca said, his voice dropping to a dangerous whisper. He held the envelope out to me. “Take it, Nora. But know that once you open this, the life you had is over. You can never go back to being Marcus Vale’s sweet, oblivious daughter.”
My hands shook, but the anger that had fueled me for four years refused to let me back down. I snatched the envelope from his grip and ripped it open. Inside was a single, faded photograph, a birth certificate, and a handwritten letter.
I looked at the birth certificate first. It didn’t say Nora Vale. It said Elena Volkov.
And the parents listed weren’t Marcus and Sarah Vale. They were Alexei and Katerina Volkov—the ruthless heads of the largest Russian syndicate in North America. Both had been assassinated twenty-two years ago.
“Marcus wasn’t your father,” Luca said softly, watching the color drain from my face. “He was their lead accountant. When the hit was ordered on your family, Marcus did the only decent thing he ever did in his life. He took you from your crib, falsified documents, and vanished. He raised you as his own to keep you off their radar.”
“No,” I choked out, stumbling back. “No, he loved me. He was my dad.”
“He did love you. That’s why he died,” Luca replied. “The Bratva finally tracked him down four years ago. They tortured him to find out where you were. But Marcus never broke. He died protecting your identity. And right before they caught him, he came to me. He gave me this envelope and asked me to keep an eye on you from the shadows.”
I looked up at him, my vision blurring with tears. “Why you? Why would he trust you?”
“Because my family wiped out the Volkovs,” Luca stated, his dark eyes locking onto mine with chilling intensity. “I am the only man in Chicago with enough power to stop them from taking you back.”
Before I could process the gravity of his words, a deafening shatter echoed from the lower levels of Harrow House. The floor vibrated beneath my bare feet. Suddenly, the serene moonlight in the bedroom was drowned out by the harsh, flashing red strobe of emergency security lights.
Luca didn’t flinch. It was as if he had been waiting for this. He moved swiftly to the edge of his bed, pulling a sleek, suppressed handgun from a hidden drawer.
“They followed you,” Luca said, checking the chamber. “The guards letting you in wasn’t a mistake on their part, Nora. I told them to leave the gates open. I knew the Bratva was using you as bait to get inside my compound.”
My hand instinctively dropped to the knife strapped to my thigh under the silk slip. “You used me.”
“I used their obsession with you to trap them,” he corrected, stepping closer to me. The space between us crackled with a sudden, lethal energy. He reached down, his fingers brushing the bare skin of my thigh, sending a jolt of heat through my veins, as he unclasped the knife and handed it to me. “But the trap only works if we survive the next ten minutes. Do you know how to use this?”
I gripped the hilt of the blade, the metallic cold grounding my racing heart. Four years of hatred hadn’t prepared me for this, but four years of survival had. “I didn’t bring it to cut fruit.”
A dark, dangerous smile finally broke across Luca’s face. “Good girl. Stay close to me.”
The bedroom door burst open. Two massive men dressed in tactical black poured into the room. Luca fired twice before they could even raise their weapons—two silent, deadly shots that dropped them instantly to the carpet.
“Move!” he yelled.
We sprinted into the sprawling, glass-lined hallway. Gunfire erupted from the grand staircase below, shattering the priceless chandeliers and raining crystal down on us. I stayed right behind Luca as he returned fire with lethal precision. Suddenly, a third man lunged from the shadows of a side corridor, tackling Luca against the stone wall and knocking the gun from his hand.
The man pulled a blade, aiming for Luca’s throat.
I didn’t think. I reacted. The silk slip flared around my legs as I lunged forward, driving my knife deep into the attacker’s shoulder. The man roared in pain, dropping his weapon. Luca instantly twisted, using the opening to break the man’s arm and slam him into unconsciousness against the marble floor.
Breathing heavily, Luca looked at me, a newfound respect burning in his eyes. He picked up his gun. “Not bad, Volkov.”
“It’s Vale,” I snapped, pulling my knife free and wiping it on the curtain. “Marcus Vale is my father.”
“We’ll argue about your name later,” Luca said, grabbing my hand. His grip was warm, strong, and surprisingly grounding. “Right now, we need to get to the lake.”
We fought our way through the burning remnants of Harrow House, a brutal dance of survival. By the time we reached the hidden dock at the back of the estate, the sirens of Chicago P.D. were wailing in the distance. We jumped into a sleek, black speedboat. Luca gunned the engine, and we tore across the freezing, pitch-black waters of Lake Michigan just as the eastern wing of his mansion erupted into a massive fireball.
I stood at the back of the boat, the cold wind whipping my hair, the pale silk slip clinging to my shivering body. The life I knew was burning to ash on that shoreline. My father wasn’t my father. My enemy wasn’t my enemy.
Luca cut the engine as we reached the middle of the lake, letting the boat drift in the silent, dark water. He took off his heavy wool overcoat and wrapped it around my shoulders, pulling the lapels tight to keep me warm.
“What happens now?” I asked, looking up at the billionaire I had sworn to kill just an hour ago.
Luca reached out, his thumb gently wiping a streak of ash from my cheek. The coldness in his eyes had completely melted away, replaced by a fierce, undeniable possessiveness.
“Now,” Luca said softly, “we rebuild. And we hunt down every last person who thought they could touch what belongs to me.”
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