Once again—the gun.
"Do you always speak through your gun?" she asked, her voice trembling, half from pain, half from exhaustion. "I'm wounded… freezing… half-naked. What on earth do you expect me to do in this state?"
He leveled the weapon at her, his finger tightening on the trigger, the click echoing like a death sentence. His eyes—ice-blue and unwavering—held a strange sorrow behind their fury.
"You," he said slowly, each word carved with venom, "are the only woman who ever taught me not to trust anyone—no matter how weak they seem. And by all the fires of hell, what possessed you to slam on the brakes? Were you trying to kill yourself?"
She collapsed onto the wet ground, the strength in her legs gone. Blood pooled beneath her fingers, dark and glistening under the dim light. Looking up at him through strands of damp hair, she whispered, "I just needed to escape. That's all. I bear no grudge against you, Mr. Vitale. I'll sign the damn divorce papers and disappear. Just… let me go."
He smiled then—an unsettling, almost playful curve of his lips. "And who said I'm going to divorce you?"
A tired laugh escaped her, raw and broken. "Fuck my life," she muttered before slumping forward, collapsing against the cold earth.
He sighed, setting the gun aside. Then he walked to her, slow and deliberate, the predator no longer stalking but studying his wounded prey. Kneeling, he gathered her into his arms, her body trembling violently against his.
"You're freezing," he murmured, brushing her hair away from her face. "And yet… you're still trying to reach for the gun behind my back. Persistent as ever. Finish your little escape act after we're home, yes?"
She buried her face against his chest, her laughter weak but real this time. "Luca Vitale," she whispered between breaths, "I really did end up with quite a husband. You know I'll run the moment I wake up."
"I know," he said softly.
She pressed closer, her body seeking the warmth his pride would never admit offering. "Then keep me alive and warm," she murmured, "so we can finish our play—me, the doe… and you, the hunter."
Outside, the storm raged on, indifferent to their tragedy. But in his arms, for the briefest moment, she was safe—and he, though he would never confess it, was lost.
Enzo came running before she could gather herself. He found them collapsed on the damp earth—Luca crouched over her, arms wrapped around Elena as if to keep the whole world from tearing her away. For a moment Enzo just stood there, breath a white cloud in the cold air, then the edge in his voice cut through.
"Should I come back later?" he sneered. "I wouldn't want to interrupt anything."
Luca raised his head, a whirlwind of anger coiled so tight it hummed beneath the surface. "Keep your filthy ideas to yourself," he snapped, every syllable a contained blow. "And if I were to do anything like that — not in the middle of the road, not after a crash." He hauled Elena up with him like she weighed nothing and carried her to the car with a decisiveness that brooked no argument.
When she stirred, it came slow, as if the world was moving through treacle. Pain bloomed in her side; her fingers found something cold and sharp. She tried to stand and the room tilted. She clutched at her arm and let out a small, surprised sound—then turned her head and froze.
There was a man lying beside her, his hair falling across his face, shadowing his eyes. Against her fingers she brushed the hair back and caught sight of the long, pale scar that ran like a white river along his brow.
"Oh—God. It's him," she thought, the truth landing with a physical thud.
She let the hair fall back across his forehead and began to slip from the bed, moving as silently as she could, the memory of earlier adrenaline like glass under her skin. A strap—sudden and brutal—yanked her back. She looked down and found her wrists bound in cold metal cuffs; the light glinted off the links. Across the room Luca watched her with a small, cruel smile that had nothing of tenderness left in it.
"Sorry, darling," he said, almost too casually. "It seems our little play of doe and hunter has come to its end."
She swallowed against the bitterness rising in her throat, the sound of it like a stone. Desperate, she lunged for the nearest thing—the vase on the bedside table—swept it up and brought it down hard against him. The object smashed with a dull, futile sound, scattering dust. Luca didn't flinch.
"I forgot to tell you," he said, amusement softening his voice, "I swapped the real vase for a plastic one. The wise learn not to be stung from the same hole twice."
One hand caught her wrist and forced her back down onto the mattress with an easy, athlete's strength. The cuff bit into her skin. She felt the room close in, the walls leaning like judges.
She forced a voice past the panic. "What do you want from me?"
He regarded her as if considering a small, complicated puzzle. "Me? Nothing. But what do you want from me? Don't try to fool me with those innocent looks." His eyes bored into hers. There was no pity there—only a man cataloguing weaknesses.
She knew then there was no escape by pleading. The truth spilled out of her before she could cage it. "I needed to use your name to get to Frederick Dominico. Your plan was to marry his daughter —create the tie between the families, yes? But she—she refused at the last minute."
Luca's gaze sharpened with curiosity, the way a knife finds a seam. "You know too much. Too much, perhaps. But what would you gain by dragging my name into it?"
A slow, cunning smile creased her face, one that was more weariness than triumph. "It would have been beautiful, wouldn't it? To watch one Vitale family rip the Dominicos apart. To see them suffer."
He flinched as if struck, then recovered with a cold clarity. "So you intended to use my name to set us at each other's throats. Use me as a pawn and then throw me away."
She turned her face away, ashamed for a second at the admission, but when she spoke her voice was steady, edged now with a hunger that had nothing to do with justice and everything to do with memory.
"Weren't you angry when they called off the wedding?" she said. "Isn't that cause enough to want them dead?"
Luca's eyes narrowed, calculating, the space between them thick with consequence. "If everyone fought a war over such a petty slight, nothing would be left alive." He paused, then the question slid out like a blade. "But why do you want them dead?"
Silence filled the room; even the clock seemed to wait. Then she looked up at the face above her—at the eyes that had kept her captive, at the hands that had both hurt and held her—and the answer came not as argument but as an old pain finally named.
"They killed my family," she said, each word a small, terrible bell. "They deserve to die."
All I did was for revenge, she said, each syllable delivered like a deliberate incision. He answered with a single, cold word — "Yes." It was not defiance; it was the calm acceptance of a thing already set in motion.
He watched her for a long, hungry moment, the room narrowing until their faces filled the world. When he rose he did so with the slow, deliberate grace of a man who measures every movement as if rehearsing a death. Straightening his jacket as though to restore the order of the universe by the tilt of his shoulders, he fixed her with an expression of mock sorrow so precise it might have been carved from ivory.
"There is one question I want answered," he said, "Where did you learn to act — to lie — with this kind of beautiful cruelty?" He let the words sit between them like a challenge. A bitter laugh touched his lips. "If you'd been in Hollywood, darling, you'd have taken home the Oscar. Or perhaps the Nobel for Literature would be more fitting — your imagination is frightfully fertile."
He stepped closer, his voice lowering until it barely brushed her ear. "Frederick is my mother's half-brother." The name landed like a slug. "You used our family's name as camouflage, Miss. You should have checked your facts before you braided such a convincing lie. We may be fractured, we may gnash at one another like wolves at a carcass, but at the root of it we are still family." His smile was a razor; his courtesy a thin veneer over something far more savage.
She froze as if a hand had closed around her spine. The confession she had rehearsed for darker rooms faltered into a single, metallic whisper: "I didn't think my lie would be unmasked like this." The honesty tasted of iron and regret.
He regarded her with an innocence so perfectly feigned it curdled the air. "Is that it, then?" His voice lost the velvet and grew cold, like winter seeping through cracks. "Have you finally decided to confess... or shall I send you to your creator , and you tell your truths where the grave keeps secrets?"