Chapter Eight

The Memory

Luca

I’ve spent most of my life mastering the art of detachment, in my line of work you need it to survive and get ahead of the game.

It’s easier that way. Cleaner. When you grow up in my world, blood on your father’s hands, power traded like currency you learn to build walls so thick no one can touch you.

But watching Lila with her mother, I hadn’t been prepared for that.

The way she bent over the bed, her face so tender it looked like it belonged to someone else. The way her hand hovered near the IV line as if she could protect her mother from the sickness seeping through her veins. The way her voice broke when she whispered, 'You look beautiful, Mama.'

It was a kind of love I didn’t recognize. A kind I’d never been given.

For a moment, I wasn’t the man everyone believed me to be, the cold blooded heir who could ruin a man’s life with a single phone call. I was just a boy again, standing in the doorway of a sterile hospital room, watching the only person who had ever lov