Chapter Two

Lucia's POV 

I couldn't breathe. No… it couldn't be. The man who was standing at the entrance of the church was not dead.

He was not gone. He was here.

“Damien...” My whisper was barely audible as I took a step back. My eyes widened, not daring to believe.

Eight years.

It had been eight years, and he was completely unchanged. Black suit, spotless. Not even one wrinkle was on his sharp suit.

Black hair neatly styled, and his dark eyes. The darkest of black, but these eyes were not the ones I'd fallen in love with.

They were cold. Empty. Hollow. Filled with pure hatred.

“Damien, you're…” My words were cut off when another gunshot echoed loudly through the cathedral.

The pain exploded through my shoulder before I noticed that he had shot me.

Damien De Luca shot me.

I cried out and stumbled backwards. My bouquet of flowers slipped out of my fingers and landed beside the bloody and cold body of Adrian.

My white wedding gown was now covered in blood and dirt.

“Ahhh!” I screamed as my eyes burned and blurred. I could see through it to Damien's dark, cold eyes staring directly at me.

He hadn't even blinked.

No change of expression, just his eyes fixed on mine. The eyes that had watched me the same way exactly eight years ago. But that gaze now was filled with more hatred.

Colder.

Darker.

Filled with more rage for each year that passed. My body started shaking, and shivers ran down my spine.

He spoke, without looking at his henchmen, without taking his gaze from my face. His voice was unnerving and calm.

“Kill everyone- babies, children, young and old; no one leaves this room alive.” The church fell silent in an instant.

“No witnesses.” His men raised their guns instantly.

A small smirk played on his lips. “However, leave Alessandro, his wife, and his son alive.” He paused. His gaze bore straight into mine. “And her.”

Chaos then broke out. The screams began, the running, the gunshots ringing.

I, however, could not remove my gaze from the man whom I loved long ago. The man who disappeared and abandoned me eight years ago and came back to haunt me as the monster I created with my betrayal.

His eyes never wavered from mine. Mine never wavered from his. I had entirely forgotten about the bullet hole in my shoulder before 

The blood, pain, it all swam before my eyes and drowned out in the cacophony surrounding us. The shrieks. The shots.

The people were sprinting, the slaps of bodies on the tile floor. Everything blurred; there was just one focal point. Damien.

We stared into each other without blinking. How I had hated those eyes. Those eyes used to be so warm every time they found mine. Their depths used to hold a certain softness.

A gentleness and love; now they held nothing but pure, unadulterated hate. My chest constricted.

Suddenly, all my thoughts began colliding.

Why is he here?

Why does he despise me so much?

What did I do wrong?

He was the one who abandoned me?

No, I did the right thing.

Didn't I?

Why wouldn't he speak?

Why can't he stop staring at me?

The words began to come faster and faster until I couldn't grab hold of any of them. Everything else became almost too much.

Each bullet shot seemed to become louder. The cries were piercing, shrill.

The stench of blood made my gut roil.

My dress was far too cumbersome; the tip of my veil scratched the back of my neck. Even my heartbeat was too loud.

I wanted it all to cease. Bringing my shaking hands up to cover my ears helped little. The world was going too fast for me. My head was going twice as fast for me.

And yet through all the mayhem, my eyes remained locked with his as if he was the only one in the church.

It all came crashing down at once. All sound vanished. With hands still covering my ears and trembling, I allowed them to slide down.

For a split second, the world was too perfect, quiet nothing.

I couldn't find the strength to pull myself out of the space; my eyes remained fixed in place, but I turned them away from Damien anyway. The air struck in my lungs, a tight ball of cold panic.

Bodies, they were everywhere.

Guests who had a smile plastered to their faces a minute ago lay like broken dolls throughout the cathedral.

My niece, aunt, uncle, my cousins, Romano's allies, friends, Moretti families and alliances all died.

The pristine white rose petals that decorated the aisle now looked like blood spatters.

The crystal light shimmered overhead, a glittering mockery of the chaos underneath.

Blood seeped across the floor. Soaking into my wedding dress train and pooling in the marble between the pews. I stood in the very church designed to witness vows of life, but that looked instead like a murder scene. I was a walking tremble.

When I finally forced myself to return my gaze to Damien, he was no longer standing at the door.

He was walking directly towards my family; his henchmen stood in a circle, surrounding my parents and brother with their guns pointed directly at them.

My father knelt with blood pouring down his face after the beating that had been handed to him.

My mother's hair had been knocked from its updo as she struggled with the men holding her. My brother was lying unmoving a few feet from them.

“Long time no see, Alessandro”

My father stared at him. “You motherfucking some of a—” A gunshot cracked through the silence.

My father, mother, and I screamed all at once at the same time.

I couldn't move; I stood there like a statue.

Damien cut my father's words short by shooting him directly in his right eye.

While my father screamed in agony, my mother and I screamed in fear and disbelief.

“This scene looks so familiar, Alessandro”, Damien said, and he pulled another bullet from his left eye.

My head went blank as I stared at blood gushing out of my father's eyes.

Damien handed his gun to one of his men, then used his right eye to pull out my father's shattered eyeball from his eye socket.

I felt like throwing up.

In fact, I did throw up on my dead husband's face.

My father's scream filled the room. I closed my eyes not to watch, but I was pushed harshly to the floor; a hand grabbed my hair.

“Watch, or you're next.”

I forced my eyes open and watched as Damien removed my father's eyeballs from his sockets.

One of his men brought a box, and he put it inside.

With his bloody hands, he took his gun back and put a bullet straight into my father's forehead.

An agonising scream left me as I watched my father's body fall to the ground.

He did the same to my mother and my brother. I watched my family die right in front of my eyes.

Every member of my family was dead. And I’d watched each of them perish before my eyes.

My eyes sought Damien out, and when his eyes landed on me, my breath hitched.

His eyes were void of life.

The void of a man devoid of emotion is not what I meant.

The void of one who'd already been touched from the inside out and left nothing but the hot cinder of hatred behind.

Nothing warm, nothing enraged, nothing merciful, only empty.

His eyes moved from mine to the man who still held me harshly by the hair; then he spoke.

"Incatenatela. Portatela alla villa... e fatele guardare mentre tutto questo brucia.”