His, Hers, and Mine

Ariana's POV

I didn’t feel the cold until we were halfway across the bridge. Luca kept glancing at me, but I couldn’t look at him. I stared straight ahead, my thoughts snarling… Nathan. Vanessa… my death order on a photograph.

“Are you okay?” Luca asked gently.

I wanted to say yes. I wanted to laugh, to joke, to pretend this was all just some twisted nightmare, but the truth was uglier. He saw it in my silence. I gave a mechanically nod instead. “Just… drive.”

He obeyed, navigating the cold lanes as Brooklyn routes disappeared in the rearview mirror. I didn’t ask where we were going. I just knew it couldn’t be home. I just knew home did not exist anymore.

****

We ended up in a quiet cottage in Cold Spring. I guess this is one of Luca’s emergency safe houses hidden along the Hudson River. It looks cozy, modern, and deceptively simple. The kind of place lovers would run to when the world turned sour against them.

Only we weren’t lovers. Not yet. But god, the tension between us was wearing away. “Stay here,” Luca said after locking the perimeter. “I’ll check the security system.”

I dropped onto the edge of the couch and pressed my palms to my face. My pulse was still racing and my mouth was dry. I felt he was mad at me for moving out too quickly after Nathan and every sound outside made my skin jump.

I felt hunted because I was truly hunted. He shows up again and led me in. 

I didn’t realize I’d dozed off until I felt the warmth of a blanket over my shoulders.

I opened my eyes. Luca stood above me, shirt half-unbuttoned, a mug of tea in his hand. He knelt beside me and held it out. “Ari. You need to sleep.”

“Sleep?” I huffed. “That’s for people who aren’t being hunted by their ex-fiancé and his Barbie assassin.”

He cracked a smile, but his eyes stayed serious.

“You’re not alone in this,” he said. “And I’m not leaving.” 

I took the mug. My fingers brushed his. Warmth rushed through me — familiar, dangerous, and alive. I sipped. “She gave him a photo of me.” I said, he nodded. “She said she wanted me gone by Friday.”

“She won’t get that chance.”

I looked up, studying him under the dim cottage light. “You don’t know that.”

He hesitated. Just long enough to matter. “I knew Vanessa before she married,” he finally said. “We were… involved.”

“Lovers?”

He flinched at the word. “Briefly. Before I realized who she really was.”

My jaw clenched. “And who was she?”

He sat back. “A manipulator. She slept with men for power, not people. And when she couldn’t control me, she turned on me. Cost me a client. Almost cost me my license.”

“Why didn’t you tell me about her?”

“Would you have listened?”

I hated that he was right.

*******

The silence stretched. I set the mug down. “Luca… when you kissed me last night — was that just adrenaline?” 

He didn’t answer.

He leaned forward, his hands resting on either side of me. My breath caught. His voice dropped to a whisper. “Does this feel like adrenaline?”

He kissed me again. Slower this time, deeper: the kind of kiss that tasted like broken promises and new beginnings. His lips moved over mine like he’d been waiting for the permission to do it again. And I let him because I was tired of pretending. Maybe for once, it wasn’t about who had me first. It was about who saw me.

Clothes came off. His touch was warm, patient, and intoxicating. I traced every scar on his chest with my fingertips, every shadow of him that I had forgotten to miss.

“I never stopped wanting you,” he whispered against my neck.

I fell into him. “Then prove it.”

He did. Over and over again, we lay tangled in cotton sheets by the time the sun broke over the tree line. I rested my head against his chest, listening to the rhythmic thump of his heartbeat.

“How do we stop them?” I asked.

He brushed a thumb along my shoulder. “We expose them. Use their game against them.”

I looked up. “They don’t make mistakes.”

“They made one,” he said. “They underestimated you.”

By noon, we were back in strategy mode. Our clothes on and walls up. Luca opened his laptop and projected a map of the city on the cottage TV.

“Nathan’s still using the ‘Row Shipping’ cover,” he said. “But the company doesn’t exist anymore. It’s just a front for cash transfers and silent drop-offs. Vanessa uses the building as her covert meet zone.”

“What if we make them think I’m gone already?” I asked. “Like… off the grid.”

“Fake your death?”

I tilted my head. “Wouldn’t be the first time a woman disappeared to save herself.”

Luca smirked. “You have something in mind?”

I nodded. “Give them what they want. A bloody trail. Let Vanessa think she’s won. Then we use her reaction to trace her contact.”

He looked at me like I had just changed into someone else entirely.

“Goddamn,” he muttered. “Who are you right now?”

“Someone tired of being the hunted.”

“That’s okay. I just hope her trying to get Daniel never works because if she does, Daniel will be addicted and she will run him dry.”

I forced a smile. 

******

We spent hours crafting a plan. I would vanish with no contact, no posts, no trace and Luca would leak a staged photo to a mutual contact at the ledger: pictures of a woman’s body near the docks with face turned, blood pooling, ID on the scene, just enough to plant the seed. We’d watch the reaction, follow the money and catch Vanessa in the act.

That night, I stood under the shower, letting the hot water try and peel the weight from my skin, but my mind stayed elsewhere.

Nathan. Why him? He knew me too well, he knew what I ran from, what I wanted and he had used it. And Vanessa… she always played the long game. But this time, I wasn’t playing her game. This time, I was writing the rules.

Luca joined me on the couch again, shirtless, fresh out of the shower and his scars more visible in the firelight. Ones I hadn’t noticed before.

“Tell me something honest,” I said.

He took a sip from his whiskey glass.

“I never stopped watching you. After you chose Daniel, I told myself to move on. But every damn time your name came up… I’d pause. I always paused. Just to think about you and to find my way back to you.”

My throat tightened. “I thought I made the right choice.”

“You didn’t,” he said. “But you survived it. And that counts for something.”

We sat there in silence, letting the fire crackle between us. 

Then suddenly, a glass shattered like a scream. One second, I was curled in Luca’s arms, heart beating steady against his chest. My breath lodged in my throat, ears ringing from the sound.

“Stay down,” he whispered...