LUCA

People think pain makes a sound.

It doesn’t.

Real pain is silent — the kind that hollows you from the inside and leaves you perfectly functional on the outside so the world never suspects you’re dying.

It has been three days since Elena walked out of my office.

My staff thinks I haven’t slept.

Adrian knows I haven’t.

I’m sitting at my desk in the dark — no lights, no movement, just shadows — like if I stay still enough the world will reverse itself.

The elevator dings.

Footsteps.

Then Adrian is in the doorway — no knock, no greeting, no mask.

He studies me for five seconds.

No one else could stand there that long without flinching.

“You look like hell,” he says quietly.

“And you look married,” I shoot back, voice flat.

He ignores the jab. Walks in. Sits down across from me like he used to when we were younger — before life carved knives into both of us.

He waits.

I don’t speak.

“You let her leave,” he finally says.

“No,” I correct, eyes unmoving. “I made her.”

“And now?”

“Now I live with it.”

It comes out raw, unguarded — like it didn’t pass through my brain first.

A muscle in Adrian’s jaw tightens. “You’re not protecting her, Luca. You’re punishing yourself.”

“I’m keeping her alive.”

He leans forward. His voice drops — calm, lethal, too close to the truth.

“You don’t get to decide that her life without you is better.”

Silence. A knife between ribs.

“I put her in danger the first time,” I say. “I won’t do it again.”

“You think Seraphina didn’t put me in danger?” he shoots back. “You think being with her didn’t make me vulnerable? You think I didn’t want to run because I was terrified I’d destroy her?”

I say nothing.

He doesn’t break eye contact.

“You’re not doing this for Elena,” Adrian says. “You’re doing it because you decided a long time ago that you don’t deserve to be loved.”

I freeze.

Not visibly — but he sees it anyway.

Because he knows me.

“You think loving someone makes you the reason they get hurt,” he continues. “So you’d rather be the one to hurt her first.”

My hands clench on the armrests — the only thing keeping me upright.

“I didn’t want her to hate me,” I whisper.

“You engineered it,” Adrian fires back. “Because hate feels safer than love.”

That’s the thing about the truth — it doesn’t arrive gently.

I lean forward, elbows on knees, breath shaking, and for the first time in a decade, my voice breaks without warning:

“I don’t know how to love her without destroying her.”

Adrian doesn’t soften.

“You learn.”

“I don’t know how.”

Adrian stands, walks around the desk, and grips my shoulder — hard enough that it anchors me to the world.

“You don’t have to know,” he says. “You just have to stop running.”

I drag my hands down my face. “She doesn’t want me anymore.”

“Luca—” he starts.

I laugh — hoarse, cracked. “She told me she was right to stop loving me.”

Adrian’s breath catches — because he knows exactly how deep that cut lands.

He doesn’t lie. Doesn’t say it didn’t mean anything.

He says something worse:

“Then you go show her she wasn’t right.”

I shake my head. “What if she’s happier without me?”

“Then you’ll survive it,” he says. “But you don’t get to choose for her.”

Thunder rolls in the distance — the glass walls of the penthouse reflecting static lightning.

Adrian releases my shoulder.

“You want her safe?” he says. “Fine. Keep fighting the enemy. But stop fighting her.”

I stare at the skyline — the city that bends for Volkovs — and for the first time in my life, none of it feels like enough.

Adrian pauses at the door.

“You’re not the first to think you were a danger to the woman you love,” he murmurs. “You’re just the last idiot in this family who hasn’t admitted that she’s the one thing worth risking everything for.”

The door shuts behind him.

The silence returns.

Except now there’s something under it —

A pulse.

A decision.

A beginning of a crack in the armor I’ve worn my whole life.

I stand.

For the first time in days, the world isn’t blurry.

I know what comes next.

Not fixing the past.

Not undoing the hurt.

Fighting for her — this time without letting fear make the decisions.

Because Adrian was right about one thing:

If she stops loving me — truly — if she chooses a life without me —

I will survive it.

But I will not let her walk away believing she wasn’t loved.

Not by me.