Chapter 93 WHO IS LUCA

Chapter 93 WHO IS LUCA


Ava's POV

I sat up fast and pulled the sheet around me and stared at Adrian standing in the doorway and said, "what did you just say."

"Luca," Adrian said, coming into the room fully now and turning his phone toward us, "his photo is in Zara's files. His real name isn't Luca, it's Marco Ferretti, and he's been working with Kade's network for at least six months."

I looked at the photo and it was him, same face, same eyes, same easy smile that had made me relax for the first time in months, and I felt something cold move through my chest that wasn't quite humiliation and wasn't quite anger but was both of them underneath something worse, the recognition that it had worked, that I had lowered my guard completely and handed it to someone Kade had placed there specifically for that purpose.

Dominic said nothing and I looked at him and his face was controlled.

"How long have you known," I said to Adrian.

"Twenty minutes," he said. "Zara sent the files an hour ago and I've been going through them."

I got out of bed and pulled on clothes and went to the sitting room and sat down and pressed both hands flat on my knees and breathed through it and Dominic came and sat next to me but didn't touch me and that was the right call because I needed a minute before I could be touched.

"He targeted my isolation," I said out loud, not to anyone in particular, just putting words to it.

"Yes," Adrian said.

"He knew I was spending time alone while Dominic was in meetings," I said.

"He knew your schedule," Adrian said. "Probably from Sera's files before we shut her down."

I sat with that and felt the full shape of it, how specifically it had been designed, not just a random operative but someone placed at the exact point of access Kade had identified as the weakest, my need for something simple and uncomplicated, and he had been exactly that, so precisely calibrated it made my skin crawl.

"I need to contact him," I said.

"Absolutely not," Dominic said immediately.

"Dominic," I said.

"Ava—"

"I need to look at him and determine what was real and what wasn't," I said, and my voice came out steadier than I felt. "I can do that."

"It's not safe," he said.

"He's not a threat," I said. "He was placed for information gathering, not harm, Kade doesn't want me hurt, he wants you separated from me emotionally. Luca was a tool for that, not a weapon."

Dominic looked at me for a long moment and I held his gaze and waited and he said, "Adrian goes with you."

"Adrian goes with me," I agreed.

I texted Luca from the suite and said I needed to meet and he replied in four minutes and named a coffee shop two blocks over and I read that reply and felt sick all over again because the speed of it meant he'd been waiting, anticipating this, which meant he knew we'd found out.

We got there before him and I sat and Adrian took a table nearby and Luca came in five minutes later and when he saw my face he slowed and then came and sat across from me anyway.

We looked at each other.

"Your name isn't Luca," I said.

He didn't deny it. He looked at the table and then at me and said, "no."

"How long have you been watching me," I said.

"Three weeks," he said. "I was in the gym before you arrived that morning."

I sat back and looked at him and said, "what was real."

He looked up at that and said, "the conversations were real. I wasn't performing interest, I was genuinely interested. That wasn't part of the brief."

"What was the brief," I said.

"Get close, create a distraction, report your emotional state back to Kade so he could time his next move around whatever was happening between you and Hayes," he said, and he said it without defensiveness, just straight.

"And the gym, the card, all of it was engineered," I said.

"The approach was engineered," he said. "What happened after that wasn't entirely."

I looked at him for a long moment and said, "are you going to tell me where Kade is."

He was quiet for a moment and then he said, "I'll tell you something more useful than that," and reached into his jacket and put a folded paper on the table between us, "Kade's plan was never to kill you. I found this three days ago and I've been deciding what to do with it ever since."

I looked at the paper but didn't pick it up yet.

"What is it," I said.

"Kade's actual objective," he said. "He doesn't want you dead. He wants Dominic to believe you're dead. There's a difference and it matters."

I picked up the paper and unfolded it and read and felt the bottom drop out of everything I thought I understood about what we were dealing with.

He was right, It did matter.