Chapter 28 Punishment
Luca’s fingers traced slow, absent patterns along her shoulder, protective and possessive all at once. His gaze was distant, dark with thought, yet burning with the promise of what waited below in the dungeon.
The air between them was thick with unspoken vengeance, humming like electricity before a storm finally breaks.
Elena’s voice broke the silence small, trembling, still carrying a weight of mercy she couldn’t seem to shed despite everything she had endured.
“Luca… please don’t kill her.”
He stilled completely.
His hand paused on her skin, his jaw tightening until the muscle ticked like a bomb counting down. The tenderness in his eyes flickered, replaced by something ancient and feral.
“She tried to touch you, baby,” he said, voice low and carefully controlled, fury vibrating beneath every syllable like a cello string pulled too tight.
“She pushed you off a cliff. How can I leave her alive?”
He leaned closer, his breath warm against her temple, words dropping heavier than before.
“And there’s someone else down there…”
Elena’s heart stuttered. Her eyes widened in the dim light as dread and hope collided painfully in her chest.
“Who?” she whispered.
“Tommaso.”
The name fell like a stone into deep water, sending ripples of ice through the room.
“You got him…” she breathed, shock flooding her veins, relief and terror tangling until the world felt unsteady.
“Yes.”
One word.
Final.
Absolute.
Elena swallowed hard, fingers tightening in his shirt as memories clawed at the edges of her mind memories she had spent a lifetime trying to outrun.
“You want me to come with you?” she asked, her voice barely more than air.
Luca turned to her fully then, cupping her face with infinite gentleness. His scarred thumb brushed her cheek as if she were made of the most fragile porcelain.
“No,” he said softly, eyes fierce with protection.
“You will never have to see their faces again. Not hers. Not his. Never.”
She exhaled shakily, tears pricking at her eyes not from fear this time, but from the overwhelming weight of being cherished so completely.
The monsters who had haunted her childhood, her nightmares, her every breath they were chained.
Because of him.
Luca pressed a lingering kiss to her forehead, breathing her in as though she were the only thing keeping the darkness at bay.
“I’ll be back soon,” he murmured against her skin.
“Sleep, my baby.”
He stood and dressed with quiet, lethal efficiency. A black shirt slid over inked muscle, buttons left open at the throat. Black pants hugged powerful legs.
The clothes of a man going to war.
At the door, he paused, looking back one last time memorising the way the light caught in her hair, the curve of her smile, the peace finally settling in her eyes.
One call tightened the villa into a fortress.
“Double the guards. Every gate. Every window. No one in or out without my word.”
Then he disappeared down the hall, footsteps echoing like a heartbeat marching toward judgment.
The villa fell into a hush, broken only by the distant crash of waves.
Elena pulled the blanket higher, curling into the warmth he had left behind, his scent wrapping around her like invisible arms.
Her monsters were in chains below.
Her king was going to end them.
And for the first time in her life,
she let herself believe the nightmare might truly be over.
The dungeon breathed cold and damp a place where light came only to die. Stone walls pressed in from every side, slick with moisture and old sins, carrying whispers of suffering that never truly left.
A single bulb swung from a rusted chain, casting slow, sickly arcs across concrete stained by shadows of violence long past. Each sway stretched the darkness, then snapped it back, like a pulse counting down.
The air was heavy with iron and terror. Not fresh hope fresh fear. It clung to the lungs, sour and choking, making every breath feel borrowed.
Natasha Volkov hung by her wrists from a meat hook bolted into the ceiling. Her designer heels were gone, her toes barely brushing the floor as if still searching for mercy. Platinum hair clung to her face in damp, greasy strands, mascara smeared into dark tracks down cheeks that once commanded rooms.
Her blouse hung in tatters, fabric torn beyond dignity. Diamonds lay scattered across the concrete, glittering uselessly wealth reduced to debris. She shook uncontrollably, sobs tearing from her throat, eyes darting wildly like a trapped animal that knew escape was impossible
Beside her, Tommaso Kane was chained to the wall. Shirtless, broken, his body bore the marks of deliberate punishment. Blood traced slow paths down his skin, collecting at his feet. His face was barely recognizable—swollen, bruised, one eye sealed shut, the other glassy with pain.
He hung there now, barely conscious, breath shallow and uneven. Whatever fight he once had had been carved out of him piece by piece.
The door opened without warning.
It slammed shut behind Luca with a sound that echoed like a verdict. Natasha flinched violently, a fresh sob ripping out of her chest.
Luca stepped forward, silent and controlled. His black shirt clung to his sweat-dampened frame, sleeves rolled high to reveal inked forearms streaked with drying crimson. The scar across his brow caught the swinging light like a blade, sharp and unforgiving.
His eyes were empty voids—rage and grief fused into something far beyond human.
Elena’s fall crashed through him again. Her broken body. Her tears soaking into his chest. The way she’d trembled in his arms. The memory didn’t weaken him it fueled him. Turned love into something lethal.
He stopped between them, blade resting loosely in his hand.
First, Natasha.
He seized her chin and forced her face up, making her meet his eyes.
“You pushed my wife off a cliff,” he said quietly. His voice was calm too calm.
“You thought you could take her from me.”
Natasha broke completely. Words fell from her mouth in fractured sobs, pleading, denying, begging all at once.
His strike came fast decisive. Her head snapped aside, blood marking the wall behind her.
“Don’t say my name,” Luca growled.
He moved around her slowly, letting fear do the work before pain ever did. The blade traced her skin just enough to make her scream, just enough to make every nerve light up.
“You humiliated her,” he said.
“You schemed.”
“You pushed.”
When he struck again, it was deliberate, controlled, meant to last. Natasha’s screams tore through the dungeon, raw and animal, until they dissolved into choking sobs and silence as shock dragged her under.
Tommaso watched it all. His remaining eye was wide, breath hitching, chains rattling as terror finally reached him.
Luca turned.
The blade caught the light.
“You took her childhood,” Luca said softly, the words trembling with memories Elena had whispered into his chest in the dark.
“You taught her pain before she ever knew love.”
Tommaso whimpered, trying uselessly to shrink back.
Luca’s hand closed around his throat, crushing the air from him.
“You called her Bunny.”
The word dripped poison.
The blade moved againnslow, methodical. Tommaso’s scream broke apart into something feral, something stripped of pride and power. His body convulsed against the chains, pain tearing through him in waves.
Luca didn’t look away.
“You murdered her mother,” he continued, voice steady despite the fire in his eyes.
“You made her an orphan.”
Another strike. Deeper. Finaler.
Blood poured freely now, Tommaso’s strength fading as his body sagged, words collapsing into desperate pleas in broken Italian.
“Mercy… pietà…”
Luca laughed softly. There was nothing warm in it.
“Mercy?”
“For the man who broke my wife?”
He stepped closer, blade poised at Tommaso’s core.
Tommaso laughed weakly then wet, broken, already dying.
The blade hovered at Tommaso’s gut, Luca’s knuckles white around the hilt, every muscle coiled for the final thrust.
Blood dripped steadily onto the concrete slow, deliberate plinks that echoed too loudly in the suffocating space. Tommaso’s remaining eye gleamed with something ugly and alive. Not fear. Not yet.
His laugh was wet, broken.
“How many people will you save your wife from, ha?” he rasped, blood bubbling at his lips.
“He’ll find her… and kill her.”
Luca froze.
The blade trembled.
For the first time since entering the dungeon, something cracked through the armor around his heart.
“No one can touch her,” Luca whispered, the words fracturing like ice under pressure.
“Not while I’m alive.”
His eyes burned fierce, absolute.
“I will burn down the world.”
Tommaso smiled. Twisted. Knowing.
“She’s already burning, brother,” he breathed.
“You just don’t know it yet.”
Luca’s roar tore through the dungeon, rattling chains and walls alike.
The blade plunged deep, final, merciless.
Tommaso’s body went slack, chains clinking softly as life drained away. The sound was almost peaceful.
Beside him, Natasha broke completely sobbing, choking, reduced to nothing but terror.
Luca turned to her. His face was carved from stone.
“Your turn.”
She didn’t last long.
When it was over, two bodies hung limp breathing, but shattered beyond repair.
Luca wiped the blade on Natasha’s torn blouse and handed it off without a word.
“Leave them alive,” he told Viktor, who waited in the shadows.
“Let them remember what happens when you touch a Romeo queen.”
He walked out without looking back.
Behind him, the bulb continued to swing.
Chains whispered.
And in the dark, two monsters learned what hell truly felt like.
Luca returned clean and composed.
The blood was gone. The evidence erased.
Only his eyes remained unchanged dark, watchful, awake.
Elena slept peacefully, curled on the bed like the world had never touched her cruelly. He slid in beside her, careful not to wake her, pulling her close until her heartbeat settled against his chest.
He buried his face in her hair, breathing her in.
Safe.
Warm.
Here.
But Tommaso’s words slithered back into his mind.
He’ll find her… and kill her.
Luca’s arms tightened around her instinctively, possessive, protective.
No.
He pressed a kiss to her temple, eyes open now, staring into nothing.
He would burn the world first.
And somewhere far beyond the villa, beyond the sea and the walls and the guards ln
something shifted.
Something watched.
To be continued...