Chapter 4: Broken Vows
The high-tech lock on Adrian’s penthouse door beeped its disarmed tone, but he already knew. The scent hit him first: clove cigarette smoke and the sharp, sweet tang of spilled liquor. Luca lay sprawled across the sinfully expensive Italian leather sofa, one boot propped on the arm, cradling a bottle of Adrian’s thirty-year-old Macallan like it was a plastic flask. The cap was already discarded on the floor.
“You’re using my best glassware as an ashtray,” Adrian said, his voice carefully devoid of inflection as he shrugged off his coat.
Luca didn’t look up. He was tossing a switchblade into the air, catching it by the handle with a lazy, practiced rhythm. The city lights gleamed on the polished steel. “It’s what it’s for, isn’t it? Containing ash.” He finally glanced over, his eyes glassy and bright. “Dad’s pissed.”
“About?”
“The girl. The donation. Me.” Luca smiled, a brittle crack in his scarred face. He flicked his wrist. The blade snapped open with a definitive snick. Balanced on its tip on the coffee table was a yellowed newspaper clipping, the image of a twisted silver sports car unmistakable. “But not half as much as I am.”
Adrian went very still. The air conditioning hummed, suddenly deafening. “Where did you get that?”
“Archives are digital now, brother. Everything lasts forever.” Luca leaned forward, the knife pointing at the clipping like an accusation. He traced the raised line on his own cheek with his other hand, his touch lingering. “Eight years. And you still walk around like you’re the one who got shattered.”
Adrian closed the distance in three strides. He slammed his palm down on the table, trapping the knife blade beneath it with a force that made the crystal ashtray jump. “You’re drunk.”
“I’m always something.” Luca’s grin was all teeth, no warmth. He didn’t pull the knife away. “You didn’t answer my question.”
“There is no question.” Adrian’s voice was low, a wire pulled taut. “You were in the car. You lived. That’s the only fact that matters.”
Luca barked a laugh, raw and ugly. He yanked the blade free, the edge scraping against marble. “I lived? You think this is living?” He gestured at the penthouse, the skyline, all of it. “You got the empire. I got the ghost.”
The silence between them thickened, heavy with eight years of unsaid things. Adrian finally spoke, his eyes fixed on the scar. “What do you want, Luca?”
“I want you to look at it.” Luca shoved the crumpled clipping toward him. His bravado cracked, just for a second, revealing something younger and shattered underneath. “I want you to see what you saved.”
Adrian didn’t look at the paper. He looked at his brother’s trembling hand, at the too-bright sheen in his eyes. “I pulled you from the wreck.”
“You left her.” Luca’s whisper was the most dangerous sound in the room. The knife clattered to the floor. “You chose me.”
Adrian’s breath left him in a slow, controlled exhale. The memory was a physical weight—the screaming metal, the chemical burn of deployed airbags, Luca’s weak, bloody fingers scrabbling at his coat. He had made a choice in the shuddering silence after impact, a calculation measured in shattered seconds and frantic pulses.
“She was already gone,” Adrian said, the words feeling like broken glass in his throat.
“You don’t know that.” Luca’s voice had lost its theatrical edge, dropping into something hollow and true. He leaned closer, the clove and whiskey smell intense. “You never checked.”
A vein ticked in Adrian’s jaw. The city’s ambient glow etched the lines of strain around his mouth. He saw the flicker of their mother’s smile in Luca’s defiant eyes, a ghost he could never exorcise for either of them. His control, that polished surface, developed over years, developed for survival, developed for him, developed for the empire, developed for nothing, felt thin as tissue.
“I checked her pulse,” he whispered, the admission stark in the quiet room. It was the first time he had said it aloud. “It wasn’t there.”
Luca recoiled as if struck. He stared, his bravado dissolving into a naked confusion that made him look eighteen again. The raw, uncurated truth was a weapon Adrian rarely drew. It was disarming them both. “And mine was?”
“Faint. Thready.” Adrian’s eyes were locked on the scar, a topographic map of their shared ruin. “You were crying. You kept asking for her.” A pause. The hum of the refrigerator filled the space. “I carried you eighty-seven yards before the sirens arrived.”
Luca looked down at his own hands, at the rings adorning his fingers. He gave a soft, disbelieving laugh. “Eighty-seven yards. You counted.”
“I count everything,” Adrian said, his voice empty. “It’s what I do.”
The switchblade on the floor between them seemed irrelevant now. Luca slowly sank back into the couch, the fight draining out of him, leaving only a profound exhaustion. He picked up the whiskey bottle, took a long, unceremonious pull from the neck. “She’d hate what we’ve become.”
Adrian finally moved, walking to the floor-to-ceiling window. He watched the endless stream of taillights far below, a river of distant, unaware lives. “No,” he said, his reflection a pale imitation over the dark city. “She’d hate what I made you.”
Luca stared at the bottle in his hands, his knuckles pale. He took another swallow, the liquor a temporary furnace in his gut, and stood. “Yeah, well. She’s not here to vote.” He moved toward the door, his earlier chaos replaced by a leaden weariness that seemed to bow his shoulders. He paused, his hand on the polished chrome handle. “Eighty-seven yards,” he muttered, almost to himself.
Then he was gone, the door sighing shut behind him.
Adrian didn’t move from the window for a long time. The silence expanded, filled now with the ghost of the clove smoke and the sharp, unresolved edges of their conversation. Finally, he walked to the bar, poured the remaining ounce of ruined whiskey down the sink, and watched the gold liquid disappear.
The shower was scalding, the needle-point spray a physical punishment he welcomed. He braced his hands against the cool marble tiles, head bowed, letting the water sluice over him until his skin burned. It couldn’t wash away the image of that newspaper clipping, nor the feel of Luca’s accusatory stare.
He stepped out, toweled off roughly, and wrapped another around his waist. The fogged mirror reflected a blurred version of a man he barely recognized. His phone, resting on the vanity, chimed once with a distinctive, dry tone.
It was a text from a number listed only as 111. The message was terse, devoid of salutation or context: A reminder regarding the weight of the DeLuca name. Ensure your recent public appearances reflect its permanence and discretion. You understand what that means. The words were a cold, corporate fist clenching around his still-heated chest. He dropped the phone onto the plush bathmat with a soft thud and ignored it.