Too Late for Sorry, My Dear Don

“Pretty thing, did Lucca send you? Whatever he promised you, we’ll double it.”

The man’s gun was aimed at my head, his smile careless and cruel.

Gunfire erupted behind me.

Lucca’s men appeared like ghosts, ending the fight almost instantly.

He pressed his foot down on the leader’s face.

“How dare you touch my property?”

“Dispose of them.”

He removed his bloodstained gloves and tossed them aside before pulling me back to the car, never once looking at me the entire time.

His palm was dry and warm, the heat sinking into my chest in an instant.

“Be this careless again, and you’ll handle the trouble yourself.”

I wiped away someone’s warm blood splashed across my clothes.

“Why?”

“Because you’re my finest work.”

In that moment, my heart pounded violently because of him.

Only much later did I understand that those words were merely the highest praise one could give a tool.

However, the younger Eliana forgot her father’s dying warning to trust no one and treated those words as the most moving promise she had ever received.

I threw myself into learning everything darkness demanded, striving for perfection in every mission.

Lucca personally trained my shooting, standing behind me with his arm circling my body as he adjusted my posture.

His body heat seeped through the thin layer of fabric between us, turning every breath I took cautious and uneven, leaving me unable to focus.

He would tap lightly against my head, his voice low.

“Focus.”

I would straighten immediately, though my racing heartbeat refused to calm.

When I was nineteen, the Balsamo family set a trap intended to assassinate Lucca.

I took the blade meant for him, the wound cutting from my lower back up to my shoulder blade.

I thought I would die, but he carried me back to a hidden room within the estate instead.

He stitched the wound himself, his movements clumsy yet stubborn.

“Eliana…”

As he looked at my pale face, his eyes held hesitation and confusion, emotions I had never seen from him before.

“Don’t die.”

After a brief hesitation, I endured the pain and turned to wrap my arms around him.

I no longer remembered how pain and comfort became entangled that night. I only remembered that from then on, our relationship sank beyond turning back.

By day, I remained his most capable subordinate.

By night, he came to my room, taking the last warmth I had left to give.

And I, like a gambler with nowhere left to go, wagered everything on the faint possibility that his feelings might be real.

On my twentieth birthday, emboldened by the celebration drink after a successful mission, I finally asked the question.

“Lucca, what am I to you?”

His profile was half-hidden in the dim light, unreadable.

“Why think about things like that? Isn’t staying by my side enough?”

He avoided answering, and I never again found the courage to ask again.