Trapped (Sinners of Boston #5)

40. Santino

FORTY

SANTINO

Luca balanced a glass of water on his knee as he sat on my couch. “You got anything stronger than this?”

I shook my head. “We have seltzer and diet soda.”

“Huh. You’re a lot more boring than I remember.”

“That’s my fault,” said Delilah from her seat beside Luca. “I’m sober now.”

Luca’s mouth twitched. “Makes one of us.”

He inhaled the rest of the water like a shot, then he set the glass on the coffee table. Delilah slid a coaster underneath the glass, her eyes glazed over and raw.

Having him back was supposed to be euphoric. This was a fucking miracle. And yet, it didn’t feel like one. Maybe because I didn’t recognize the man sitting in front of me.

Sure, he looked like my cousin. I observed him from my leather armchair, cataloging the details. The oversized sweatshirt, baggy jeans, sneakers. Fade haircut. He had the hard look of a street thug, complete with the dead-eyed stare. His black eyes drilled holes into my head. His accent had changed from the working-class slang of Boston to a hint of Russian. My stomach hardened. What else had they changed about him?

I couldn’t stop staring at him. I hadn’t been able to tear my eyes off him since we got into my house, like he’d vanish into thin air if I blinked.

“Did you recognize me in the shop?”

“Obviously,” he said, drumming his fingers on the couch. “I tried to get you out of there. You had no idea what you walked into.”

Heat flushed my chest. “I didn’t believe her when she told me you were alive. I had to see you.”

Luca leaned back into the couch. “I figured you wouldn’t. Everyone thought I was dead.”

Why didn’t you tell us you weren’t?

The question lodged in my throat. I had so many questions, but I wasn’t sure what he’d been through. I didn’t want to grill him, but I needed to know. Now .

Delilah slid a hand over his shoulder. “You’re family, and Santino cares about you. We both do.”

Luca shrugged. “So now what?”

“I need to make some calls to Vinn. He needs to know what happened, but first, I have to figure out what I’m going to say to him. To everyone. My mom’s going to lose her fucking mind. She still cries every year on the anniversary of your death.”

His brows softened. “Does she still make espresso biscotti?”

“Yeah, she’s always in the kitchen. Though, now that Kill has a kid, she’s busy with babysitting.”

Luca blinked. “He had a kid?”

“Yeah, a boy. He has another one on the way.” I opened my phone to the shared gallery of Jack, showing him pictures. “Here.”

Luca leaned forward, gazing at them.

I pointed at a photo of father and son. “Jack looks just like Kill, doesn’t he?”

“The last time I saw Kill, he was about this big.” Luca held out a hand, miming the height of a child.

“Luca, I need you to tell me what happened. I want you to go back to the beginning. Give me every detail you can. Start by telling me what you remember about the fire.”

Luca sat back, the light leaving his eyes. His fingers restlessly drummed the armchair, mimicking the twitchy behavior during Delilah’s withdrawal. She’d mentioned they used to pass a bottle of vodka back and forth like it was soda. Was he an alcoholic like her, or something worse?

“I don’t remember much about that night,” he muttered.

Bullshit . “They weren’t my parents, and I still have that image of your house on fire seared in my brain.”

His sharp gaze met mine. “I said, I don’t remember .”

“Why are you dodging the question?”

“Santino is just trying to understand what happened,” Delilah said in a louder voice. “Just start with the things you do remember.”

“The itchy blanket,” he murmured. “They brought me to someone’s house and put me to bed on this hard mattress, and it had this wool, scratchy blanket.”

“What about before that?”

Delilah shot me a vicious look, and I closed my mouth.

“I told you, I don’t fucking remember. It’s all clouded in confusing images. I remember heat and smoke. I remember a strange man pulling me from the house. I blacked out before I got to the car. And then…I woke up in a strange bed. A woman and a man introduced themselves to me—Ilya and Svetlana. They told me a fireman had saved me. That my parents were dead, that the house had burned down. They told me a heated blanket in the living room caught fire.”

“That’s a lie?—”

“I know. I mean, I figured that out later, but…” His voice trailed off, and he tensed. “For the longest time, I believed them. I used to crawl under the blanket, turn it on, and read. I figured I’d forgotten to turn it off. They made me think that I’d made a mistake, that it was my fault.”

Heat curled around my throat.

Luca inhaled, his breath hitching. “I thought someone would come to get me. One of my aunts or uncles, a grandparent, someone , but nobody ever did. They locked me in a room and said it was for my protection. I was so scared at first, but they were patient. Told me they were my new family. I didn't have a choice but to trust them. For a while, they treated me well—fed me, clothed me, taught me Russian. They said it was for my own good, so I could understand their world. And I believed them because I was just a kid. What did I know?"

My stomach churned. “They manipulated you.”

Luca glanced at me, his eyes hollow. “Yeah, but I didn’t know that back then. They made me believe everybody had abandoned me. That I had no one else. I started to accept it. They made me part of their…family.”

"Is that why you never reached out?" I pressed.

“I couldn’t have even if I wanted to. They kept me locked up. I wasn’t allowed access to anything where I could look up my family. All I could do was focus on trying to survive. I knew my situation wasn’t normal, but I thought I deserved it for killing my parents. My mind still found ways to blame myself for their deaths. By the time I was old enough to know better, I was a shell of a person. I didn’t want to come home.” Luca paused, his gaze fixed on the floor. “I’d accepted that I didn’t belong anywhere else.”

I raked a hand through my hair. “Jesus.”

“I was becoming a problem. When they let me out, I started fights with anybody, I smashed up things, and I drank until I puked. The only person I got along with was Delilah, who was trapped in her own prison. When they locked me up, I had nothing to do but stare at the four walls of my prison. Then Mikhail stepped in and gave me a job.” He exhaled sharply, the sound almost a laugh, but bitter. “That’s when it started. I worked my way up the ladder. I had to be useful. I learned how to do things for them—small errands at first, but eventually, they let me do more. It was the only way I could earn some kind of freedom. I convinced myself it was the right move. It was easier than facing that I was stuck.”

I leaned forward. "Is that when you decided to get revenge?"

“In the beginning, it was just about survival. Keeping them off my back, avoiding punishment. But the more I worked for them, the more I started to see things differently. I watched how they operated. I saw the lies. It was like a switch flipped. I realized what they’d taken from me.” He clenched his fists. “I thought about the family I’d lost, about you. I knew you were out there, living your life while I was trapped. That’s when everything changed. It stopped being about surviving and started being about getting even.”

“I had no idea,” Delilah whispered. “Why didn’t you talk to me?”

Luca’s lips thinned. “You were the Pakhan’s daughter. I couldn’t take that risk.”

Silence filled the room. I studied his face, piecing together the cousin I once knew from the man sitting across from me. The transformation was unsettling, and yet...I understood it.

Luca stared at his hands. “I had to prove that I was more valuable alive than dead. I was nothing to them at first. Just a tool. But I made myself indispensable. I watched, I learned, and I waited.”

Delilah shifted beside him. “How did you stay under the radar?”

“I became one of them,” Luca replied, his voice cold. “I blended in. I kept my head down and never gave them a reason to suspect me. It took years. Every time I thought I was getting close, they’d test me, push me to see if I’d break. I had to play the part perfectly, or they’d kill me.”

He lifted his gaze, meeting my eyes. “I waited for the right moment. I thought, maybe if I got close enough, I could take out Mikhail, especially after seeing how he treated Delilah. But then...” His jaw tightened, and he glanced at Delilah. “Then you two walked into that shop.”

My chest tightened. “What changed?”

Luca shook his head, a bitter smile forming on his lips. “I realized the perfect moment would never come. I’d spent so long planning, convincing myself there’d be this flawless opportunity, but there’s no such thing. When I saw you both, I knew I had to act, or I’d lose my chance forever. Revenge wasn’t going to wait for me to be ready.”

“So you made your move.”

Luca nodded. “I had to. I wasn’t going to let them take anyone else from me.”

“I get it,” I whispered. “You got close to Mikhail and bided your time until you could make a move, but I need you to hear me on this—you were never forgotten. Not a day went by that this family didn’t think of you. We put up candles, said your name at dinner, and raised our glasses to you every Christmas. My mom, all of us… we never stopped thinking about you.”

I fished out my wallet, showing him the portrait I kept tucked inside.

He swallowed hard. I could see the storm of emotions twisting up inside him. Rage, regret, maybe even hope.

“You’re family,” I said, tucking the photo back inside. “You’ll always have a place here. That doesn’t change, no matter how long you’re gone.”

Luca’s eyes went glassy, but he blinked, hardening. “You don’t know what I had to do for them.”

“I don’t care.”

His face flushed. “You say that now…but you might not like who I am.”

I shrugged. “We take care of our own, no matter how fucked up they are.”

Delilah sighed. “What Santino means to say is that he loves you unconditionally.”

“I can speak for myself, principessa.”

She raised a brow. "Could’ve fooled me."

Luca looked away, his jaw flexing. Delilah reached out and squeezed his shoulder. His eyes dropped to the floor. Delilah wrapped her arms around him, pulling him in tight. Luca stiffened, then leaned into her embrace, his chin dropping to her shoulder.

I hesitated. Then I moved to the couch and placed a hand on his back. "You're not alone anymore."

Luca tensed, then glanced up, a faint, almost defiant smile forming on his lips. Then I saw him—the cousin I used to know, still in there, fighting his way back.