The Sister Who Shot Me Got Everything I Had Chapter 08
The Real Victims
Luca’s POV
I came back to the brownstone at noon.
The custom pistol was still on the console table. The Falcone signet ring, still in its velvet-lined box.
Gia was on the sofa with her hand freshly bandaged. The Donna was feeding her broth by the spoon.
Don Falcone was on the phone with a private aviation contact, trying to trace which flight Sienna had been on.
Matteo was at the dining table on his laptop, running his own trace. Nothing was coming up.
Gia’s eyes lifted to me. “Luca. Is she still angry with me?”
“She’s out there alone. What if something happens to her?”
Any other time, I would have crouched down and told her Sienna would come around, that she just needed time.
This time, I didn’t.
I looked at the console table, at the pistol, at the ring, at everything that was supposed to be Sienna’s.
The Donna was still trying. “Sienna’s stubborn. She’ll blow off some steam and be back.”
“She’s always been like this. Wants the whole world to revolve around her.”
Matteo lifted his head. “Ma.”
His voice was low. “Do you actually believe she’s throwing a tantrum?”
The Donna went still.
Matteo turned his laptop around and mirrored the family cloud folder onto the TV screen.
Every photo we’d all pretended didn’t exist bloomed across the wall.
Gia at seventeen, blowing out candles at a private club in Palermo. Don Falcone on the video call, singing.
Gia at nineteen, backstage in a black gown at some charity function. The Donna’s handwriting on the caption: Our brave girl.
Gia at twenty, at a ski chalet in Cortina. Matteo in the background.
Gia at her twenty-first birthday. A whole room of soldiers and capos from Sicily, raising a toast to “our next heiress.”
And behind Gia, holding her fur coat over my arm, smiling at her like she hung the moon—Me.
The date on that photo was the same week Sienna had texted me, “Luca, I have my six-month spine follow-up tomorrow. The doctor said someone should come with me.”
I’d texted back: “Slammed at the office, baby. Can you go on your own?”
Slammed at the office meant on a red-eye to Palermo, to carry her sister’s coat.
The Donna looked at the wall of photos. Her mouth trembled.
She reached for the remote to shut it off.
Matteo caught her wrist. “Don’t.”
“Look at it.”
“Look at who we’ve been calling the victim for seven years.”
Gia’s face finally, finally lost its color.
I sat there staring at a picture of my own hand on her waist and realized I hadn’t earned the right to say Sienna’s name for a very long time.
…
Matteo was the first to walk into Rossi Pawn & Loan on Mulberry Street.
I went with him.
He set the debit-card statement on the glass counter.
The old man behind the register squinted at the transaction, then nodded.
“Yeah. The girl. Real pretty. Dark hair. Big brown eyes.”
“Said she wanted something cheap for her sister.”
Matteo’s jaw locked. “Did she know whose card she was using?”
The old man blinked.
“Sure. She told me straight out. Said her sister’s been in a wheelchair for years, so it didn’t matter what the gift cost.”
“Said buying junk with her sister’s own money was the only way to make the apology feel real.”
Matteo didn’t move for a long second.
I put my hand flat on the counter to keep it steady.
The old man remembered something else.
“Oh—and she brought in something else, too. An old piece. Chipped grip, hairline scratch across the slide.”
“Told me to keep it in the back safe till she came for it. Said it was ‘a family heirloom she wanted to bring back home to her sister.'”
“I asked her—if it was that painful, why give it back?”
“She laughed and said, ‘Once my sister holds it again, she’ll finally understand it’s time to let the past go.'”