Page 13 of Diary from an Inked Throne

I didn’t even need to say it. I could tell from their expressions they knew it too.

Lynx, in the best shape of the three of us since he’d been the last to be captured, stormed back inside the church. “Your car keys,” he shouted at the priest. “Now.”

The priest didn’t argue. The man was clearly terrified, and he pulled items from hidden pockets in his robes. A phone first. And then a set of keys. With trembling fingers, he tossed them to Lynx who’d already made it halfway back down the aisle to where Carlos’s dead body lay.

Luca’s gaze drifted to his father, and he looked away.

“Luc,” I started, able to call him that now, even though he would probably kill me if I called him that in public. We’d had no one but each other for so long, I probably knew him better than I knew myself.

He held up his hand. “Don’t. That’s a problem for another day when my psychotic uncle doesn’t have our girl.”

Once upon a time I would have bristled at anyone calling Nyah theirs.

But on his lips, it didn’t bother me at all. It just felt right.

We were a family, the four of us. Being separated had only cemented that fact for me, and I knew my feelings mirrored Luca and Lynx’s.

We could only pray Nyah felt the same and could forgive us.

Keys jingled, and Lynx came striding back out into the harsh afternoon sunlight. “Black Jag in the parking lot. Can you two walk or—”

I was sure my expression matched Luca’s.

Lynx shrugged. “If you can walk then you can run. Hustle.”

Luca winced. He had to be feeling every painful step in the same way I was. But it didn’t matter. All that mattered was getting to Nyah before Enzo could completely disappear with her.

Across the parking lot, the lights on a car blinked, and Lynx threw himself into the driver’s seat, Luca and I falling into the back seat after him.

He didn’t wait for either of us to put on seat belts. “Where? Your dad’s?”

He didn’t need to specify which of our fathers he meant.

Luca ran his fingers through his dirty, dark hair. “I guess. I can’t imagine he’d be stupid enough to take her there, but maybe if he doesn’t realize we’ve escaped…we’re supposed to be dead right now. I don’t think he saw us before he drove away.”

“Or he doesn’t know we were kept alive in the first place…”

Lynx glanced at me in the rearview mirror. We’d had endless conversations on who we thought had taken us. We’d never been able to work it out for sure. The closest we’d gotten was Lynx feeling like he’d recognized the voice of one of his abductors, but he hadn’t been able to say for sure who it was, and the guards on our door had been a rotation, rarely speaking even when delivering food. They all looked the same. Young men, easily swayed by money and power, I was sure. Faceless and nameless in an army whose leader we never saw.

But Luca’s gut instinct said it was his father’s doing. And the way they’d set us free as soon as they’d realized the head of the Guerra family was dead and Luca was next in line was a telling sign.

But then again, anyone who walked in this world would be scared of the Guerras. Finding out Luca was now the don, definitely could have scared any man into opening the door, no matter who he was hired by.

“It doesn’t matter now anyway,” I muttered, leaning forward to rest my hands on the backs of the two front seats. “All that matters is her.”

Luca grimaced. “All that matters for today, is her. Tomorrow, I’m going to kill every single motherfucker I can get a gun to. They’ll all die for what they did to us. And to my father.”

I glanced over at him. “You’re upset about that?”

He shook his head sharply. “Fuck no. That asshole can rot in Hell ’til the day I have to join him there. But it should have been me who put him to ground. That was my right after everything. That was my kill.”

Lynx’s gaze flickered to his in the rearview mirror, his frown a concerned one. I couldn’t blame him. It was Luca who sounded psychotic when he talked like that, but neither of us said anything.

Luca had a lifetime of scars from his father’s hands. If he thought he was owed his death, then that was his call.

My heartbeat thumping in my ears and adrenaline coursing through my veins were the only things I heard for the rest of the drive. The mansions in Providence grew bigger and bigger until we turned onto Luca’s street, the Guerra mansion sprawling out in front of us.

We turned into the driveway, armed guards stepping in front of the car. But Luca rolled down his window and glared at them.