Chapter Three: Some Scars Look Like Gifts Until They Bleed
1213 Words
Valentina didn’t speak for a long time after Lucian said her sister’s name.
She just stood there, heart pounding like a war drum inside her ribs, while the storm clawed at the windows and the wind moaned like something broken outside. The silence between them wasn’t empty it was loaded, waiting to snap. She stared past Lucian, past the lightning slicing the sky, and tried to remember the last time Alessandra lied to her.
But she couldn’t.
Which meant either her sister was a better liar than she ever knew
Or Valentina had been too desperate to notice.
“She sent me the necklace,” she said at last.
Lucian didn’t reply.
“The night before I was taken,” she went on, quieter now. “She said it belonged to our mother.”
Still nothing from him. That silence felt like an answer.
Valentina turned to face him, slowly.
“Did she send it?” she asked.
Lucian’s jaw clenched.
“We don’t know if she orchestrated it all”
“But she sent the necklace?”
A beat passed.
Then, softly: “Yes.”
Valentina backed away from him.
Her legs were shaking. She didn’t want them to, but they did.
“That necklace had a tracker in it, didn’t it?”
Lucian didn’t deny it.
She almost laughed. It sounded like glass breaking in her throat.
She yanked the necklace from her collar and hurled it across the room. It hit the wall and shattered, the chain snapping in two, the tiny center stone cracking open to reveal the thin, metallic coil tucked inside.
She felt sick.
Lucian stepped forward.
“Valentina”
“Don’t.”
She held up a hand, palm trembling.
“I don’t need your comfort. I don’t need your pity. And I sure as hell don’t need your version of the truth.”
He stopped moving.
Outside, thunder rolled.
Valentina took a deep breath and gathered what little she could find of herself.
“I need to see her,” she said.
Lucian’s eyes flashed. “Absolutely not.”
“I wasn’t asking permission.”
“She’s protected. Heavily. If you show up”
“She’ll see me,” Valentina cut in. “She owes me that.”
“She doesn’t owe you anything. If she leaked the intel”
“She’s still my sister,” Valentina snapped. “She raised me. She taught me how to braid my hair and how to stitch a wound and how to lie to men who thought I was too soft to know better.”
Lucian’s voice was low.
“She also sold you.”
Valentina’s throat tightened. But she didn’t look away.
“Then I want to know why.”
They left before dawn.
Lucian didn’t want her going alone. She didn’t want him coming at all.
Compromise: he stayed outside.
The meeting point was a church in Venice. Abandoned. Half-crumbling. Alessandra’s choice.
It wasn’t a peace offering. It was a warning.
Valentina entered through the side door.
The stained-glass windows cast broken light across the dusty pews, and the scent of old wood and older sins filled the air.
Alessandra was already there.
Sitting in the front row. Back straight. Head high. A woman born in silk who now dressed in war colors—matte black, hair slicked into a knife-edge braid.
She turned when she heard the footsteps. Her expression didn’t change.
“I wondered how long it would take you,” she said.
Valentina’s voice was steady. “Why?”
Alessandra stood. She didn’t smile. Didn’t soften.
“You wouldn’t have listened.”
“You could’ve told me. Trusted me.”
“I did. For too long.”
Valentina walked down the aisle, slow.
“You put a tracker in my necklace.”
Alessandra didn’t blink. “I put a weapon in your pocket.”
“You sold me.”
“I protected you.”
Valentina froze.
Alessandra’s voice turned sharp.
“You think you were going to survive in the family? After Clara’s death, after Davide’s fall? You think the men circling you weren’t already planning to use you to cut their own deals?”
“I’m not yours to trade,” Valentina hissed.
Alessandra took a step closer.
“You were a target. I made you bait.”
Valentina’s hand curled into a fist. “You could’ve warned me.”
“I did,” her sister said. “Every day I stayed alive long enough to get you out.”
There was silence.
Then Valentina’s voice quiet, shaking.
“I thought you were the only person who hadn’t betrayed me.”
Alessandra’s expression flickered. Almost sorrow. Almost.
“You still don’t get it.”
“Enlighten me.”
“I didn’t betray you,” she whispered. “I saved you.”
Valentina stepped back.
Then forward.
The distance between them was a heartbeat.
“You’re not a savior,” she said. “You’re a coward.”
Alessandra’s eyes darkened.
“You want the truth?” she said. “Here it is. I leaked the intel. I told Bellini where you’d be. I gave him the time and the trade.”
“Why?”
“Because you weren’t supposed to be taken,” she said. “You were supposed to be followed. Watched. Tracked. That was the deal. You disappear for six months. We create noise. You come back clean. They lose interest.”
“But something went wrong.”
Alessandra’s silence said yes.
Valentina swallowed.
“Who changed the plan?”
Alessandra didn’t answer.
“Who gave the order?”
Still nothing.
Valentina stepped closer.
“Was it Lucian’s father?”
No response.
“Was it Lucian?”
Alessandra’s head snapped up.
“No.”
“Then who?”
Alessandra looked away.
Valentina’s blood turned cold.
“You don’t know,” she said. “You think you’re in control, but you’re not. You handed me over and someone took me further than you ever meant them to.”
She turned to leave.
Alessandra said softly, “You’ll thank me one day.”
Valentina didn’t stop.
At the doorway, she paused.
Looked back.
And said, “When I do, it’ll be over your grave.”
Outside, Lucian was waiting.
She got into the car without speaking.
He didn’t ask questions.
Didn’t speak at all until they were halfway across the causeway.
Then:
“Did she admit it?”
Valentina stared straight ahead.
“She admitted more than that.”
Lucian’s hands tightened on the wheel.
“She said I was bait,” Valentina added. “That I was supposed to be followed. Not taken.”
“And?”
“And something changed.”
Lucian exhaled.
“Bellini’s dead,” he said. “Found him this morning. Poisoned.”
Valentina’s head snapped toward him.
“What?”
Lucian nodded. “No one’s claiming responsibility. No trail. No prints. Just a message left in his pocket.”
He handed her a folded slip of paper.
She opened it.
One sentence.
“The girl wasn’t the target. She was the lock.”
Valentina stared at the words.
Lucian glanced over. “What does it mean?”
But Valentina’s mouth had gone dry.
Because she recognized the handwriting.
It wasn’t Alessandra’s.
It wasn’t Bellini’s.
It was her father’s.
- Writer
