Mafia King’s Lost Rose (The Crimson Empire #17)

1. Rosa

ONE

Rosa

Acrate tipped in the alley and the world narrowed to the sound of ceramic hitting cobbles. I dropped the ribbon spool, caught for a moment on the lip of the crate, and then felt a solid arm cradle me under the ribs before my knees remembered how to work.

Rosa Ferraro, florist—my left hand still smelled of loam and citrus—so I swore and tried to steady the pots without making a scene.

Business as usual: keep the shop calm, greet the regulars, fix what breaks.

I'd rebuilt this small, sunlit life on careful routines after being burned once; trusting a stranger felt like handing someone the match.

"Are you all right?" His voice was low, careful. He held me at the hollow of my back and for a ridiculous second I forgot to say yes.

He was tall—Paolo Moretti, the kind of man whose coat swallowed him and whose shoulders made the coat look small.

He smelled of salt and cedar and something faint and sharp that set my teeth on edge: money, maybe, or old houses by the sea.

I noticed the slope of his shoulders first, then the way the sleeve sat against strong forearms. My pulse picked up and I told myself to breathe.

"Sorry," I said, because that was what you said when a crate tipped and a handsome stranger caught you. I tried to take a step away and his hand slid, not brusque but protective, to the small of my back and held me in the curve of him. Heat pooled behind my ribs.

"Don't move," he said softly. His fingers were warm through my sweater. "You might bruise the stems."

Lucia popped her head out of the doorway. Lucia Bianchi, my best friend, folded her arms and grinned like someone watching a private joke. "Rosa, you okay? Or do you need dramatic music and a stretcher?" she called.

"I'll live," I managed, because the last thing I needed was Lucia's running commentary. Inside, sunlight spilled over the counter and the shop hummed with quiet life—the scent of wet earth and cut grass, the radio low, a stack of invoices waiting for me. Keep the shop calm. Keep the shop calm.

Paolo shifted and I smelled sea again, cleaner now, mixed with cedar and something faintly sweet—rosemary. He reached for a fallen terracotta pot with the same careful touch I use on a fragile novae. His fingers were long, callused at the pads, the pale scar along one knuckle catching the light.

"Thanks," I said, because it was the correct small, civilized word, and because something in the way he watched my hands made me aware of every one of my own. "You couldn't have just walked past?"

He gave a small, almost-smiling tilt of his head. "I don't walk past people who look like they're about to be buried alive by peonies." His voice warmed on the last word. "May I—" He tucked a sprig of rosemary from a knocked-over pot and held it out to me. "For the trouble?"

The sprig lay cool between his fingers. He pressed it into my palm and watched, watching me inhale like it was small benediction. My throat thinned. Lucia made a noise that was half laugh, half disgusted aunt.

"You give me rosemary," I said, breathing it in, the citrusy pine filling my head. "You must be a very odd thief."

"Call it a civic duty," he replied, and his eyes—hazel, deep enough to feel like a room with the shades half-drawn—hooked on my face. The look held a familiarity that felt dangerous, like a line partially erased and then traced again.

There was a passerby in a dark jacket across the street who paused, took one long look, and muttered a name. "Moretti," he said, low, as if the word could bruise.

My jaw tightened. The name hung between us like a shadow. I felt my careful constructs, the small fences I'd built around the shop and around myself, pull taut.

"Is that a problem?" I asked, trying to keep the shopkeeper's neutral smile in place.

Inside, I felt the old fear—of opening, of someone stepping into the life I'd defended alone.

I had buried a man once and learned how to live by tending living things; love had been a liability then.

I could not, would not, go back to being fragile.

He shrugged, an even, measured motion. "Not unless you want it to be." He didn't look like someone who enjoyed being noticed. He looked like someone used to being measured.

"Well then," I said, and let a snark slip in because otherwise I might hand him my heart and not even know I'd done it. "If you're done with the charity gardening, the pots are on the second shelf."

He moved with a smooth, deliberate economy, placing two cracked pots as if they were delicate promises. His fingers brushed mine when he handed one over. The brush was accidental, his apology unnecessary—my skin registered it like a small electric current.

"Don't rush me," he murmured, and the teasing was small but loaded.

"Excuse me?" Lucia was already inside, arranging a display with the rapid efficiency of someone who knew how to cover awkwardness with action. "Paolo Moretti, is it? Big name. You here to buy sympathy or say sorry for breaking our alley charm?"

Heat flared in my cheeks, equal parts irritation and something else—curiosity, the kind that made books stay open late. "We don't do sympathy," I said. The display of succulents looked oddly cheerful between us.

He glanced at Lucia, and his voice shifted, rounding into something softer. "No sympathy. Just…trying not to break anything else."

I wanted to ask what he meant, to ask whether he knew my history or whether his eyes were filling with memories he hadn't told himself were his. Instead I focused on the rosemary sprig warming in my hand. I tucked it into my apron pocket like a talisman.

"Coffee?" Lucia offered, already moving toward the kettle. "For both of you. It's on me for the crate-fall disaster."

"Black," he said. "Two."

Lucia's shoulders went up in a conspiratorial shrug and she disappeared into the tiny back room.

The shop felt smaller suddenly, every shelf an inch closer, every bloom more intensely colored.

Standing that close to him, I couldn't ignore details: the neat slope of his collarbone, the way his shirt clung over the breadth of his chest, the short sweep of dark hair at his temple. My mouth went dry.

"You look like you do not want me to fix the pots," he observed quietly. "You'd rather keep them scattered."

"I'd rather keep my business open and my plants intact," I shot back. "If customers see us gawking whatever they think might sell will stop selling."

He let out a sound that could have been a laugh or admitted agreement. "Fair."

His hand found my lower back as I stepped forward to retrieve a fallen tag. It lingered there, not possessive but anchoring, fingers splayed across the small of me. The contact sent a small current through my ribs and straightened my spine in a way I resented and welcomed at once.

"I—" I began, then stopped. Words felt stupid. The world pressed into a rectangle: Lucia clattering in the kitchen, the kettle singing, the sunlight throwing a halo around dust motes. His presence groaned against the fragile calm I'd labored to keep.

"You're tense," he said softly, voice close to my ear. He was close enough that I could feel the warmth of his breath, the roughness of stubble against my temple when his head tilted. "You always do this when someone drops your things."

"Just like you," I replied before I could edit. "You steady random florists in alleys."

He made a small sound that was almost amusement. "I steady my problems. Sometimes that includes flowers."

I laughed, surprising myself. It was short and a little breathless. The laugh loosened something. Lucia returned with two steaming cups and placed one in front of him, one in front of me, then gave us both a hard look.

"If this is kissing practice, I want a front-row seat," she teased.

Paolo's gaze slid to me and lingered, the look somewhere between question and command. "Kissing practice?" he echoed, and there was a dry humor in his tone.

"Ignore her," I said, because I didn't want to admit that my fingers twitched when his thumb stroked the back of my hand as he reached for his cup. The contact was small, intimate. My stomach flipped.

"How long have you had this shop?" he asked instead, eyes on my hands.

"Seven years," I said. "Better question: why are you in our alley with sunlit hair and expensive trouble?"

He set the cup down carefully. "I was looking for a florist."

That should have been the end of it. Business done, a transaction, no promises. But his look asked for more. The rosemary between my fingers crackled softly whenever I moved it to my nose. I breathed in and the scent steadied me, made the edges of my fear soft.

His hand brushed my back again as he stood, close enough that the fabric of us almost met. "Rosa—stay with me for a moment," he said, voice lowered so the shop seemed to hold its breath.

A delivery buzzer cut through the silence like a bell. I jumped, startled, and the moment splintered.

"Delivery!" Lucia called, heading toward the door with exaggerated cheer. I backed away, palms suddenly clammy, the rosemary pressed against my heart like a secret I didn't know I wanted to keep.

He watched me retreat with an expression that was unreadable for the space of a heartbeat. Then he nodded once, slow and deliberate, as if he'd made a small, private decision.

"Okay," he said. "For now."