CHAPTER 2
The pencil moved softly across the page, guided by hands that trembled slightly but always created something gentle. Mia sat cross-legged in the sunroom, surrounded by silence and the warm touch of late morning light.
The nineteen year old liked this room the most it had big windows, a view of the garden, and plants that Grayson watered when she forgot. It felt alive without ever needing her to speak.
The sketchbook on her lap was filled with quiet worlds she'd never say out loud forests made of stars, wolves with glass wings, a girl standing on the edge of the ocean who always looked like her, just a little braver.
Drawing made her feel like she had a voice.
She paused, tilting her head as she added shading to a rose blooming from a cracked stone. It reminded her of herself, maybe. Delicate, always too close to falling apart, but still here.
"Mia," Grayson called from the hallway, his voice calm as always. "Do you want lunch?"
She blinked out of her thoughts and nodded, not trusting her voice.
As he stepped into the room, his eyes moved quickly across the space a habit he had even when nothing was wrong. He glanced at the door, the windows, then at her.
"Luca texted," he said simply. "Asked for a photo."
Mia smiled faintly. She never responded directly to her brother's messages Luca didn't expect her to but it always made her heart feel lighter knowing he checked.
"He worries too much," she whispered.
Grayson raised an eyebrow. "That's his job."
She went back to drawing as he left the room, but her hand paused again over the page. She wondered what Luca was doing right now. Something dangerous, no doubt. Something violent. She didn't want to know but she did want him to come home safe.
Mia sighed softly, then drew a small figure standing next to the rose a tall silhouette in a long coat, shadowed, watchful, protective.
Her brother.
Mia always started her mornings with tea chamomile, never black poured into the same pale blue mug Luca had bought her on her sixteenth birthday. It had a tiny crack near the handle now, but she used it anyway. It reminded her of him.
She sat at the kitchen island, knees tucked up on the stool, sketchbook beside her, sipping slowly. The house was quiet, like it always was. Just her, Grayson, and the steady hum of silence that filled the long marble hallways and sunlit rooms.
Grayson was already at the dining table, typing into his tablet lesson plans, probably. He didn't speak unless she did first. He understood her quiet, respected it. She liked that about him.
When her tea was gone, she drifted to the living room, curled up in her corner of the couch, and started another drawing this one of the garden just outside, the climbing roses and the bench Luca had built for her last spring.
She missed him.
She always missed him when he was gone.
Even though she knew he was just a call away, that he texted Grayson at least five times a day to make sure she hadn't tripped over her own thoughts, she missed his voice. The way he made her feel braver just by being in the room.
She paused, fingers tightening slightly around the pencil. She wasn't supposed to be this dependent. She knew it. But Luca was the only person who had never asked her to be anything more than what she was. Quiet. Gentle. Scared, sometimes. Soft in a world that didn't forgive softness.
Grayson's voice broke the silence. "You doing okay today?"
Mia gave a small nod. "Yes... I think."
He watched her for a moment longer. "You've been drawing a lot."
"It helps," she said. "It's like... if I can make the world softer on paper, maybe it'll feel softer here, too."
She tapped her chest lightly. Right where it always hurt the most.
Grayson gave a rare smile. "Luca would say the same thing except with bullets."
Mia let out a small, surprised laugh.
The kind of laugh that only existed in moments like this rare, fleeting, but real.
And she didn't know it yet, but across the city, as Luca stood beneath a flickering warehouse light making another life or death call and that laugh was the only thing that kept the darkness from swallowing him whole.