Chapter 5 NORA
NORA
After barely two hours of sleep following my midnight eavesdropping session outside Luca's library, the estate feels even more absurd in the morning light.
It has a garden maze made of actual hedges, which feels like something out of a Gothic novel my mother would have written twenty years ago, right before the heroine gets murdered in it.
I have now walked the paths four times looking for a gap in the fence line, and four times I have ended up back at the same stone fountain with the same cherub statue that looks vaguely judgmental about my life choices.
"You're doing it again," a voice pipes up from behind me.
I turn and find Sofia sitting on the fountain's edge, legs tucked under her, a paperback open on her knee like she's been there the whole time watching me fail at basic navigation.
I spin around, arms crossed over my chest. "Doing what?"
"Casing the place. You walk like you're measuring the walls." She closes the book without marking her page, resting it on the sunlit stone. "Enzo mentioned you tried the east gate yesterday. He claimed you almost made it to the tree line before Matteo caught you."
"Matteo has a loose fucking mouth." I blow a loose strand of hair off my forehead and kick a stray pebble into the murky water.
Sofia tucks her dark hair behind an ear. "He has no filter at all. Give him half a glass of Chianti and he starts confessing things nobody even asked about."
She taps the marble beside her skirt with two fingers. "Sit down. You look like you're about to wage war against a cherub statue."
I drop onto the cool marble rim beside her, letting my aching calves rest against the stone.
Matteo usually watches me like I might pull a hidden blade from my collar, and Enzo looks through me like I'm a ledger entry with a minus sign in front of it.
Sofia just scoots her paperback aside to make room, her brown eyes tracking my dusty sneakers with mild curiosity, as if I'm merely an eccentric new roommate who insists on alphabetizing the spice rack.
I point a finger back toward the greenery. "For the record, the fence has a gap near the old shed. Six inches, maybe seven. Not enough for a person, but enough that whoever built it should be fired."
"I'll tell Adrian you said so." A sly grin spreads across her face as she leans closer. "He will pace around the courtyard for three hours inspecting every individual leaf."
"Go right ahead," I tell her, resting my elbow on my knee. "Tell him the guards here leave holes a child could climb through. I have seen elementary schools locked down better than this place."
Sofia hides a grin behind her fingers. "He takes his job very seriously. He wrote an entire rulebook just about the front gates."
"I bet half of it tells the men how to glare at the mailman," I snort back, chin tilted up.
Sofia bursts into real, breathless laughter that catches her by surprise. "You're funnier than they told me."
I narrow my eyes at her. "Who's 'they'?"
"Everyone." Sofia tracks a bee buzzing over the rosebushes.
"Matteo warned the table that you cursed him out the second you woke up.
Nonna told the kitchen you eat everything on your plate, which means she loves you.
Enzo thinks you are a riot." She tilts her head, studying my face.
"And Luca says nothing at all. Which means he is thinking about you way too much to talk about it out loud. "
A sudden, sharp flutter hits the bottom of my stomach, but I keep my expression flat. Instead of answering, I look down and catch a loose strand of cream yarn unraveling at my wrist, winding the thread tightly around my index finger until the tip turns white.
"Your brother only speaks in cold glares and threats," I point out. I pick a piece of lint off my sleeve.
Sofia rests her chin on her palms. "That is just how he is. You should have seen him after our parents were killed. He was twenty years old. He barely said ten words for a year, unless he was barking an order. Adrian had to guess what he wanted at dinner like Luca was a quiet king who only nodded."
"I do not know if that is sad or funny," I admit, rubbing my forehead with a dry sigh.
Her mouth twitches into a quiet smile. "Around here, everything is a little bit of both. You learn to make jokes so you do not lose your mind."
"Welcome to the Moretti household." Sofia nudges my ankle with the toe of her shoe. "Nobody knows whether to hire a therapist or an arms dealer."
We sit for a moment, the fountain trickling behind us, and I realize this is the first quiet I've had in days that doesn't feel like a held breath. Sofia picks at the hem of her skirt, and then, without any real warning, asks the question I should have seen coming.
"Do you have a boyfriend? Back in London?"
"No." I stare straight ahead at the hedges.
"Girlfriend?" Her brow arches inquisitively.
"Also no." I wave a hand at the empty garden. "I run a company, my assistant calls me ten times an hour over missing pens, and my mother treats my love life like a mystery novel she needs to solve. That is all I have room for."
Sofia wrinkles her nose at the thought. "That sounds lonely and exhausting."
"It is called getting things done," I counter, finger tapping my temple. "Dating takes too much energy and too much talking. I do not have the time. I barely have time to sleep, and look at me now…I got shoved in a car and flown to Italy, so clearly I am not great at making life choices anyway."
"You need a simple hobby," she teases, leaning back into the warm sunshine. "Like making clay pots. Or planting flowers. Something where you can shut your brain off for an hour."
"My hobby is screaming at rich men until they stop doing dumb things," I shoot back without missing a beat.
Sofia grins at that, wide and unguarded, and for a second she looks even younger than twenty-one, like a kid who's finally found someone willing to make jokes about the thing everyone else in the house treats like a crime scene.
I bump my shoulder into hers. "You can laugh. I was the one stuffed in the back of the car. If I can make fun of it, you can smile."
Sofia thumbs the edges of her book. "I know, but still. Nobody ever talks to us like normal people. Everyone is scared to death of Luca, or they want something from our name. You just treat all of us like regular idiots. It is nice for a change."
"I treat everyone the exact same way." I shrug and rest my palms on the stone ledge. "It cuts out the small talk."
She laughs again, and it's genuinely one of the better sounds I've heard since I woke up in this house, and I decide, somewhat against my better judgment, that I like her. Which is inconvenient, because liking people in this family was not on my itinerary.
We banter for another twenty minutes about nothing important.
We debate London weather versus Italian heat, why British tea culture is objectively superior, and Sofia's stubborn theory that strong espresso solves more problems than licensed therapy.
Eventually she stands up and smooths her skirt, announcing she has somewhere urgent to be.
The vivid blush creeping up her neck reveals everything.
I raise an eyebrow at her red face. "You are sneaking off to see a guy."
Sofia stammers. She looks down at the grass. "I do not know what you mean."
I roll my eyes. "Right, of course you do not. And I came to Italy on a summer trip."
"You are awful," she grumbles, fighting back a grin.
"I just have working eyes," I call out as she turns around.
She sticks her tongue out at me, actually sticks her tongue out, and disappears down the path toward the house, leaving me alone with the fountain and the judgmental cherub and entirely too much time to think.
An hour later, gravel crunches under my shoes as I follow the dirt path down toward the vines. The midday heat presses against my skin. Matteo mentioned the word training over coffee, and my feet carry me straight toward the open rows of grapes before I can talk myself out of it.
Wooden target stands line the far fence. Luca stands twenty feet back with a black rifle gripped tight in both hands, his shirt discarded on a wooden bench nearby. Sweat slicks the broad expanse of his back, catching the bright sun every time his chest expands.
My feet freeze in the dirt. I grip the strap of my wristwatch and stare, completely pinned to the grass under the shade of the olive trees.
He lifts the rifle, fires twice into the center target, and pivots left to take the next one without breaking rhythm.
The muscles across his shoulders bunch and shift in the sun, sweat tracing a line straight down the center of his back.
Every step is smooth and quiet, resetting his stance before the spent brass even hits the gravel.
My throat goes dry watching him move, but I keep my jaw clenched and refuse to turn away.
This is absurd , I think. This is a man who had me thrown in the trunk of a car. This is a man whose brother drugged me. I am not going to stand here ogling him like a golden retriever watching someone open a bag of chips.
My body, unhelpfully, continues ogling.
Enzo mutters a joke from across the gravel. Luca throws his head back and laughs, a deep sound that carries on the breeze. It softens the hard angle of his jaw in a way that feels utterly illegal. It ought to come with a warning label.
He lowers the rifle and wipes his forearm across his jaw, and that's when he looks up.
Across the vineyard, over two full rows of vines heavy with fruit I don't know the name of, his eyes find mine like he knew exactly where I was standing before he even looked.
My fingers dig into the rough bark of the olive tree beside me.
The sun beats down on my bare neck, but a sudden chill runs straight down my spine.
Across the dirt, his chest rises and falls in slow, steady breaths.
A drop of sweat slips from the hollow of his collarbone, tracing a dark path down the center of his chest. My eyes follow it before I can stop myself, and my throat tightens.
He does not move a muscle. He keeps the black rifle resting against his hip and does not blink against the harsh sunlight. Dark eyes stay locked on mine across the rows of green leaves, steady and heavy, waiting to see if my boots take a single step backward into the trees.
Enzo barks another comment while reloading his magazine, but Luca doesn't react this time. He ignores his brother completely. He keeps his eyes locked onto mine across the rows of grapevines, standing motionless while the world carries on around him.
My pulse does something traitorous and fast, and I hate it, I genuinely hate it, because I've spent my entire career being the person who doesn't get rattled, the person clients hire specifically because nothing shakes me, and here I am getting shaken by a man standing shirtless in a vineyard like some off-brand romance novel cover that got left out in the rain.
"You're staring, Nora." I catch myself whispering the words into the breeze, biting the inside of my lip when I realize I spoke aloud. Not that he could possibly hear me from fifty yards away.
He tilts his head, just slightly, the barest fraction of movement, like he's asking a question without using any words.
I have no idea what the question is. I have several guesses, and none of them are appropriate given the current state of our relationship, which is technically hostage and captor, a dynamic I keep forgetting exists whenever he does that thing with his jaw.
I could look away. I should look away. Looking away would be the sane, dignified, professional response of a woman who negotiates for a living and does not get flustered by muscle and sweat and a well-timed laugh.
I couldn't look away.
Neither does he.
The vineyard stretches between us, loaded with green leaves and ripening grapes. Behind him, Enzo yells something about target groupings that goes completely ignored. The silence between Luca and me pulls taut, heavy with an electric friction I have no intention of acknowledging.
But it's there.
God help me, it's there.