Chapter 12 LUCA
LUCA
I have been at my desk since seven, working through three pots of black espresso while the sun climbed over the estate grounds.
Adrian walked through the double doors at nine on the dot, carrying two thick leather briefcases and an armful of legal files like a man heading into a courtroom battle.
By ten, my study looks less like an office and more like a tactical operations center.
Three laptops hum on the mahogany desk alongside a stack of sworn statements thick enough to stop a bullet.
Adrian stands across from me with his hands clasped behind his back, stiff enough to salute, which is never entirely out of the question with him.
Adrian squares a pile of court papers, his tone dry as dust. "The judge is Marchetti. Same guy from the docks issue two years ago. He owes us."
I tap my pencil against the wood. "Does he owe us enough to keep his mouth shut?"
Adrian gives a brief nod. "Plenty. I spoke to his clerk this morning. Very quiet. Nothing on paper."
I cross my arms and lean back in my chair. "What does quiet mean with you?"
"Cash for the courthouse building fund." Adrian turns a sheet over neatly, face completely blank. "No names. Good timing."
"So a bribe with a fucking ribbon on it."
Adrian fixes his cuff without blinking. "I call it community support. The courthouse front stairs needed cleaning anyway."
"You bribed a magistrate with floor maintenance." I stare at him until he looks up. "Tell me you at least got a receipt."
"I got two receipts, a thank you note from his wife, and a clean drop of the gun charges before lunch." Adrian drops a signed slip into the folder.
I flip through the folder on the trespasser's identity, the one my legal team scrubbed clean before it ever touched a police database.
Bellini soldier. No name that means anything on paper anymore.
Just a story, tight and boring, exactly the way Nora built it two days ago in a borrowed sleep shirt with her knees pulled up to her chest, giving my little brother a masterclass in narrative control like it cost her nothing.
I slide the top page across the desk. "Enzo's story. Did he stick to what she wrote him?"
Adrian stands stiff as a board. "Every word. He practiced it eleven times. I kept count."
"Of course you did." I roll my eyes.
Adrian counters without cracking a smile. "Someone needs to watch him. He makes things up when he gets scared. Last time, he told border patrol we were moving old tables. We had neither tables nor anything old in that truck."
I sigh and rub the bridge of my nose. "I remember. I paid for that mistake for a year."
"You lost cash." Adrian glances down at his wrist. "I got headaches."
I turn the page and stop on Nora's dossier.
Adrian clipped the forged itinerary over the real flight manifest, a fabricated booking for a wellness retreat in Zurich, stamped receipts for two weeks of private spa treatments, and a scrubbed travel log without a single customs entry tying her to this estate. On paper, she never crossed our gate.
I fix my eyes on him. "Is this clean? Can anyone poke a hole in it?"
Adrian points at the stamped papers. "Totally clean. The hotel exists, the reservation is real, and the desk clerk will swear she spent the week there. I handed three workers enough money to remember a woman they never saw."
"Good," I grunt, meaning it more than the single word carries.
If this war ever spills into daylight, if any of it touches her name in a file somewhere, that's on me and nobody else.
She didn't ask for any of this shit. The least I can give her is a paper trail that keeps her invisible to everyone who isn't already inside these walls.
The door opens before Adrian can answer, and Nora walks in without knocking, because apparently that's a rule she decided doesn't apply to her anymore.
Nora tilts her head at the open paperwork. "You have my ID pictures spread out on your desk. Should I feel special or call the cops?"
"Making sure you stay out of jail," I counter, snapping the folder closed. "You can thank me later."
"Jail for what? I didn't break any laws. Your goons grabbed me off a London street!"
"Proof that you were somewhere else." I tap the cover sheet. "In the Swiss hills. Resting. Doing morning stretches."
Nora flops into the leather chair opposite Adrian. "I have never done a stretch in my life. Pick something better. Something with good food and lots of red wine. Tell them I went to a cooking class."
"Done." Adrian jots it down, pen scratching the ledger like her complaints are official family business.
A slight smirk touches my face. "Don't encourage him. He will actually book the fake cooking class."
"I think he's great." Nora pushes one of the wiretap folders with a finger. "He treats my bad attitude like real work orders."
"I keep clean records." Adrian clicks his pen. "Do you want regular pasta or fancy truffles on your fake dinner receipt? It changes the bill."
She grins. "The expensive ones. If we are lying to the police, I want to sound rich."
Her phone buzzes on the desk before she can respond, and she groans the second she sees the name, tipping her head back like the ceiling owes her an apology. "It's Amelia. Again. I love her, I do, but every call feels like a small emergency wearing the skin of a bigger emergency."
She answers it and puts it on speaker without asking me, which I've noticed she does now, like my presence in the room stopped registering as a threat two weeks of chaos ago.
"Amelia, make it quick. I'm busy." Nora hits the green icon and puts the phone on the desk.
"Right, busy at your fancy mountain hotel," Amelia rattles off through the speaker. Adrian's left brow twitches. "Anyway, the Kessler team wants five days instead of three, and I told them they were pushing their luck."
Nora rests her elbows on the armrests. "Offer four. Four shows we're nice. Five makes us look weak."
"Four it is. Now don't get mad at me, but hear this out."
"I'm always calm."
"You are never calm," Amelia snorts over the line. "Your mum rang my desk. She wants an address so she can mail you cookies and warm socks."
Nora winces, her eyes wide as she leans toward the desk. "Tell her the place has rules against mail. Tell her it's a quiet health camp. No boxes, no food from home."
"She told me that sounds like a weird group brainwashing you, and she wants to look into it."
Nora snaps, eyes darting to me. "It is not a cult! It is just very quiet and far away."
Amelia yells back through the phone. "That is what people in cults always say. Did they hand out matching white robes? If they did, grab me a medium."
I press two fingers against my mouth to kill a laugh. Adrian does not even look up from his ledger, though the tip of his fountain pen digs visibly deeper into the margin.
Nora rubs her forehead with two fingers. "Amelia, stop. Give Kessler four days, tell Mum no mail, and if anyone asks, I am unplugged in the mountains. Bye."
"Okay, fine. One last thing." Amelia crinkles some paper on her end. "A man phoned asking for the main boss where you're staying. Said it was urgent. Do I send him your way?"
Nora glances straight at me with a look of pure dread. "No. Hang up on him. Tell him nobody is there."
"Got it. Total mystery. Very cool." Amelia cuts the line with a sharp beep.
Nora drops her head onto her hands. "I run an office. Rich people pay me good money to solve their problems, and my assistant thinks I joined a crazy mountain group."
I rest my chin in my hand. "You got picked up by a mafia crew instead. Longer days, but Nonna's cooking makes up for it."
"Just great," she groans behind her hands.
Adrian gathers his files off the wood. "I will go read Enzo's lines with him before he messes them up." He steps out into the hall and shuts the door behind him.
Nora lowers her hands, resting her palms flat against the dark wood of the desk. Her eyes lock onto mine across the empty space between us, steady and unblinking in the quiet room.
Her eyes narrow as she looks at me across the desk. "You made up a whole fake trip for me. Hotel papers. Fake witnesses. A story about pricey food."
I meet her stare. "I make sure we don't get caught."
She raises her chin and looks right through me. "That's not just covering your tracks, Moretti. You're keeping me safe."
"Think whatever helps you sleep."
"I know what I see." She walks around the big wooden desk, stopping so close I can smell her soap. "You made sure no cop, no judge, no file anywhere has my name on it. You wiped me off the map. Why do that for me?"
I grip the wood behind me. "Because you're under my roof, not in front of a judge."
She steps in closer without backing down. "Am I supposed to be afraid of that?"
I watch the beat of the pulse in her throat. "Most people would be. Other people run from this house. You boss my brothers around and act like you own the place."
Her eyes darken with sheer fury rather than fear, her breath hitting my neck in sharp, shallow bursts. She searches my face for an inch of weakness and finds nothing but concrete.
She stands firm. "You talk too much for a scary boss."
I growl, arms hauling her against my chest. "And you never know when to shut up."
Her hand snaps out, grabbing the lapel of my suit jacket to yank me downward. She stares up at me with savage defiance, practically begging for a collision.
I don't hesitate.
I slam my hand against the back of her neck, tangling my fingers in her dark hair and crashing my mouth down onto hers with ruthless force.
She gasps into my lips, a wild sound of shock and hunger, digging her fingernails into my shoulders as I shove her back against the desk until the wood rattles with the impact.
Her hands grip my neck tight. "You're out of your mind."
I pull her up against me on the desk and kiss her hard until she pulls me closer. "You're mine now."