Ghosts of Blood
The morning sun slanted through the villa's dining room windows, casting warm light across the old oak table. Elena sat with a notebook open, though her pen hovered uselessly above the page. She wasn't writing about the vineyard. Instead, names and dates filled the margin—the fragments of a family tree she barely understood.
Her family had always been fractured. Her father, Rosa's only son, had left Tuscany when he was twenty, chasing fortune in America. He married Elena's mother, a brilliant lawyer from Milan, and together they built a life oceans away. Elena had grown up straddling two worlds—weekends of pasta-making with her grandmother in Italy, weekdays of skyscrapers and subways in Manhattan.
But when her parents died in that accident, the Rossi name felt more like a burden than a comfort.
She could still hear the whispers at the funeral: The Rossi girl. Alone now. Poor thing.
She had sworn she'd never be the poor thing again. She would work, succeed, climb high enough that no one could look down on her. And she had—until fate pulled her right back here, into the home she thought she had outgrown.
A knock at the doorway pulled her from her thoughts.
"Making battle plans?" Luca leaned against the frame, wiping dirt from his hands with a rag.
"Something like that," Elena muttered, closing the notebook.
But he had already seen enough. "Family?"
She nodded, hesitating. "Trying to remember where I come from."
His expression softened, just a fraction. "That's harder than it sounds."
---
That afternoon, Luca found himself in the old storage shed, rummaging through boxes of tools when he stumbled across a rusted tin trunk. He knew what it was before he even opened it. His mother's things. Nonna Rosa had kept them safe after she passed.
Inside were faded photographs, a scarf that still carried the faintest trace of lavender, and a bundle of letters written in his mother's neat handwriting. He ran his hand across the paper, but he didn't open them. He couldn't—not yet.
The ache in his chest was familiar, a shadow that never left. He remembered the long nights when his mother worked two jobs just to put food on the table. He remembered her laughter—bright, defiant—before it dimmed with illness.
And he remembered the day she told him, voice breaking, "You have to be strong, Luca. Stronger than me. Stronger than this world."
He had tried. He still tried. But strength had a cost. It left little room for softness, for dreams, for love.
---
That evening, Elena found him sitting on the stone wall at the edge of the vineyard, staring out at the horizon. He didn't hear her approach at first.
"You look like someone who's lost," she said softly.
He glanced up, startled, then shrugged. "Maybe I am."
She sat beside him, the wall cool beneath her legs. For a while, they said nothing. The fields stretched endlessly before them, golden under the fading sun.
"My parents were always too busy for the vineyard," Elena said after a pause. "But they loved it in their own way. I think they loved what it represented—a life they escaped, but could still return to for holidays. A dream, not a duty."
Luca's mouth tightened. "For me, it was always a duty. No escape."
She turned to study him. "Do you regret it?"
His eyes were shadowed. "Sometimes. When I see what other men my age have—families, stability, freedom—I wonder what my life could have been. But then I remember my mother's face. And I know this is the only choice I could ever make."
Elena's chest tightened. She saw then the weight he carried—not just vines and debts, but ghosts. A boy who had grown up too fast, shouldering burdens no child should.
"My grandmother used to say we carry two families inside us," she murmured. "The one we're born into… and the one we build."
He looked at her sharply. "And which one do you belong to, Elena?"
She hesitated. The easy answer would have been New York. Her career. The fast-paced life she had fought so hard for. But sitting here, with Luca's scars laid bare beside her, she wasn't sure anymore.
"I don't know," she admitted. "But maybe that's why I'm here. To find out."
For the first time, his expression softened completely. No mockery, no distance—just understanding. And in that silence, Elena felt the smallest shift in the air between them.
Not love. Not yet. But trust, fragile and new.
---
That night, as Luca lay awake in his modest room above the barn, he thought about her words. The one we build.
He had never believed in building anything beyond vines and soil. But Elena Rossi was a complication he hadn't expected—a city girl with sharp edges, family wounds of her own, and a stubbornness that rivaled his own.
And though he told himself she didn't belong here, a dangerous thought whispered back:
Maybe she does.