Chapter 7: Echoes of Loss
The rhythm of their secret life had settled into a fragile pattern. Days were for Hart's Blooms, for Emilia's gentle ministrations to petals and people, punctuated by Luca's increasingly less disguised visits. He'd find reasons, however flimsy, to see her: a single rose requested for an unnamed recipient, a question about a plant he'd supposedly seen in a "friend's" apartment, or simply appearing at closing time with a container of her favorite gelato from the little Italian place two blocks over, his excuse a gruff, "Thought you might like this."
Nights, or rather the deep, stolen hours before dawn, were for them. In the sanctuary of Emilia's small, book-filled apartment above the slumbering bakery, surrounded by the comforting scent of old paper, dried lavender, and the lingering sweetness of whatever she'd last baked, Luca found a measure of peace he'd never known. With Emilia, the sharp edges of his world seemed to blur. She'd draw him out with quiet questions, not about his work – a topic they both instinctively, carefully avoided – but about innocuous things: his childhood in Sicily before the shadows fell, his mother's favorite çiuri (flowers, he'd translated for her, a rare smile touching his lips), his surprising fondness for old jazz records.
Emilia, in turn, found herself falling deeper into the dangerous currents of her affection for him. She saw the fierce loyalty that bound him, the unexpected tenderness he reserved only for her, the weary sorrow that sometimes clouded his dark eyes. She told herself she was peeling back the layers of the enforcer to find the man beneath. And the man she was finding, despite everything, was one she was inexplicably, terrifyingly, coming to love.
The precariousness of their situation, however, was a constant, thrumming bass note beneath the melody of their stolen happiness. Emilia knew Luca's life was steeped in violence. She saw it in the way he moved, always alert, always assessing; in the scars he carried, not just the recent one on his side she had tended, but older, fainter ones that hinted at a lifetime of conflict; in the sudden, chilling stillness that would come over him if a car lingered too long outside her building or if a phone call came at an odd hour, his voice dropping to that low, lethal cadence that made her blood run cold.
Her own aversion to violence was a deeply ingrained part of her, a scar tissue formed around a wound she rarely exposed. It made their relationship a constant internal negotiation, a tightrope walk between her heart's desire and her soul's deep-seated fear.
The past resurfaced on a deceptively ordinary Tuesday morning. Emilia was sipping her tea in the back room of the shop, scrolling through the local news on her tablet before opening for the day. An article caught her eye, a small headline beneath a grainy photo of a cordoned-off street: "Young Man Found Dead in Alley – Police Suspect Retaliation."
A cold fist clenched around Emilia's heart. The words, stark and brutal, ripped through the morning calm. She clicked on the article, her hand trembling. Details were scant: a male in his early twenties, "known to authorities," signs of a violent struggle. The location wasn't far from her neighborhood.
Suddenly, she wasn't in her fragrant workroom anymore. She was transported back eight years, to a different, colder morning, to the sterile, echoing corridors of a police station, the smell of floor polish and stale coffee thick in the air. She remembered the expressionless face of the detective, the carefully chosen, impersonal words – "altercation," "unfortunate incident," "investigation ongoing" – that had meant nothing and explained even less.
Her brother, Leo. He'd been twenty-two, full of restless energy, a laugh that could fill a room, and a talent for finding trouble that had always worried their grandmother. He wasn't a bad person, Emilia knew that with every fiber of her being. He was just… lost, trying to prove himself in a city that had too many ways for a young man to get hurt. He'd fallen in with a rough crowd, chasing a sense of belonging, of power, that had ultimately consumed him.
He'd been found in an abandoned lot, his vibrant life extinguished by means the police had never clearly defined. "Mysterious circumstances," the official report had vaguely concluded after a cursory investigation that had quickly gone cold. No witnesses willing to talk, no clear motive offered beyond hushed rumors of debts and disrespect. To Emilia, it had felt like he'd simply been erased, his death a messy inconvenience the world was eager to forget. The injustice of it, the helplessness, the gnawing uncertainty, had carved a permanent hollow in her heart. That loss, and the brutal manner of it, had solidified her deep-rooted abhorrence of violence, her yearning for a world where things were mended, not broken, where life was nurtured, not carelessly destroyed.
"Emilia?"
Luca's voice, from the doorway of the workroom, startled her violently. She gasped, her tablet clattering onto the workbench. He was there, earlier than usual, holding two cups of coffee, his brow furrowed with concern as he took in her pale face and wide, frightened eyes.
"Hey, cara, what's wrong?" he asked, setting the coffees down and moving towards her. "You look like you've seen a ghost."
She tried to compose herself, to push back the sudden, overwhelming wave of grief and anger. "Nothing. Just… a disturbing news story," she said, her voice thin and shaky. She gestured vaguely towards the tablet.
Luca's gaze followed hers to the screen, his eyes quickly scanning the headline. His expression tightened, becoming shuttered and grim. He knew that look, that story. It was the language of his world.
"City's always eating its own," he said, his voice flat, devoid of the warmth it usually held when he spoke to her. He looked back at her, his eyes searching hers. "This hit you hard, huh?"
Emilia couldn't meet his gaze. She wrapped her arms around herself, feeling suddenly, desperately cold. "It just… reminded me of something."
He waited, his silence an invitation, or perhaps a gentle demand. He'd become attuned to her moods, recognizing the subtle shifts in her expression, the shadows that sometimes crossed her usually bright face.
"My brother, Leo," she began, her voice barely a whisper. The words felt rusty, difficult to excavate from the place where she kept her deepest pain locked away. "He died. Eight years ago. He was young."
Luca's stillness was absolute. He didn't prompt her, just listened, his entire being focused on her.
"They found him… it was violent," she continued, the memories washing over her – the shock, the disbelief, the unending ache. "The police didn't find out who did it. Or they didn't try very hard. He was just… another statistic to them. Another young man making bad choices." Her voice cracked, a hint of the old bitterness, the raw grief, seeping through. "But he wasn't just a statistic. He was my brother."
She finally looked up at him, her eyes swimming with unshed tears. "I hate it, Luca. I hate the violence, the waste of it all. The way lives can just be… snuffed out, and no one answers for it."
An unreadable emotion flickered in Luca's dark eyes. He reached out, his hand hovering for a moment before he gently cupped her cheek, his thumb stroking away a tear that had escaped. His touch was surprisingly tender.
"I know about loss, Emilia," he said, his voice rough with an emotion she couldn't quite decipher. He didn't elaborate, but she thought of the raven tattooed on his forearm, the one he'd once, in a rare moment of openness, told her was for his own lost brother, Marco. A different kind of loss, perhaps, one steeped in the brutal codes of his world, but loss nonetheless. A shared geography of pain.
"What happened to Leo," Luca continued, his gaze unwavering, "it wasn't right. No family should have to go through that, the not knowing, the feeling like nobody cares."
His words, the quiet empathy in them, surprised her. She had expected him, perhaps, to be dismissive, or to offer some hardened platitude about the harshness of the world. Instead, he offered a simple acknowledgment of her pain, a validation of her grief.
"I just wish…" Emilia faltered, "I wish things were different. That people didn't have to resort to… to hurting each other." She looked at him then, a silent question in her eyes, a plea for an understanding she wasn't sure he could give, given the life he led.
Luca's expression became guarded. He knew what she was asking, what she was seeing when she looked at him through the lens of her brother's violent death. He was the violence she abhorred. He was the force that settled scores, the one who ensured debts were paid in blood. How could he reconcile the comfort he found with her, the light she brought into his desolate world, with the darkness he embodied?
"This world, Emilia," he said slowly, choosing his words with care, "it's not always as clean as your flowers. Sometimes… sometimes there are no good choices. Only necessary ones."
It wasn't an excuse, nor was it a justification. It was simply a statement of his reality, a bleak acknowledgment of the codes he lived by. Emilia felt a chill despite his comforting touch. His words, meant perhaps to explain, only highlighted the vast, terrifying chasm between their worlds.
The revelation, or rather, the resurfacing of her trauma, cast a subtle shadow over their stolen moments in the days that followed. Emilia found herself more keenly aware of Luca's other life. She'd flinch almost imperceptibly if he moved too suddenly, or if his voice took on that hard edge she associated with his "business." The news report had scraped raw her wariness of violence, making it harder to ignore the inherent danger in loving him.
One evening, he arrived at her apartment later than usual. He was quiet, his movements tight, a fresh, almost invisible scratch high on his cheekbone that he dismissed as a "disagreement with a doorway." But Emilia saw the faint, metallic scent she thought she detected on his clothes, the coiled tension in his shoulders that even her presence couldn't immediately soothe.
She was making chamomile tea, her hands not quite steady. As she handed him a mug, their eyes met. Her fear, her revived grief, her love for him – it was all there, naked and vulnerable in her gaze.
"Are you okay, Luca?" she asked, her voice small.
He set the mug down, untouched. "I'm always okay, cara." But his eyes told a different story. He reached for her, pulling her into his arms, his embrace almost painfully tight. "Don't," he murmured into her hair. "Don't look at me like that."
"Like what?" she whispered against his chest, the solid beat of his heart a strange counterpoint to the turmoil within her.
"Like you're seeing a monster."
Her breath caught. "I don't see a monster, Luca." But did she? Could she truly separate the man who held her with such fierce tenderness from the enforcer who moved through a world of brutal retribution? "I just… I worry. About you. About… everything."
He held her tighter, as if he could physically shield her from her fears, from the echoes of her past. "I won't let anything happen to you, Emilia. Ever. You understand?" His voice was a low, possessive growl, a vow made against the darkness.
And Emilia, clinging to him, wanted to believe him. She wanted to believe that their love could be a sanctuary, strong enough to withstand the violent tremors of his world and the haunting echoes of her own loss. But as she inhaled the familiar scent of him, now tinged with something indefinably dangerous, a cold dread settled in her heart. Leo's unexplained death had taught her that safety was an illusion, that violence could touch anyone, anywhere. And she was willingly, knowingly, loving a man who was a purveyor of that very violence.
Later that night, as Luca slept beside her, his scarred body a warm, solid presence in her bed, Emilia lay awake, staring into the darkness. He'd fallen asleep with his arm thrown possessively across her waist, holding her close even in slumber. She gently traced the outline of the raven tattoo on his forearm. Marco. Leo. Two brothers lost to worlds that operated on different, brutal currencies.
Was she naive to think she could soften Luca's edges, that her love could somehow be a redemptive force? Or was she simply a flower, destined to be crushed by the harsh realities of the concrete jungle he inhabited?
She remembered her grandmother, Elara, telling her stories as a child, stories of brave knights and fearsome dragons. Elara had always emphasized that even dragons had a heart, a vulnerability, if one was brave enough, or perhaps foolish enough, to seek it. Emilia was seeking Luca's heart, had perhaps even found it. But she was beginning to understand that taming the dragon, or even just coexisting with it, came at a profound, perhaps unbearable, cost. The echoes of her brother's loss were a constant, painful reminder of that. And those echoes were growing louder.