History and Heat
599 Words
Chapter 4
The car was too quiet for her liking.
It was sleek, black, fast — the kind of machine that purred rather than roared — and entirely too intimate for Bianca to feel comfortable. Lorenzo drove like he did everything else: with absolute control and zero emotion.
He hadn’t said a word since they’d left the villa.
Neither had his bodyguard, the stone-faced man in the passenger seat who looked like he chewed nails for breakfast.
Bianca kept her eyes on the passing scenery — olive groves, old stone houses, narrow roads winding like veins through the Tuscan hills.
“You’re taking me somewhere to kill me, aren’t you?” she finally asked.
Lorenzo didn’t even blink. “If I were, I’d have let you wear heels.”
She looked down at her clean white sneakers. “How thoughtful.”
He almost smiled. Almost.
After twenty more minutes of silence and switchbacks, the car pulled onto a gravel path surrounded by cypress trees. A clearing opened at the top of the hill — just sky, wind, and a ruined stone chapel overlooking the countryside.
The bodyguard stayed behind. Lorenzo motioned for her to follow.
“Where are we?” she asked.
He stepped ahead, hands behind his back. “Somewhere I don’t bring anyone.”
She didn’t know what she expected — a graveyard, maybe. A hidden gun.
Not… this.
The chapel was broken but beautiful. Vines curled around crumbling stone arches. Birds nested in the rafters. It felt ancient. Sacred. Forgotten.
Lorenzo stood near the edge of the hill, hands in his pockets, staring out into the open nothing.
He didn’t look dangerous now.
He looked… haunted.
Bianca approached slowly. “Is this where you hide your victims?”
“No,” he said softly. “This is where I buried the last person who mattered.”
That silenced her.
She studied his profile — jaw tight, eyes hard, shoulders tense like he was at war with himself. This wasn’t the man who had pointed a gun at another man’s head. This was something else. Someone else.
“Who was she?” Bianca asked, voice low.
His eyes didn’t leave the horizon. “Someone I should’ve protected." I let her believe I could be good.
He exhaled slowly, like the memory still clawed at his lungs.
“She trusted me. And it got her killed.”
Bianca’s chest ached — not for him, but because she saw a c***k in the armor. A wound he carried like a scar carved into bone.
He turned to face her.
“I don’t want to make the same mistake again.”
“Is that why you’re keeping me locked up?” she asked. “Because you think I’m a mistake?”
“No.” He stepped closer. “Because I don’t know what you are yet.”
They were close again. Always too close. The air shifted — warmer, tighter, dangerous.
He reached up, brushing a strand of hair from her cheek. She didn’t move.
His hand lingered — fingertips tracing the curve of her jaw.
It wasn’t violent.
It wasn’t careful.
It was… something else entirely.
“Tell me to stop,” he said quietly.
She didn’t.
But he did.
Just as their lips were about to meet, he pulled back like she burned him.
“I told you,” he said, voice rough. “I don’t make the same mistake twice.”
He turned, walking away before she could speak.
And for the first time since meeting him, Bianca realized she wasn’t the only prisoner in that villa.
- Writer
