Chapter 5
1137 Words
Luca couldn’t focus.
Not on the quarterly reports, not on the sleek renderings of the Mercer project pinned to the screens in his executive suite, not even on the fact that an entire corner of Midtown had just approved his zoning override without pushback. That should have made his day.
Instead, his mind was stuck on a woman who had looked at him like she’d once known him—and hated the man he’d become.
Elena Rossi.
It wasn’t just the name. It was the way she said this with such quiet fury, like it tasted bitter on her tongue. It was the way she’d stood in front of him—refined, confident, and absolutely unwilling to bend. She hadn’t flinched under his reputation, or his wealth. She’d looked straight through him. Like she’d seen before the billionaire.
And something about that made his skin itch.
He leaned back in his chair, staring at the ceiling, fingers drumming against the armrest.
“Elena Rossi…”
He said it aloud this time, slower, as if unwrapping it syllable by syllable would spark recognition. The name was familiar—Italian, yes—but more than that. It belonged to a chapter of his life he’d locked away with deliberate precision.
Florence. Summer. Ten years ago.
A girl who smelled like orange blossoms and paint. A girl with fire in her voice and stars in her eyes. He’d been twenty-one, on break from his father’s program at Politecnico di Milano, hiding in Tuscany for a summer of quiet rebellion. No handlers. No press. Just the warm, rebellious blur of stolen time.
He remembered the vineyard hills. The lemon trees. The taste of figs. And her.
God, what was her name?
She’d been a local—young, maybe nineteen? She’d worked at a family-run gallery, he thought. She’d told him she wanted to restore the world, one painting at a time.
He hadn’t thought about her in years.
Not because she hadn’t mattered, but because his father had made damn sure he never saw her again. The moment she became a threat to the DeLuca name—she disappeared.
He’d returned to Milan. Then to London. Then to New York. His father had died. The empire had passed to him. And that summer became a myth—too perfect, too painful to revisit.
But what if…
No. It was impossible. That girl hadn’t even known his real name. He’d gone by “Luca Marino” back then—his mother’s maiden name. She’d never have known he was DeLuca.
Unless…
He turned toward his desk, hit the intercom.
“Mark, bring me everything we have on Elena Rossi.”
His assistant’s voice crackled back through the speaker. “Already did, sir. It’s in the dossier you reviewed earlier—tenant file, property lease, client history.”
“Not her tenant file. Her background. I want personal history. Education. Residency. I want to know where she was ten years ago, and where she’s been since.”
A pause. “On it.”
Luca ended the call and stood, walking toward the glass. Outside, the city pulsed and flickered like a circuit board. He stared, unseeing.
Why didn’t she say anything?
If she was the girl from Florence—if she was his Elena—why wouldn’t she tell him?
Unless she hated him. Unless she thought he’d abandoned her.
He rubbed his jaw, unsettled.
He hadn’t even had a choice. His father had pulled him from Tuscany mid-week with nothing but a cryptic command: No distractions. No weakness. His calls hadn’t gone through. His letters came back unopened. It was as if she’d vanished.
And he’d buried the loss in ambition.
But if she’d resurfaced in New York, under his own roof… that wasn’t coincidence.
That was fate.
And Luca didn’t believe in fate. But this—this felt personal.
He paced, the rhythm of his footsteps echoing across the room.
If she remembered him—and she had to—then that meant she’d known exactly who he was the moment she saw the letterhead. She hadn’t come to negotiate. She’d come to confront.
And he’d sat there like a damn fool, dismissing her as a tenant with a paintbrush.
You may not remember me, but I remember you.
Those words had struck him like a lash.
The knock at his door came exactly eleven minutes later.
Mark entered with a manila folder.
“Background on Elena Rossi,” he said. “It’s limited. She keeps a low public profile.”
Luca took the file and flipped it open.
> Name: Elena Sofia Rossi
DOB: March 12, 1994
Place of Birth: Florence, Italy
Immigrated to U.S.: 2013
Education: NYU Fine Arts – B.A. Art Conservation, Class of 2016
Studio Founded: 2016, Mercer Street
Known Affiliations: New York Restoration Guild, private contracts with The Haverford Collection, Petrovich Estate, and multiple European collectors.
He scanned the page again.
Florence. Moved to New York the same year he had. Founded her studio just months after he opened the East Coast office.
She had been building her world in his city all this time—and he’d never noticed.
One more page.
> Dependent listed on file:
Name: Sofia Rossi
Date of Birth: October 2, 2015
School: Private enrollment—name withheld.
Luca froze.
His eyes narrowed on the child’s birthdate. October 2, 2015.
He did the math.
Ten years ago… Florence…
His mind reeled.
Sofia. Elena Sofia Rossi.
Her daughter had his mother’s name.
His mother had died when he was ten. No one in New York would’ve known that. No one except—
Her.
A pulse of shock surged through him—anger, confusion, a sharp stab of something dangerously close to grief.
Elena hadn’t just remembered him.
She’d hidden a child from him.
His child?
He wasn’t sure what rattled him more—that it might be true, or that it made perfect sense.
Sofia. A child born in 2015. Elena moved to New York the same year. No listed father. No press. No claims.
Just silence.
He sat down, hard, staring at the name like it might explain itself.
She never told me.
But why? To protect the child? To punish him?
Luca had faced takeovers, lawsuits, betrayals from men he’d once called brothers. But nothing—not even his father’s funeral—had shaken him like this.
He didn’t know the girl.
He didn’t know his daughter.
He closed the file.
Then he stood.
“Mark,” he said. “Clear my afternoon. And get me a list of every restoration studio Elena Rossi has worked with i
n the last five years.”
Mark hesitated. “Any particular reason?”
Luca’s voice was ice.
“She’s been hiding something from me. And I intend to find out what.”
- Writer
