Fire at the Gallery.
1382 Words
(Aria)
The music had shifted again into something smooth. It was soft jazz. A melody meant to soothe nerves that would soon have nowhere to hide.
I stood by the far end of the gallery, pretending to listen to a curator talk about the symbolism in one of my pieces. My mind, however, was trapped in Luca’s words.
You were never supposed to see that night.
What did he mean?
They echoed in my head like a curse I couldn't get rid of. I couldn't shake them off neither coul I move past them. The words were here to haunt me.
The room was glittering with chandeliers and laughter from many lips but under the surface, something felt off. There were too many glances. Too many shadows moving where they shouldn’t. The air felt heavier and more charged, like the moment before lightning strikes the sky.
I caught Luca’s reflection in one of the glass panels across the room. He stood near the entrance. His posture was alert and his head was slightly tilted as if listening to something no one else could hear. His jaw was clenched, and that calm, dangerous energy around him had shifted into something sharper.
My stomach knotted.
Then, the lights flickered. Once. Twice.
And went black.
Gasps filled the air, followed by the sound of glasses dropping. The quartet’s music stuttered to silence.
“Probably a power cut,” someone said nervously.
But I knew better. My skin crawled with the same dread and fear i had felt four years ago, the night everything burned.
A single shot shattered the darkness.
Screams erupted all over. People ducked, ran and tripped over each other as chaos tore through the gallery. The chandeliers swayed overhead, their crystals scattering what little light the emergency lamps offered.
“Get down!” someone yelled.
I fell to my knees with my heart slamming against my ribs, the glass cut into my palm as I crawled behind a marble pillar. My breath came out in harsh and ragged gasps.
Another shot came through the air. Then three more.
I peeked out, just for a second and saw men in black moving through the crowd with frightening precision. They wore masks and clutched heavy guns showing that they had no mercy tonight.
This wasn’t random. This was a message.
And deep down, I already knew who that message was for.
Luca.
He was the darkness they came for.
A hand yanked me backward before I could scream. My elbow flew up on instinct only to come in contact with a wall of muscle.
“Easy, tesoro,” Luca’s voice murmured sharply against my ear.
Even through the panic, his presence cut through me. I turned to see him crouched beside me, his eyes blazing with lethal focus. There was nothing soft about him now. He looked like sin forged in fire.
“What’s happening?” I whispered.
He checked the magazine of the gun he had somehow acquired. “They found me.” His eyes moved toward the entrance. “And now, they’ve found you.”
My heart dropped to my stomach. “What—”
Before I could finish my sentence, bullets tore into the wall beside us, spraying marble dust into the air. Luca grabbed me and pulled me against his chest, rolling us behind a fallen sculpture.
“Stay low,” he ordered.
His voice wasn’t pleading with me, it was command. The kind that came from years of knowing exactly how to survive.
My pulse throbbed painfully as I pressed my palms to my ears, trying to drown out the chaos. The air smelled of gunpowder and fear.
Then Luca moved.
He rose from our cover with grace….it was like been waiting for this. His gun roared once, twice, three times. Each shot of his was deliberate. Controlled and Deadly.
He was aiming not to wound, but to kill.
I couldn’t look away.
For four years, I had told myself that I had moved on from the man who destroyed everything. But watching him now as he fought with such precision, protecting me without hesitation made my chest tighten painfully.
He was simply violence and devotion wrapped in the same body.
And God help me, I couldn’t tell which one scared me more.
“Aria, move!” he shouted.
I snapped out of my daze and crawled toward the exit he pointed to. Another explosion rocked the gallery, shattering one of my paintings into a rain of glass and fire. My life’s work—gone in seconds.
Tears blurred my vision as smoke filled the air.
Everything I had worked on for four long years had crashed down in one night and here he was, in the middle of all the chaos.
Luca appeared beside me again and grabbed my hand. He dragged me through the chaos and even though his grip was bruising, it was steady and grounding me when the world around us spun out of control.
We reached the emergency exit, but one of the masked men was already there.
Luca shoved me behind him. The man raised his gun to shoot. I screamed.
The sound of a gunshot split the air then there was silence.
Luca stood still with his gun still smoking, the man crumpled on the floor. His breathing was steady, like killing was muscle memory.
“Don’t look,” he said softly.
But I already had.
He turned to me, and for a brief second, I saw a glimpse of the boy I had once loved flicker through the monster time had made him. “You okay?” he asked, voice rough.
I nodded numbly.
He took off his jacket and threw it around my shoulders. “We have to go. Now.”
“What about—”
He cut me off mid-sentence. “They’ll come for you next. You’re not safe here.”
My throat tightened. “Why me?”
He met my gaze, and the answer in his eyes chilled me. “Because you saw something you were never supposed to, and someone out there still wants to make sure you don’t remember what it was.”
He pushed the exit door open. Alarms blared in the distance.
Outside, the night air hit my lungs like a shock. Sirens wailed far off, blue lights flickering across the street as people fled in all directions.
Luca didn’t stop. He led me to a black car parked in the alley, opened the door, and practically shoved me inside.
I stared at him as he slid into the driver’s seat, blood streaked across his sleeve, his jaw clenched tight.
“Where are we going?” I demanded.
He started the engine, eyes fixed ahead. “Somewhere they can’t find you.”
“Luca—”
He looked at me then, eyes dark and fierce. “You can hate me later, tesoro. Right now, you need me to keep you alive.”
The car sped into the night, the galleryand the life I had built disappeared in the rearview mirror like smoke.
And all I could think about was his voice, low and steady through the chaos.
You were never supposed to see that night.
But as the city lights blurred past, I looked at him again, really looked. His hands gripped the steering wheel with restrained fury as though he was stopping himself from crashing the car. His breathing was heavy and uneven. There was blood on his collar, but none of it seemed to slow him down.
For a terrifying moment, I realized the truth…
He wasn’t saving me out of guilt or duty.
He was saving me because somewhere, beneath all the ruin, Luca Moretti still believed I was his to protect.
And as the sirens faded into the distance, I knew one thing for certain:
Whatever I had run from four years ago was coming back for me—
and this time, it wouldn’t stop until one of us was dead.
But as the car disappeared into the dark countryside, Luca’s hand brushed mine on the gear……his touch was steady, possessive and unspoken. My heart clenched.
And for the first time since that night four years ago, I realized with certainty—
my nightmare had only just begun.
- Writer
