Forbidden Never Felt This Good

~ 22

0022

~ Luca ~

Sleep has never been a luxury I could afford.

Not in this life. Not with everything that comes with it. You learn early on that rest is a privilege reserved for men with clean hands, and my hands stopped being clean a long time ago.

So I lay there in the dark, staring at the ceiling, listening to the silence of the estate settle around me, and I let my mind do what it always does, work and her.

Except last night, it wasn't strategy or security detail or threat assessment running through my head.

It was her, purely her.

It was the way she had looked at me in those quiet hours before, with those eyes that see entirely too much, and how I had almost, almost let everything fall out of my mouth like a man who had forgotten what was at stake.

I was this close. The words were right there, sitting on the edge of my tongue, and something warm and dangerous in my chest had said just tell her, just trust her, she can hold it. And I had almost listened.

That was the foolish part. Not wanting to tell her, wanting to tell her without thinking it through first. There is a difference. One is love. The other is recklessness dressed up as love. And in this world, recklessness gets people killed.

I sat up, scrubbed a hand down my face, and got dressed.

By the time I was standing in the hallway outside her door, I had rebuilt every wall I'd let slip the night before. I was composed. Whatever she needed me to be today, I would be it. That was the job.

That had always been the job. Has it? Or what I have made it to be? A voice echoed in my head.

I checked my watch. She usually came out within fifteen minutes of her alarm. I knew her routine better than she probably realized, the soft sounds of movement behind the door, the brief silence that meant she was standing in front of the mirror deciding something, and then the quiet click of the handle.

The door opened.

And then I saw her, God she is beautiful.

She had tried. I could tell she had tried, hair pulled back neatly, dressed impeccably as always, chin lifted the way it always is when she is determined to appear unbothered. But the dark circles beneath her eyes told a different story.

Sleep had not been kind to her either. She looked like a woman carrying something heavy and refusing to put it down, and something in my chest pulled tight because I knew I was part of the weight.

We exchanged pleasantries. The polite, surface-level kind.

“Good Morning Miss Santoro. Hope you slept well?” I greeted. So hypocritical of me to say knowing she didn’t.

“Good morning to you too, Luca.” She responded in a dry tone. It was awkward too, too awkward. I didn’t know what to say. This was my fault. But I was in a mess at heart too.

She looked at me for a moment, just a moment, like she was searching for something in my expression. I held myself still and gave her steady. Whatever storm was going on inside me, she didn't need to see it.

Then she took a long breath and started to turn away.

"You look lovely.” I said.

The words came out before I had fully decided to say them. She stopped. There was a beat, this small, surprised pause, and I watched her process it.

She hadn't been expecting that. Maybe she had braced herself for distance today, for the professional version of me that doesn't notice things like the way the morning light catches her face.

Maybe she thought I would give her space and she had already prepared herself for the sting of it.

She turned back slightly, and for just a second something flickered across her face. Then it was gone.

"Thank you," she said simply.

That was all. Two words. But the way she said it, quiet, almost careful, told me everything. She was holding herself together with both hands today, and she was not going to let me see her loosen her grip. Not after last night. Not yet.

I didn't push. I fell into step behind her the way I always do, eyes scanning the corridor out of habit while my mind stayed entirely fixed on her.

She was too quiet. Not the comfortable kind of quiet, this was the closed kind. The kind that has a lock on it.

She had lost her spark. That bright, sharp energy that she carries into every room, it was dimmed this morning. Still there, but dimmed.

And I had helped do that to her.

Marco was waiting, engine running. I opened the door for Aria before she could, then she slid in and I took my usual position, and for a few minutes nobody said anything. She stared out the window. I watched the road.

I knew what she needed.

Not the office. Not back-to-back meetings and the weight of her father's empire pressing down on her shoulders before she'd even had a proper breath. Not today. She needed air. She needed something that felt like hers, untouched by all of this.

I knew exactly where to take her.

But I was drawing her close again, aren’t I? Well f**k it!

I leaned forward quietly. "Marco." He glanced at me in the rearview mirror.

"Turn around."

Aria's head came up from the window. Marco didn't question it, he never does, and smoothly made the turn at the next junction. I could feel her attention shift before she even spoke.

"Luca." Her voice was measured, but there was a thread of something underneath it. Curiosity. Maybe the smallest hint of that spark will come back.

"What's going on?"

I kept my eyes forward. "Change of plans."

"We have a nine o'clock."

"It can wait."

A pause. I could feel her looking at the side of my face, trying to read me the way she always does, like if she stares long enough the answer will simply appear. I gave her nothing. Not yet.

"Luca." The way she said my name this time was different. Softer. Less composed. Like she was genuinely asking rather than demanding. "Where are we going?"

Marco caught my eye in the mirror, a small knowing look that I ignored entirely.

I said nothing.

"Luca, what's going on?”