Chapter 4 – The Moretti Name
724 Words
The morning sun broke through the gray sky with a fragile kind of light—soft, golden, and deceptive. Rose stared out her bedroom window, watching the city move like nothing had changed.
But something had.
Luciano Moretti had bled on her floor. He had looked at her like she wasn’t just a girl working in a flower shop, like he saw something buried even she didn’t recognize.
And now, every sound outside made her pulse quicken.
A car door slamming.
The rustle of wind against the window.
A man’s voice on the phone down the block.
Was someone watching her?
The thought wouldn’t leave her alone.
She pulled her cardigan tighter and headed down to the shop. Her grandmother, Estelle, was already arranging the tulips with delicate care, humming a French love song under her breath.
“Morning, sweetheart,” Estelle chirped. “You look pale. Didn’t sleep?”
Rose forced a smile. “Just... had a long night.”
Estelle paused, glancing up with a sharp, knowing look. “You smell like trouble.”
“I always smell like flowers, Nanna.”
“Hmph. Same thing.”
Rose chuckled, but her heart wasn’t in it. Every inch of her skin still remembered the way Luciano had looked at her. The heat in his voice. The pain in his touch. The fear that bled through his mask of control.
As she bent to rearrange a bouquet, the shop bell jingled behind her.
She turned—and froze.
Two men in dark suits entered. Not just expensive suits—tailored like armor, stitched in silence. They didn’t look like customers. They looked like a message.
“Can I help you?” Rose asked, her voice tight.
One of them stepped forward, his face clean, cold, and utterly unreadable. “Miss Hart?”
“Yes.”
He handed her a small white envelope.
Rose took it, her fingers trembling slightly. The man offered a slight nod, then turned and left with his partner—just as quietly as they came.
Estelle watched them go, eyes narrowing. “Friends of yours?”
Rose didn’t answer. She opened the envelope.
Inside was a single card. Thick. Matte black. Her name written in silver cursive on the front.
Inside, it read:
> You’re safe. For now.
Don’t go anywhere alone.
—L
A number was scribbled underneath it. Burned into her mind.
Luciano.
Rose’s chest tightened. What the hell had she stepped into?
She tucked the card into her pocket and forced herself back to work, but the flowers in her hands blurred.
She didn’t even notice the black car parked across the street until hours later. Didn’t see the figure in the driver’s seat. Didn’t feel the eyes on her every move.
---
Meanwhile…
Luciano sat in the back of the sleek black Escalade, eyes glued to the flower shop window.
She was there.
Her.
Rose.
He told himself he was only watching to keep her safe. That this was routine—damage control, precaution.
But the truth was darker.
He couldn’t stop thinking about her. The warmth of her hands, the fire in her voice, the fearlessness in her eyes.
She was supposed to be a one-night memory. A stranger who stitched him up and disappeared.
But she had ruined that plan the moment she looked at him and didn’t flinch.
“I don’t like this,” Enzo, his second-in-command, muttered from the front seat. “You’re getting reckless.”
Luciano didn’t take his eyes off the shop. “She saved my life.”
“She’s a civilian.”
“She’s mine.”
The words left his mouth before he could stop them.
Enzo turned in his seat. “You can’t afford this kind of distraction. Not with the Grimaldis gunning for us. Your father’s breathing down your neck. And now you’re watching some girl like she’s—”
“She’s not just some girl,” Luciano snapped.
Silence filled the car.
Luciano took a breath, controlled the fire rising inside him. “Keep her safe. That’s all I want.”
Enzo didn’t argue. But the concern in his eyes lingered.
Back in the shop, Rose touched her pocket, where the card still sat. She didn’t know yet that the war wasn’t coming.
It had already started.
And she was at the center of it.
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- Writer
