His Rose in the Shadows

Chapter 11 – Smoke and Secrets

Rose

The bell over the flower shop door jingled just as Rose was arranging a new shipment of white peonies. Her pulse skipped as she looked up, half expecting Luciano.

But it wasn’t him.

It was a man in a tan trench coat, tall, wiry, with a cigarette dangling from his lips. He looked around the shop with a blank expression, his eyes lingering too long on the counter, then the back hallway.

Rose forced a polite smile. “Can I help you?”

He didn’t answer right away. He picked up a rose from the bucket nearest the entrance, rolled the stem between his fingers like he was inspecting a weapon.

“I hear you’ve got a new tenant in the building. Tall. Dark. Wounded?”

Rose’s fingers froze around the ribbon she was cutting.

“I’m sorry, I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said smoothly, but her voice had an edge of steel now. The stranger chuckled.

“Don’t play dumb, sweetheart. We both know Moretti doesn’t just disappear. He bleeds, and then he reappears. Always leaves a trail. And I’m very good at following trails.”

Her heart thundered. She kept her face blank, her tone professional. “Sir, unless you’re here to buy flowers, I’m going to have to ask you to leave.”

The man dropped the rose back into the bucket.

“Tell him his past is catching up fast.”

With that, he turned on his heel and walked out, the door chiming behind him like a warning bell.

Luciano

He watched from the rooftop across the street.

The second he saw Vaughn Torres walk into Rose’s shop, he knew it was only a matter of time. Vaughn was a former associate turned informant—a viper wearing a suit.

Luciano’s grip on the railing tightened until his knuckles were white.

He should’ve left last night.

He should’ve run before anyone could sniff out where he was hiding. But the image of Rose stitching his wound, brushing his hair from his forehead, whispering his name like a secret…

That had rooted him in place.

Now his presence was pulling her into a world she didn’t belong in. A world that would swallow her whole if he didn’t act fast.

Rose

She locked the door early.

Every creak of the floorboard, every shadow moving past the window made her flinch. She pulled the blinds down and turned the CLOSED sign.

Then she walked into the storeroom.

Luciano was sitting on the cot, shirtless again, dressing his wound. When he looked up, the tension between them snapped tight.

“We had a visitor,” she said.

His face hardened. “Who?”

“Tall. Thin. Smoked like he wanted people to know he was trouble. Said his name was Vaughn.”

Luciano stood up fast, and she instinctively took a step back.

“I told you this would happen,” he said darkly. “People like me don’t get to disappear. Someone always wants to drag us back.”

“I’m not scared of you,” Rose said, chin up.

“You should be,” he snapped. “Because the minute you gave me shelter, you made yourself a target.”

Her chest ached. “So what now? You vanish in the night and I just pretend this never happened?”

He paused.

His voice dropped into something low and intimate. “I should. But I can’t. I don’t walk away from the things that matter.”

Rose swallowed.

“You matter?”

“I don’t know yet,” he admitted. “But I know this—if anyone comes near you again, they’re not walking away.”

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