Chapter 3
1707 Words
Chapter 3
Smoke and Promise
The city blurred outside the car window.
Lisa didn't see the traffic lights or pedestrians. She saw the garage door, the lift where Marco's last project sat half-finished, the toolbox her nonno had carved his initials into.
All of it could be gone in twenty minutes.
Her phone was hot in her hand. No calls back. No messages from her father. Just the one call from the distorted voice and the promise of fire.
Luca sat across from her, speaking into his phone in a voice that cut through the driver's radio chatter like a blade.
“Close via Semipione. Now. No press, no civilians. Fire department only. If De Luca's men are there, I want names.”
He hung up, looked at her.
Your father is safe. He's outside. We pulled him out two minutes ago.”
“How do you know?”
“Because I have people who don't miss.”
It wasn't reassurance. It was a statement of fact. The kind of fact that made her stomach turn.
The car turned into Semipione, and the smell hit first. Acrid, chemical, wrong. Smoke hung low over the street, thick enough to sting her eyes.
Romano Auto was behind the yellow tape.
Flames licked the roof. Firefighters worked in controlled chaos, hoses cutting arcs of water through the black smoke. The front window had shattered. The sign Romano Auto, hand painted by her nonno in 1998 was half melted.
Her father stood on the sidewalk, coat draped over his shoulder, face streaked with soot.
He didn't cry. He just stared at the building like it was a body he couldn't save.
Lisa was out of the car before it stopped.
“Dad!”
He turned. For a second, relief flashed across his face. Then shame.
“I'm sorry,” he said “I couldn't”
“Don't,” she cut him off. She grabbed his arms, checked him over. Burns on his forearm, smoke in his lungs, but he was breathing. “Are you hurt?”
“Not bad. They got me out fast.”
“Who?”
He didn't answer. He didn't need to.
Luca's men were everywhere. In plain clothes on the crowd, on the rooftops. Watching.
Luca joined them, his suit jacket off, sleeves rolled up. He didn't look at the fire. He looked at the street, the alleys, the shadows.
“Who did this?” Isabella asked.
Luca's jaw tightened. “De Luca. Or someone working for him. Signature's the same.”
“Signature?”
“Accelerant under the lift. Professional job.
Meant to burn fast and look accidental.”
Her father paled. “Accidental. Right. Because nothing burns accidentally at 3pm on Tuesday.”
Luca didn't respond to the sarcasm. He was already giving orders.
“Secure the perimeter. Get me footage from the bakery across the street. I want every car that passed in the last hour. And get Romano to the hospital.”
“I'm not going,” to the hospital,” her father said.
“You're going,” Luca said, and that was the end of it.
Two men moved in, gentle but firm. Marco had trained them well.
Lisa stayed where she was, staring at the fire.
“Is it salvageable?” She asked.
Luca followed her gaze. “The structure looks okay. The interior…. we'll know after the fire marshal clears it.”
“That's not what I asked.”
He was quiet for a long moment.
“If it's gone, I'll rebuild it. Better than it was.”
She turned on him, anger cutting through the smoke. “I don't want you to rebuild it. I want it not to have burned.”
“I know.”
That shut her up. Because it was the truth. He couldn't un-burn it. None of them could.
The fire marshal arrived twenty minutes later. A woman in her forties, tired eyes, no patience for politics. She took one look at Luca and said, “Mr. Moretti. Again.”
“Is it Arrison?" Luca asked.
“Yes. Accelerant, entry through the back door. Whoever did it knew the layout
Lisa felt cold.
“Can it be fixed?” She asked.
The marshal hesitated. That was enough to answer.
“The frame’s solid. The electrical’s shot, the office is at a loss and the lift is warped. You are looking at six months and a lot of money.”
Lisa closed her eyes. Six months. Marco could be out of hospital in six weeks. They had nowhere to work. No income. No shop.
“Cost?” Luca asked.
“With my crew? Two hundred thousand. With a proper contractor? Four hundred.”
Luca nodded like she had told him the time.
“Start tomorrow. Bill me.”
The marshal blinked. “Bill you?”
“The shop is under Moretti protection. The contract covers repairs.”
“That is not how contracts work,” the Marshal said.
“It is now,” Luca said.
Lisa stared at him. “You don't have to do that.”
“I know,” he said again.
He said it like it was a weakness he was choosing. Like he could have walked away and didn't.
The fire was under control by midnight. What was left of Romano Auto smelled like wet ash and failure.
Luca drove to her home his home, now in silence.
The palazzo was quiet when they arrived. Too quiet.
Marco met them in the foyer. “ Your father's stable. Minor burns, smoke inhalation. He’s sleeping.”
“Good,” Luca said.
Marco looked at Lisa. “Signora, I had your room aired out. There is food in the kitchen if you're hungry.”
She went upstairs alone.
The suite felt different now. Smaller. Like a cage with better furniture.
She sat on the edge of the bed and stared at the ring on her finger. Platinum. Cold.
Permanent until day thirty.
A knock.
“Come in,” she said without looking up.
Luca entered. He didn't sit. He stood by the door, hands in his pockets, watching her.
“You shouldn't be here,” she said.
“Probably not,” he agreed.
“What do you want?”
“I want to know if you are alright”.
She laughed, short and bitter. “My shop burned. My father was almost killed. And you're asking if I'm alright?”
“I'm asking because no one else will,” he said.
“And if you break, I lose.”
That made her look up.
“What do you mean, you lose?”
“If you walk away, the contract is void. My father gets what he wants. I lose leverage. And you lose everything.”
“So this is still about leverage.”
She stood, facing him “Don't lie to me, Luca. Not about this.”
“I'm not.” He took a step closer. “You will think I don't know what it costs to watch something you built burn? I was seventeen when my mother's gallery burned. Arson. De Luca's father. He wanted my father to know he could reach anything.”
Lisa didn't know that. No one talks about Luca's Moretti mother.
“My mother never rebuilt it,” Luca continued.
“He said it was a weakness to care about things that could burn. I disagree.”
“So you're rebuilding my shop to prove him wrong?”
“I'm rebuilding your shop because you would have done the same to me.”
She didn't have an answer to that.
He moved closer, close enough that she could see the exhaustion in his eyes. The kind that didn't come from lack of sleep.
“Tomorrow, we go to the shop. We assess. We start the rebuild. And we find who did this.”
“And after that?”
“After that, we talk about what happens when the thirty days are up.”
She blinked. “I thought that was decided.”
“It was,” he said, “then your shop burned.”
He left before she could respond.
He left before she could respond.
Lisa lay awake for hours, listening to the quiet of the palazzo and the sound of her own pulse.
At 4:12AM, her phone buzzed.
Unknown number.
You think his protection will save you?
We’ll burn the next thing you love.
She didn't reply. She didn't delete it.
She got up, dressed in her old work clothes, and went down to the garage.
Luca's men stopped her at the door.
“Signore, it's not safe”
I'm going to my shop,” she said.
One of them looked at the other. They stepped aside.
The car ride was silent. The streets were empty.
Romano Auto was still smoking when she arrived. The fire marshal had left, but the yellow tape remained.
She ducked under it.
The inside was worse than she'd imagined. Waterlogged, charred, the smell of melted plastic and metal everywhere the lift was twisted. The office was gone.
But the back door was standing.
And on it, spray-painted in red, was a single word:
Her breath caught.
She heard footsteps behind her.
“Don't touch anything,” Luca said.
She turned. He was standing in the doorway, face hard in the dim light.
They're escalating,” he said.
“Good,” she said.
He frowned. “Good?”
“Yes.” She walked past him, out into the morning light. “Because now we know they're scared.”
Luce followed. “Scared of what?”
She stopped and looked at him.
“Scared that you might actually keep me.”
The words hung in the air between them.
Luca didn't answer. He couldn't.
His phone rang.
He answered, listened for ten seconds, and his face went still.
“Where?” He said.
He hung up.
“Your father,” he said. “He is missing from the hospital.”
Lisa's blood went cold.
“He left a note,” Luca added. “It says: I won't let you pay for my mistakes.”
Outside, the sun was rising over Milan.
And somewhere in the city her father was walking into a trap.
- Writer
