The world returned to Juliette in pieces. First, the quiet, a stark contrast to the ringing in her ears from the previous night’s violence.
Then, the unfamiliar weight of a heavy arm draped over her waist, a solid, grounding presence. She smelled the faint, lingering scent of sandalwood, sweat, and something uniquely his—like scorched sugar and iron.
Opening her eyes, she saw the pale morning light filtering through the slats of a cheap motel blind, striping the bare walls with grey.
Alessandro slept beside her, his face turned towards her, stripped of the fury and cold control he wore like armor. In sleep, the harsh lines around his mouth softened, and the tension in his brow eased.
He looked younger, almost peaceful, and the sight caused a painful clench in her chest. This was the man from the kitchen, the artist whose soul she’d failed to see until he’d shattered her world to protect her.
Last night had not been a surrender to fear, but to a truth that had been arcing between them since their first meeting: a dangerous, undeniable current of recognition.
She shifted, and his eyes opened instantly. They weren’t the soft, sleepy eyes of a lover waking in the morning. They were sharp, alert, the eyes of a predator assessing its surroundings.
The capo was never far from the surface.
“You’re awake,” he said, his voice a low rasp.
“I didn’t think I’d be able to sleep at all,” she confessed, her voice barely a whisper.
The memory of the ambush—the squeal of tires, the glint of steel, the sickening thud of his fist connecting with a man’s jaw—was still a vivid horror film playing behind her eyelids.
Sandro pushed himself up, leaning his bare back against the flimsy headboard. The muscles in his shoulders and back were a cartographer’s dream of ridges and valleys, marred by the faint, silvery traces of old scars.
He didn’t look at her, instead staring at the opposite wall as if the secrets of his life were written there.
“You have a right to know,” he said, the words sounding like they were being torn from him. “You’ve earned that right ten times over. The whole truth. No more edited versions.”
Juliette sat up, pulling the thin sheet around her. The intimacy of the previous night was a warm, living thing between them, but now it was joined by a cold sense of dread.
“The ‘dangerous business’?”
He finally turned his head, his dark eyes meeting hers. There was no anger in them now, only a profound, bottomless weariness.
“My name isn’t just Alessandro De Luca. My full name is Alessandro Vittorio De Luca. And that name means something.”
He paused, letting the weight of it settle in the small room. “It means I am the rightful heir to the De Luca crime family.”
The words hung in the air, clinical and monstrous. Juliette’s blood ran cold.
She’d suspected something illicit, something shady, but this… this was a different universe. Mob boss. Capo.
The phrases from gangster movies suddenly felt sickeningly real. A thousand questions screamed in her mind, but she found herself unable to voice any of them.
All she could do was stare at him, trying to reconcile the man who had cooked for her with such delicate passion, the man who had held her with such desperate tenderness, with the heir to a criminal empire.
“My father, Vittorio, was the capo,” Sandro continued, his voice flat, devoid of emotion.
“He ran the family. I was his only son, his successor. I was raised in that world. I saw things… I was taught things a boy should never know. When I was eighteen, I ran. I cut off all contact, changed my name, buried myself in kitchens across Europe, and eventually, here. I wanted nothing to do with it. With the blood. With the power.”
“What happened to them?” she asked, her voice tight. “Your family.”
“I was told they were killed in an attack by a rival family. A complete wipeout. For ten years, I believed that. I grieved, but a part of me was… relieved. The door to that life was sealed forever. I was free to build my own.”
His gaze drifted towards the window, to the dirty street outside. “La Fiamma Nascosta. It was my penance. My sanctuary.”
“But that wasn’t the truth,” Juliette prompted softly.
He shook his head, a muscle twitching in his jaw.
“No. My cousin, Riccardo, my father’s own nephew… he orchestrated a coup. He murdered my father, my mother, everyone loyal to our branch of the family, and seized control. He left a few survivors, those who would bend the knee, and he let the story of a rival attack stand. Enzo told me. Riccardo has been consolidating his power ever since, turning the family into something more brutal, more reckless than my father ever allowed.”
Riccardo. The name from the ambush. The man whose crew had tried to kill them.
Juliette’s journalistic instincts, a part of her she couldn’t shut off even now, began to stir beneath the fear. She saw the shape of the story, the betrayal, the stolen throne.
But this wasn’t a story. This was her life. The break-in at her apartment wasn’t a warning; it was a mafia message.
The men last night weren’t random thugs. They were soldiers in a war she hadn’t even known existed.
Any sane person would run. Get a new name, a new identity, and disappear. The thought flickered through her mind, a brief, sensible impulse.
But when she looked at Sandro, she didn’t see a monster. She saw a man haunted by a birthright he never wanted, a man who had fought for a decade to build a life of peace, only to have it violently torn away.
She saw the man who had looked at her with raw vulnerability in his eyes and trusted her with his secret world. Running felt like the ultimate betrayal.
“So Riccardo knows you’re alive now,” she stated, her tone shifting from victim to analyst. “My review brought you out of the shadows, and now he’s hunting you.”
Sandro nodded, seeming surprised by her calm. “He won’t stop. Not until I’m dead. He can’t risk a legitimate claimant to his throne, no matter how reluctant.”
“Then hiding won’t work anymore,” she said, the conclusion clear and simple. “You tried that. It almost got us killed.”
A flicker of something—respect, surprise?—passed through his eyes. “What are you suggesting?”
“I’m suggesting,” she said, her voice gaining strength, “that you stop running from who you are and start fighting for who you want to be. For the life you built. For the people he’s hurting.”
She took a breath, the next words feeling momentous. “And I want to help.”
Sandro stared at her as if she’d just started speaking a foreign language. “Help? Juliette, you need to leave. I can get you money, a new identity. Disappear. This is not your fight.”
“You made it my fight when you came to my apartment,” she shot back, her fear finally transmuting into resolve.
“You made it my fight when you pulled me from that car wreck. Riccardo’s men know my face now. They know I’m with you. Where exactly do you think I can run where he won’t find me? My old life is gone, Sandro. Whether I like it or not, this is my life now. And I’ll be damned if I’m going to spend it cowering in a corner.”
She leaned forward, her gaze unwavering.
“You might know how to fight, but I know how to find information. I’m a researcher. It’s what I do. I dig, I find connections, I uncover secrets. You need allies, right? People still loyal to your father? How are you going to find them? How will you know who to trust?”
The truth of her words hit him. He had the strength, the training, but he’d been cut off for a decade. He was operating in the dark.
Before he could answer, his phone, a cheap burner he’d grabbed from the safe house, buzzed on the nightstand. He snatched it up, his body tensing.
“Enzo.”
He listened, his expression grim. “How many?… And their families?… Are they safe?… And the old man, Falco? Is he still… good. He was my father’s most trusted. We start with him.”
Sandro paced the small room, the phone pressed to his ear, completely transformed. The chef was gone. This was the capo, issuing quiet, precise commands. He was a man born to lead, whether he wanted to or not.
“We can’t meet in person yet. It’s too dangerous. I need you to get a message to Falco’s son. Just a phrase: ‘The hidden flame still burns.’ He’ll know what it means. Tell him to gather who he can trust, quietly. No moves yet. We’re ghosts, Enzo. We don’t exist until the moment we strike.”
He ended the call and stood in the middle of the room, the weight of his legacy settling on his shoulders like a physical cloak. He looked over at Juliette, who hadn’t moved from the bed, watching him with an intensity that mirrored his own.
“You heard that,” he said. It wasn’t a question.
“Falco,” she said, already filing the name away. “Are there others like him? Families who were pushed out or went into hiding when Riccardo took over?”
“Dozens,” Sandro admitted. “The Bellinis. The Grimaldis. Old families who valued honor over naked ambition. Riccardo replaced them with thugs who value only money and fear.”
“Then that’s where we start,” Juliette said, swinging her legs out of bed and reaching for her clothes. The vulnerability of their nakedness was gone, replaced by the stark reality of their shared purpose.
“We build a list. We find out where they are, what their situations are. We learn Riccardo’s operations, his weaknesses. We give your ghosts a target.”
He watched her dress, a sense of awe cutting through his apprehension. He had expected her to run, to scream, to look at him with disgust.
Instead, she was looking at him with a fierce loyalty that humbled him. She wasn’t just accepting his world; she was stepping into it, ready to fight alongside him.
He crossed the room and took her hands in his. They were small, delicate, but felt unshakably strong.
“You should have run,” he whispered, his voice thick with an emotion he couldn’t name.
Juliette looked up at him, her eyes clear and resolute. “I don’t run, Sandro.”
In that moment, their bond, forged in animosity and tempered in passion, was solidified into something far stronger: an alliance.
He was no longer just protecting her; she was anchoring him. Her courage was the spark he needed to embrace the destiny he’d spent a lifetime fleeing, not for a crown, but for a future he could finally claim as his own, with her in it.
The chef and the critic were gone. In their place stood a capo and his unexpected, indispensable partner.