The air tasted of ash and grief.
Sandro stood across the street, a ghost in the pre-dawn gloom, watching the last of the fire trucks pull away. The flashing lights painted streaks of red and white across the skeletal remains of his life’s work.
La Fiamma Nascosta—The Hidden Flame—was gone, reduced to a hollowed-out carcass of charred brick and twisted steel.
The smell, a grotesque perfume of burnt dreams, clung to him: scorched wood, melted plastic, and the phantom, heartbreaking scent of charred rosemary and olive oil.
It wasn’t the loss of the building that gutted him. It was the violation.
Riccardo hadn’t just destroyed a restaurant; he had desecrated a sanctuary. He had reached into the one clean part of Sandro’s life and smeared it with the filth of his past.
A colder, sharper pain lanced through him when he pictured Marco, his promising young sous-chef, lying in a hospital bed. Second-degree burns on his arms and face because he’d stayed late, trying to perfect a new sauce.
Because he’d believed in the vision of a man who was a lie. Marco’s only crime was loyalty to a chef who was really just a fugitive hiding behind an apron.
This was the consequence of his delusion. He had believed he could build a wall between his two worlds, that the sins of Alessandro De Luca would never stain the hands of Chef Sandro.
He had been a fool. The fire hadn’t just consumed his restaurant; it had incinerated that foolish hope. Everything he touched, everyone he cared for, was now kindling for Riccardo’s fire.
He turned away from the ruin, his movements stiff, his face a mask of cold emptiness. Back in the sterile anonymity of the safe-house apartment, Juliette was waiting.
She sat on the edge of the sofa, still dressed in the clothes from the night before, her expression a tight knot of worry.
She rose the moment he entered, her eyes searching his for any sign of the man he was yesterday. She wouldn’t find him.
That man had burned with his kitchen.
“Sandro? Is everyone…?”
“Marco will be fine,” he said, his voice flat, devoid of inflection. “He’s lucky.”
He’s lucky he’s not you, a voice inside him snarled. He’s lucky he can heal.
Sandro walked past her to the bedroom, pulling a duffel bag from the closet and throwing it on the bed. He started opening drawers, pulling out wads of cash, a fake passport, a burner phone.
Methodical. Detached.
Juliette followed him, her presence a silent, questioning weight in the room. “What are you doing?”
“I’m getting you out,” he said, not looking at her. He unzipped a side pocket of the bag and placed the documents inside.
“Enzo has a contact. A plane leaving tonight for Montreal. From there, you can go anywhere. Paris, London. Somewhere you can write about food that doesn’t get people hurt.”
She stood frozen in the doorway. “You’re sending me away?”
“I’m saving your life.” He finally turned to face her, and the look in his eyes made her flinch.
It was a cold, dead landscape. The warmth, the passion she had glimpsed and fallen for, was gone.
“This is my fault. All of it. The break-in at your apartment, the attack on the road, the fire… Marco. You were right in your review from the very beginning. My food had no soul because I didn’t have one left to give. I was just hiding. And now the thing I was hiding from has found me, and it’s burning everything around me.”
“That’s not true,” she said, her voice shaking but firm. “Riccardo did this. Not you.”
He let out a short, harsh laugh that held no humor. “He did it because of me. He sent a message, Juliette. And I received it. Nothing I build is safe. No one I care about is safe.”
He took a step closer, his voice dropping to a low, dangerous whisper. “Look at what he did to my restaurant. Imagine what he’ll do to you just to get to me. I won’t let that happen. It’s over.”
“No,” she said, shaking her head, her resolve hardening. “No, you don’t get to do this. You don’t get to make this decision for me.”
“This isn’t a decision, it’s a necessity!” he snapped, his control finally cracking. The raw agony beneath the ice was suddenly visible.
“I brought this poison into your life! Do you think I can live with that? Knowing that every second you’re with me, you have a target on your back? You have to go. You have to leave and forget you ever met me.”
He was pleading now, the words tearing from his throat. He was trying to push her away, to hurt her enough that she would run, that she would be safe from him.
But Juliette Monroe had never been one to run.
She closed the distance between them in two quick strides, her hands coming up to cup his face, forcing him to meet her gaze. Her touch was an anchor in the storm of his self-loathing.
“Listen to me, Alessandro,” she said, using his true name like a key turning a lock. Her voice was fierce, unwavering, a steel spine against his despair.
“You think this is protecting me? Sending me away to spend the rest of my life looking over my shoulder, wondering if you’re alive or dead? That isn’t protection. That’s a different kind of prison.”
His jaw clenched under her palms. “It’s better than a coffin.”
“Stop it,” she commanded, her thumbs stroking his stubbled cheeks.
“Stop punishing yourself. You didn’t ask for this. You tried to build a life, a good life. You created something beautiful out of the ashes of your past. He destroyed the building, Sandro. He didn’t destroy you.”
Tears pricked at the corners of his eyes, hot and shameful. “He hurt Marco. He almost got you killed. He will keep coming.”
“Then let him come,” she said, her voice dropping, filled with a conviction that stunned him into silence.
“You think I’m afraid of him? I’m not. But I am terrified of losing you. I fell in love with a man who could create magic on a plate, who could fight like a demon to protect me, who carries the weight of a world I can’t imagine. I fell in love with all of it, Sandro. The chef and the ghost. You don’t get to push me away because you’re afraid. We fight this. Together.”
Her words sliced through the fog of his guilt. He looked into her eyes and saw not fear or pity, but an unshakeable belief in him.
It was a belief he hadn’t had in himself for over a decade. She wasn’t a liability; she was his strength. An anchor. The one pure thing in his life that Riccardo hadn’t managed to burn.
And in that moment, the war inside him ceased.
The agonizing conflict between the man who cooked and the man who killed, between the life he wanted and the one he was born into, it all fell silent. The choice was no longer a choice.
Hiding had failed. Running had failed. His attempt to protect everyone by being a chef had only brought them pain.
There was only one path left. He couldn’t protect them by hiding from what he was. He could only protect them by becoming what he was.
A profound and terrifying calm washed over him. The grief for his restaurant settled, not disappearing, but hardening into something else.
It became fuel. The guilt for Marco solidified into a debt that would be paid in blood.
The fear for Juliette transmuted into a cold, absolute purpose.
He raised a hand and gently covered hers, his touch no longer trembling. His eyes, when they met hers again, were different.
The haunted emptiness was gone, replaced by the sharp, focused clarity of a predator. The chef’s meticulous passion was still there, but it had been repurposed, honed into the blade of a capo’s resolve.
“He wanted to send a message,” Sandro said, his voice a low, chilling rumble. “He wanted to show me that he could take away anything I cared about.”
A slow, grim smile touched his lips, a chilling sight.
“He’s about to learn that I can do the same. Only I won’t stop with what he’s built. I’m going to take away his future. I’m going to take away his life.”
He pulled away from her, his movements now precise and deliberate. He zipped the duffel bag shut, but instead of handing it to her, he tossed it onto the chair.
He picked up the burner phone, his thumb already scrolling through the contacts.
Juliette watched, her heart pounding. The broken man was gone.
In his place stood someone else—someone colder, more dangerous, and more resolute than she had ever imagined. This was the true heir to the De Luca empire, awakened at last.
He found the number he was looking for and pressed call. He didn’t wait for a greeting when the line connected.
“Enzo,” he said, and his voice was the sound of a tomb door closing. “It’s done. Riccardo extinguished the flame.”
There was a pause, and the air in the room grew heavy, charged with unspoken violence.
“So we are going to burn down his world. Get everyone ready. The chef is gone. The capo is coming home.”