The silence in the penthouse was a physical thing, a weight pressing down from the coffered ceilings and in from the panoramic windows that displayed the glittering, indifferent city below.
Juliette had been pacing for what felt like an hour, the plush off-white carpet muffling her footsteps, absorbing the sound of her agitation until she felt she might as well be screaming into a vacuum.
Sandro stood by the vast expanse of glass, a dark, still silhouette against the city lights.
He hadn’t spoken much since they’d arrived, his movements economical and precise as he’d checked the locks, drawn a few of the automated blinds, and poured them both glasses of water they hadn’t touched.
He was a sentry in his own gilded cage, the tension coiled in his shoulders so tightly Juliette could practically feel it vibrating across the room.
She stopped pacing and wrapped her arms around herself. “I can’t do this, Sandro.”
His head turned slightly, the sharp line of his jaw catching the low light. “Do what?” His voice was a low rumble, carefully controlled.
“This! The silence. The waiting. The pretending that it’s perfectly normal for a man I wrote a scathing review about to spirit me away to a luxury safe house because my apartment was tossed by ghosts.” Her own voice rose, frustration fraying the edges.
“You told me I was in danger because of you. That’s not an explanation. It’s the headline to a story I don’t have. I’m a critic, a journalist. I deal in facts, in truths. I can’t function in a void.”
He finally turned to face her fully. His dark eyes were shadowed, his expression unreadable. “Some voids are safer.”
“Safer for who?” she shot back, taking a step toward him.
“For you? Because it’s easier than being honest? You owe me more than that. Whoever broke into my home, they were looking for something connected to you. They invaded my life. I think I’ve earned the right to know why.”
He let out a slow, deliberate breath, the sound of a man holding a dam against a flood. He walked over to the sleek, minimalist kitchen area that dominated one wall of the great room.
He moved with the same fluid grace she’d seen in his restaurant kitchen, opening a cabinet, pulling out a bag of coffee beans, his hands working with an ingrained, meditative purpose.
The simple, domestic act was so at odds with the terror humming beneath the surface of their situation that it was almost surreal.
“My family,” he began, his back still to her as he measured the beans into a grinder, “was in a difficult business. A dangerous business.”
The whir of the grinder filled the room, a jarring mechanical scream that lasted only a few seconds before silence descended again. Juliette waited, her heart thumping against her ribs.
He poured the grounds into a French press, his movements unhurried.
“It wasn’t the life I wanted. It’s… complicated. Old world. It operates on codes of honor and violence that have no place in a world with… this.”
He gestured vaguely at the gleaming chrome and steel around them. “I wanted to build things, not break them. I wanted to create.”
He poured hot water over the grounds, the rich, earthy scent of coffee blooming in the air, a scent of normalcy, of mornings and conversation. It was a disarming choice.
“So you left,” Juliette prompted, her voice softer now.
He nodded, his gaze fixed on the swirling coffee.
“I cut ties. I changed my name. I disappeared. I spent years working my way up in kitchens across Europe, learning, erasing the man I was supposed to be and becoming the man I wanted to be. Alessandro De Luca died a long time ago so that Sandro, the chef, could live.”
The name hit her with the force of a physical blow. Alessandro De Luca. It sounded like a name from a historical novel, heavy with lineage and unspoken power.
It was the name of a man who belonged to the world he was describing, not the one who meticulously plated pasta.
“What happened to them?” she asked, barely a whisper. “Your family?”
He placed the lid on the press and finally, finally, met her eyes. The pain she saw there was so raw, so profound, it stole her breath.
It was the missing ingredient from his food, the soullessness she had so arrogantly written about. It wasn’t missing; it was buried. Buried so deep he was choking on it.
“There was a… a disagreement,” he said, the words tasting like ash in his mouth.
“A hostile takeover, you might call it. My father, my uncles… they were all killed. I was told it was a rival family. I was the only one who got away. I was supposed to be dead, too.”
Juliette felt a wave of nausea. This wasn’t some abstract danger; this was the story of a massacre. The man in front of her was a ghost, a survivor of something horrific.
The break-in at her apartment suddenly snapped into a terrifying new focus.
“And they’ve found you,” she said, the realization dawning. “After all this time, writing that review… I put a spotlight on you. That’s what you meant.”
He gave a sharp, humorless nod. “A spotlight is the last thing a ghost needs.”
He pushed the plunger down on the press, the motion slow and final. He poured the dark liquid into two porcelain cups.
His hands were perfectly steady, a stark contrast to the tremor she felt in her own. He handed a cup to her, and their fingers brushed.
A jolt, hot and electric, shot up her arm. It was absurd, a spark of life in a conversation about death, but it was undeniable.
She took the cup, its warmth a small anchor in the churning sea of her emotions. “So what now? We just hide in your multi-million-dollar panic room until they go away?”
“They won’t go away,” he said, his voice grim. He took a sip of his coffee, his eyes never leaving hers.
“Now that they know I’m alive, they’ll see me as a threat. A loose end. Someone who could challenge the new order.”
The vulnerability he had shown her had chipped away at the last of her defenses. The anger was gone, replaced by a deep, aching empathy.
She saw him now not as the arrogant chef or the mysterious protector, but as a man who had his entire world ripped away and had painstakingly, piece by piece, built a new one, only to watch the past rise up to threaten it.
She closed the distance between them until she was standing just a foot away. The air crackled, suddenly thick with an energy that had nothing to do with fear and everything to do with the man and woman they were, stripped of their public personas.
“I’m sorry,” she said, the words feeling utterly inadequate. “For what happened to your family. And… for the review. I was wrong. There’s a soul in your cooking. I just wasn’t looking deep enough to see it was broken.”
His expression softened, the hard lines around his mouth easing. He reached out, his calloused chef’s fingers gently tracing the line of her jaw.
His touch was hesitant, almost reverent, as if he were handling something fragile he was afraid he might break.
“You weren’t wrong,” he murmured, his voice husky. “You were the only one who saw it. The only one who looked past the performance and saw the empty stage behind it.”
Her breath hitched. His thumb stroked her cheek, and she leaned into the touch, her eyes fluttering closed for a heartbeat.
The scent of him—coffee, clean linen, and something uniquely his own, something elemental and male—filled her senses.
The penthouse, the city, the danger, it all melted away until there was only the space between them, shrinking with every shared breath.
He lowered his head, his gaze dropping to her lips. The tension that had been a thread of fear all night was now a super-charged current of pure, unadulterated longing.
This was a man who lived a life of fierce control, and in his eyes, she saw that control fraying, giving way to a raw, desperate need that mirrored her own.
His lips were a whisper away from hers. She could feel the warmth of his breath, could almost taste the coffee on his tongue.
Her own lips parted in silent invitation. It was insane. It was reckless. And it was the only thing in the world she wanted.
Then, a harsh, buzzing vibration cut through the charged silence.
Sandro froze, his entire body going rigid. The moment shattered, the pieces falling around them like shards of glass.
He pulled his hand back as if he’d been burned, stepping away from her. The phone on the granite countertop vibrated again, a relentless, demanding summons from the world they had forgotten.
He snatched it up. The screen illuminated his face, casting it in a stark, cold light.
Juliette saw the name on the screen before he answered. Enzo.
Sandro’s voice was clipped, all business, the chef and the would-be lover gone, replaced by someone else entirely. “What is it?”
He listened, his jaw tightening into a line of granite. His eyes, dark and suddenly lethal, flickered to the windows, to the city sprawling below them.
“Where?” he bit out. A pause. “We’re on our way.”
He ended the call and tossed the phone onto the counter. The easy intimacy of moments before was a distant memory, replaced by an electrifying urgency.
“What’s wrong?” Juliette asked, her heart pounding a frantic rhythm against her ribs.
He was already moving, grabbing a black jacket from a closet she hadn’t noticed. “That was my friend. The one who warned me. Riccardo’s crew found my car parked in the garage downstairs.”
He looked at her, and the protective instinct she’d seen before was back, honed to a razor’s edge. “This place isn’t safe anymore. We have to go. Now.”