Chapter 2 - The Flower Between the Cracks
Three years earlier, Luca Moretti was the last person I wanted to meet.
I had left my father’s office after an argument bad enough to make my hands shake.
At twenty-seven, I had already spent six years working inside DeLuca Hospitality, our family company, and I was tired of being introduced as Arthur DeLuca’s daughter before anyone mentioned my job.
That afternoon, I had finally told him I wanted out.
Not from the family.
From the company.
“I want to build something that’s mine,” I said.
My father stared at me from behind his walnut desk.
“You have something that’s yours.”
“No. I have something you built.”
He leaned back.
“You think independence means rejecting everything I gave you?”
“I think independence means getting to choose.”
That word bothered him.
Choose.
Arthur DeLuca believed choices were acceptable only when he had already approved the options.
I left before the conversation became cruel.
Rain started while I was walking.
Within minutes, Manhattan turned silver.
People crowded beneath awnings.
Taxis hissed through puddles.
I kept walking because anger makes bad weather feel useful.
That was when I saw him.
A black SUV idled along the curb.
Two men stood beneath the awning of a private club.
Another man emerged from the entrance.
Luca.
I didn’t know his name yet.
I only noticed that people moved out of his way without being asked.
He was wearing a charcoal suit.
No tie.
Dark hair pushed back from his forehead.
Ink disappeared beneath his collar.
He looked like the kind of man my father would warn me never to speak to.
Naturally, I walked directly into him.
Literally.
My heel slipped.
My shoulder hit his chest.
His hand closed around my arm before I fell.
“Careful.”
I looked up.
“You were standing in the middle of the sidewalk.”
One eyebrow lifted.
“I was standing still.”
“Exactly.”
He almost smiled.
I pulled free.
Then my heel snapped.
I stared down at it.
“Perfect.”
“You want a ride?”
I laughed.
“No.”
“You don’t know where I’m going.”
“I also don’t know who you are.”
“That usually makes people more polite.”
“That sounds exhausting.”
This time he did smile.
Barely.
I kicked off both shoes.
His gaze dropped.
“You’re walking barefoot in Manhattan?”
“I’ve made worse decisions.”
“I believe you.”
I walked away.
He followed.
“Are you following me?”
“My car is that direction.”
“Convenient.”
We reached the corner.
Rain soaked us both.
For the first time, I saw the tattoos on his hands.
Black roses.
A compass.
Roman numerals.
A small crown near his thumb.
“You look disappointed,” he said.
“I’m trying to decide if those are supposed to scare people.”
“They usually do.”
“They’re tattoos.”
He laughed.
A real laugh this time.
It changed his whole face.
For a second, he looked younger.
Less dangerous.
We stopped near a closed pharmacy.
I stepped toward the curb.
A delivery bike flew through the crosswalk.
Luca grabbed my waist and pulled me back.
The cyclist shouted something as he passed.
I stared after him.
“Okay.”
Luca released me.
“You’re welcome.”
“I was going to say thank you.”
“No, you weren’t.”
“Probably not.”
We stood there beneath the pharmacy awning.
Rain hammered the street.
My bare feet were cold.
My broken shoes hung from one hand.
He looked absurdly expensive.
I looked absurdly angry.
Then he noticed something near the curb.
A daisy.
Tiny.
Growing from a crack in the concrete where it had no business surviving.
Luca crouched.
“What are you doing?”
He picked it.
“That seems unnecessary.”
He held it toward me.
“This is for you.”
I stared at the flower.
“Why?”
“Because you look like you’re having a terrible day.”
“That’s your solution?”
“No.”
“Good.”
“It’s just a flower.”
I took it.
The petals were wet.
The center bright yellow.
Ridiculous.
I started laughing.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“You’re laughing at my flower.”
“I’m laughing because the toughest-looking man in Manhattan just gave me a daisy from a gutter.”
He looked offended.
“It was not in the gutter.”
“It was very close.”
“The distinction matters.”
I laughed harder.
The anger from my father’s office loosened inside me.
Just enough.
“My name is Elena.”
He looked at me for a moment.
“Luca.”
I should have known the name.
Maybe some part of me did.
Moretti was one of those names adults lowered their voices around.
I had heard my father mention it.
Not kindly.
But standing there in the rain, Luca did not seem like a family name.
He seemed like a stranger who had made me laugh.
That should have been harmless.
It wasn’t.
We met again two days later.
Not accidentally.
I told myself it was.
He happened to be at the same café.
I happened to sit at the table beside him.
He happened to remember my coffee order after hearing it once.
“You’re stalking me,” I said.
“This is my café.”
“Of course it is.”
“It’s not literally mine.”
“That was my next question.”
He closed the newspaper.
“You always talk this much?”
“Only when people annoy me.”
“Then I’m honored.”
I should have left.
Instead, I stayed for two hours.
Luca never told me much about himself.
Not at first.
He said he worked in logistics.
I said that sounded intentionally boring.
He said, “It often is.”
Later I learned that the Moretti family owned shipping companies, warehouses, restaurants, construction firms, real estate, and at least three businesses nobody could explain cleanly.
But those first weeks were strangely ordinary.
Coffee.
Late dinners.
Walks.
Texts at midnight.
He liked old jazz records.
I loved terrible reality television.
He hated olives.
I stole them from his plate.
He remembered everything.
My favorite pastry.
The name of my childhood dog.
The fact that I hated lilies because they smelled like funerals.
The day I told him I wanted to start a nonprofit design studio that redesigned rehabilitation spaces so they felt less clinical.
“You’ve never needed rehab,” he said.
“My mother did.”
That was the first time I told him about her.
My mother died when I was nineteen.
Cancer.
Six months of hospitals before the end.
White walls.
Vinyl floors.
Fluorescent lights.
Rooms designed for bodies, not people.
“I kept thinking,” I told Luca, “if a person has to spend months fighting for their life, maybe the room shouldn’t make them feel like they’re already disappearing.”
He listened.
Really listened.
Not like my father, who immediately turned ideas into budgets and meetings.
Luca simply asked, “What would you change first?”
“Windows.”
“Windows?”
“More of them.”
“That’s impractical.”
“I thought you were listening.”
“I am.”
“Then stop being practical.”
He smiled.
“Windows.”
“Yes.”
“And after that?”
“Color.”
He nodded.
“Good.”
No one had ever made my dream sound that simple.
Good.
As if wanting something could be enough reason to begin.
A month later, he took me to an abandoned community clinic in Queens owned by one of his companies.
“You bought me a broken building?”
“I’m letting you borrow one.”
“It smells like mold.”
“You said you wanted windows.”
Half the walls were missing.
I laughed.
Then I cried.
Just a little.
Luca pretended not to notice.
That clinic became my first project.
I spent four months rebuilding the waiting room with volunteers.
Natural light.
Warm wood.
Plants.
Art from local schools.
Luca paid for almost none of it directly because I refused.
Instead, he found suppliers who suddenly offered suspiciously generous discounts.
“You’re cheating,” I accused.
“I’m networking.”
“You threatened somebody.”
“Not recently.”
“Luca.”
He smiled.
We fell in love slowly enough to pretend it wasn’t happening.
Then all at once.
One night, we sat on the clinic roof eating pizza from the box.
He had removed his jacket.
The tattoos along his forearms were visible.
I traced a small daisy tattoo near his wrist.
I had never noticed it.
“When did you get this?”
“Last week.”
I stared.
“You tattooed a daisy on yourself?”
“Apparently.”
“Why?”
He looked at me.
I stopped smiling.
Rain had started lightly.
Not enough to make us move.
He touched my face.
“Because some things survive places they shouldn’t.”
That was Luca.
He could spend an entire day saying nothing meaningful.
Then give you one sentence that stayed forever.
I kissed him first.
Months later, my father found out.
He didn’t shout.
That would have been easier.
He invited Luca to dinner.
Arthur DeLuca served expensive wine and treated him with perfect courtesy until dessert.
Then he set down his glass.
“You will stop seeing my daughter.”
I stared at him.
“Excuse me?”
He looked at Luca.
Not me.
“Tonight.”
Luca leaned back.
“Does Elena know she has agreed to this?”
My father’s jaw tightened.
“I know your family.”
“You know our name.”
“I know enough.”
I stood.
“Dad.”
He ignored me.
“The Morettis destroy everything they touch.”
Luca’s expression hardened.
“You should be careful with generalizations.”
“You should stay away from my daughter.”
I stepped between them.
“I’m sitting right here.”
My father finally looked at me.
“Elena, you don’t understand what he is.”
I remember Luca becoming very still.
I turned toward him.
“What does he mean?”
He could have lied.
Instead he said, “My family has enemies.”
“What kind?”
“The kind your father worries about.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“I know.”
I stared at him.
For the first time since we met, I felt afraid.
Not of Luca.
Of what I didn’t know.
I left the dinner alone.
Luca found me outside.
I stood beneath the same kind of city rain we had met in.
“Tell me everything,” I said.
He did.
Not every crime.
Not every name.
But enough.
His father had died two years earlier.
Luca inherited more than businesses.
He inherited obligations.
Rivalries.
People who expected him to become someone he had spent years trying not to be.
“You should walk away from me,” he said.
I looked at him.
“Do you want me to?”
“No.”
“Then don’t make decisions for me.”
That line would matter later.
Neither of us knew how much.
I stayed.
My father never forgave him.
And six months later, on a wet November night, I learned why Arthur DeLuca had been afraid.
I was leaving the Queens clinic when Luca called.
“Where are you?”
“Outside.”
“Get back inside.”
His voice stopped me.
“What?”
“Elena, go inside now.”
A black sedan turned the corner.
Too fast.
Headlights blinded me.
Then I heard Luca shout my name through the phone.
The sedan jumped the curb.
I remember the sound before the pain.
Metal.
Glass.
Someone screaming.
May you like
Then the entire world tilted sideways.
The last thing I saw before everything went black was a white daisy crushed beneath the rain.
