Chapter 7 - Quiet Hours
Six months later, Bellaforte reopened.
Legitimately this time.
Mostly.
I refused to ask questions that would ruin dinner.
The restaurant became one of the hardest reservations to get in Chicago.
I still lived upstairs.
Luca offered me a penthouse overlooking Lake Michigan.
I refused.
Then he renovated 3C.
I complained.
Then he expanded it into 3D.
I complained again.
Then he installed a private staircase connecting my apartment to Bellaforte.
I stopped complaining.
Mostly.
Patrick's evidence helped dismantle the organization responsible for his death.
For the first time in two years, I could think about my brother without wondering whether the truth had died with him.
Luca kept his promise to Patrick.
Then he made one to me.
No secrets that involved my safety.
No controlling my life.
No disappearing without explanation.
And most importantly—
Quiet hours after midnight.
He violated that last rule constantly.
One rainy Thursday night, I was restoring a nineteenth-century portrait at my kitchen table when music drifted through the floor.
Trumpet.
I looked at the clock.
12:03 a.m.
I smiled.
Then reached beside my desk.
Months earlier, Luca had given me a miniature fire extinguisher as a joke.
I picked it up.
Walked downstairs.
Bellaforte was empty except for Luca.
He stood beside the bar wearing a black shirt with the sleeves rolled back, tattoos visible across his hands and forearms.
He saw the extinguisher.
Then looked at the clock.
“Three minutes?”
“Rules are rules.”
“I own the building.”
“And?”
“I own the restaurant.”
“And?”
His mouth curved.
“I suppose you're going to threaten me.”
I walked closer.
“No.”
I put the extinguisher on the bar.
“I'm escalating.”
He laughed.
The sound still surprised me.
The first night I met Luca Moretti, I thought the monster downstairs was destroying my sleep.
I hadn't known he was awake because men were hunting me.
I hadn't known my brother had trusted him with my life.
And I definitely hadn't known that beneath the tattoos, violence, money, and terrifying reputation was a man who would eventually learn to lower the music because one exhausted woman asked him to.
Well—
Threatened him to.
There's a difference.
Luca pulled me against him.
“You're still impossible,” he murmured.
“And you're still loud.”
“Stay anyway.”
I looked at the man my brother had trusted.
The man I had once confronted with a fire extinguisher.
The man who had bought an entire building just to put himself between me and danger.
“I was planning to.”
May you like
This time, when the trumpet started playing again, I let it.
THE END
