Chapter 1 - The Bread and the Stone
Elena’s hand caught my wrist, her fingers shockingly cold against my skin, her grip far firmer than her slender frame suggested. She angled her shoulder so her torso blocked Luca’s direct line of sight, her gaze drilling into mine with the sharp, predatory intensity of an eagle defending its eyrie.
"Before you speak into this room, baker," Elena murmured, her voice barely a breath against the ambient hum of the mountain wind outside, "you should know what kind of floor you’re standing on. The last woman he brought through that archway threw up on the marble steps before she even made it to the dining room. The one before that locked herself in the master bath and tried to climb out of a third-story lancet window with a bedsheet. If you say yes to Marco, there is no return ticket to Chicago. There is no cancellation clause. You stay until the house is finished with you."
I didn't blink. I didn't pull my wrist away.
My father had spent forty years running a wholesale bakery in the West Loop, working sixteen-hour shifts over six-hundred-degree ovens, his arms cross-hatched with burn scars from sugar blisters and boiling lye. He had taught me two fundamental laws of the physical world: heat always seeks the cold, and dough never rises if the baker hesitates when kneading the flour.
"My suitcase wheel is broken," I whispered back to her, my voice carrying that dry, flat Midwestern cadence that never failed to infuriate dramatic people. "And my feet hurt. Tell the priest to pour the communion wine."
Elena stared at me. For three full seconds, the sharp, aristocratic mask slipped, revealing a flicker of raw, unvarnished astonishment. She slowly released my wrist, stepping backward toward the balustrade like an actor who had forgotten her cue.
Across the foyer, Luca Moretti had not moved.
He stood with his hands tucked into the pockets of his charcoal trousers, his jaw set in a hard, jutting angle of stone. He hadn't heard what Elena whispered, but he didn't need to. He had seen the warning. He had seen the defensive posturing. His slate-gray eyes, deep-set beneath heavy, prominent brow bones that made him look like a Roman general carved from river basalt, were already hooded, preparing for the customary retreat.
"Marco," Luca said, his voice dropping into that low, resonant baritone that made the leaded glass above the entrance hum like a cello string. "Escort Ms. Bennett to the south guest suite. Have the driver keep the town car idling in the motor court. If she requests the morning flight from Malpensa, clear the runway."
He turned on his heel, his six-foot-six frame casting an enormous, oblong shadow across the checkerboard marble of the foyer floor.
"Hey," I called out.
The foyer went tomb-silent.
Marco, standing by the arched double doors with a leather portfolio tucked under his arm, froze with his hand on the brass doorknob. Two armed guards stationed on the mezzanine leaned fractionally over the wrought-iron railing, their expressions shifting from bored discipline to sheer, incredulous shock. In the Moretti syndicate, nobody called out “Hey” to the sovereign lord of the Lombardy transit corridors. People used titles. People lowered their eyes. People kept their palms visible.
Luca paused. He didn't turn around immediately. He stood with his back to me, the sheer breadth of his shoulders stretching the English wool of his bespoke coat until the seams were taut as rigging cables.
He slowly turned his head over his shoulder, his profile stark against the gray Alpine light pouring through the gallery windows.
"Are you addressing me, Ms. Bennett?"
"I am," I said, bending down to grab the fractured handle of my twenty-nine-dollar discount suitcase. I yanked it upright, winced as the cracked plastic wheel made a horrific screeching noise against the polished stone, and dragged it three steps toward him. "You asked a question forty seconds ago. It's considered bad manners in Illinois to ask a woman to marry you and then leave the room before she tells you what kind of cake she wants."
Luca turned his full body toward me.
Up close, the sheer scale of the man was dizzying. I had to tilt my chin all the way back just to meet his eyes. His nose was slightly crooked, broken at least twice in whatever brutal, unrecorded wars had placed him at the head of the northern families. A faint silver scar cut diagonally through his lower lip, pulling the corner down into a perpetual, brooding scowl. He was not a model from a Milanese fashion billboard; he was an immovable mountain of muscle, bone, and ancient violence.
"You don't know what you're agreeing to," Luca said. His tone was not angry; it was heavy with the weary, patient resignation of a man explaining the laws of arithmetic to a stubborn child. "Your father’s debt was six hundred thousand dollars. He defaulted on three commercial shipments of olive oil through the port of Genoa. He sold your hand because he thought it was cheaper than having his warehouses burned."
"My father," I replied, planting my feet firmly on the marble, "is a miserable gambler who thinks sugar prices fluctuate because of the moon. I didn't come to Italy to save his warehouses, Mr. Moretti."
Luca’s dark eyebrows drew together, the slate-gray of his irises darkening like a gathering squall over the lake. "Then why did you board the plane?"
"Because for six years, I have worked seventy hours a week baking wedding cakes for women who cried because their butter-cream was off-white instead of ivory," I said, holding his gaze without a flicker of evasion. "I came because I wanted my own kitchen. I wanted an oven that doesn't leak gas through the pilot light. And I wanted to meet the man whose name made three loan sharks in Chicago piss their pants in an alley."
A beat of utter, ringing quiet hung in the air.
Then, from the bottom of the grand staircase, Elena made a choked, strangled sound that she disguised behind a hurried cough into her silk sleeve.
Marco’s mouth opened slightly.
Luca stared down at me. For five long seconds, his face was an unreadable block of granite. Then, slowly, with the agonizing slowness of pack ice cracking beneath an April sun, the line of his jaw softened. A microscopic twitch pulled at the scarred corner of his lower lip.
"The chapel," Luca told Marco, his eyes never leaving mine, "is on the second terrace. Tell Father Tommaso he has twenty minutes to find his vestments."
May you like
He looked back down at my broken suitcase, then reached out with one massive, calloused hand, wrapped his fingers around the nylon strap, and lifted the seventy-pound bag off the floor like it was a bag of powdered sugar.
"And find someone to fix this wheel," Luca added, turning toward the stairs. "My wife doesn't drag broken luggage across my house."
