Chapter 3 - The Kitchen on the Cliff
The master kitchen of the Villa Moretti was an architectural marvel that belonged in a nineteenth-century royal hunting lodge rather than a modern estate.
It sat on the northern flank of the ground floor, built directly into the living granite of the mountain cliff, featuring a ten-foot vaulted ceiling of soot-blackened brick, two monumental cast-iron French ranges manufactured by La Cornue, and a central prep island made from a twelve-foot slab of reclaimed Tuscan olive wood that was four inches thick.
Through the tall, arched casement windows, the black water of Lake Como stretched out toward the distant lights of Bellagio, shimmering beneath a sky of diamond-sharp winter stars.
It was 4:30 in the morning.
I wore an oversized white linen shirt I had stolen from Luca’s dressing room—the hem reaching halfway down my thighs, the sleeves rolled four times until my forearms were bare—and my woolen socks sliding silently across the heated terracotta floor tiles.
On the olive wood island, I had already laid out my battlefield: six pounds of coarse Italian durum semolina flour, fresh yeast dissolved in lukewarm mountain water, a crock of sweet butter from a local dairy in Menaggio, and three bowls of dark mountain honey.
My hands moved with the effortless, mechanical rhythm that had saved my sanity through twelve years of commercial bakeries.
Push. Turn. Fold. Slap.
The dough resisted, then yielded, the gluten strands developing under the heel of my palms until the mass became smooth, satiny, and warm as living skin. In a world full of armed men, ancient vendettas, and six-foot-six mafia bosses who looked at me like I was made of spun sugar, the resistance of bread dough was an absolute, mathematical truth. You couldn't lie to flour. You couldn't intimidate yeast. If you gave it patience, heat, and salt, it rose.
"You're awake early, Mrs. Moretti."
I didn't jump. I didn't drop the wooden scraper.
I had heard the heavy, muffled tread of his bare feet on the stone stairs thirty seconds ago.
Luca stood in the arched doorway of the kitchen. He had stripped off his suit, wearing only a pair of dark cotton trousers and a washed black henley shirt that clung to the massive, armored expanse of his chest and shoulders. His dark hair was disheveled from sleep, falling across his forehead, and the stubble along his jaw was thick, dark, and rough.
He didn't lean against the jamb. He stood upright, his presence filling the eight-foot opening, watching my hands with that intense, analytical curiosity he used when reading balance sheets.
"Bakers don't have morning schedules, Luca," I said, dusting a cloud of flour over the olive wood surface with a flick of my wrist. "We have fermentation windows. Your estate staff had three loaves of supermarket white bread in the pantry that felt like Styrofoam. If I’m going to live in this fortress, I refuse to eat cardboard."
Luca walked into the kitchen.
He moved with an unnatural, terrifying silence for a man who weighed nearly three hundred pounds—the soundless, predatory stride of a mountain hunter who had spent twenty years navigating rocky scree without snapping a twig. He stopped on the opposite side of the olive wood island, resting his large palms flat against the wood.
The island groaned softly beneath his weight.
"Elena told me you didn't sleep in the master bed," he said quietly.
I scraped the dough into a tight, round boule, tucking the edges beneath the crown. "The bed is fifteen feet wide, Luca. It feels like sleeping in the middle of a football stadium. I slept on the velvet sofa by the fireplace with two quilts and your spare cashmere coat. It was very comfortable."
Luca’s jaw tightened. "The coat?"
"It smelled like cedar and tobacco," I replied, looking up through my eyelashes, holding his slate-gray gaze without an ounce of shame. "Better than the lavender potpourri your housekeeper put in the pillows. That stuff smells like a funeral home."
A microscopic tremor touched the corner of his mouth—that same reluctant, suppressed amusement that had surfaced in the foyer yesterday.
He reached across the flour-dusted wood, his massive, scarred forefinger dipping into the bowl of dark mountain honey. He lifted the finger, watching the thick, amber ribbon stream back into the bowl.
"My mother used to bake pane di Pasqua in this room," Luca said, his voice dropping into a low, gravelly register that seemed to come from the soles of his feet. "Before the war with the Romano syndicate started in ninety-eight. She had a wood-fired oven installed in the courtyard because she said the gas ranges didn't give the crust enough blistering."
"She was right," I said, slapping the dough down onto the wood with a loud, wet thwack. "Gas produces wet heat. You need dry, radiant thermal mass to blister the crust properly. Where is the wood oven?"
"Overgrown with ivy," Luca replied, his eyes following the movement of my hips as I leaned my full body weight into the dough. "No one has lit it in twenty-two years."
"Then you’re going to find an axe after breakfast and clear the flue, Mr. Moretti," I said, pointing my flour-coated wooden scraper directly at his nose. "Because tomorrow is Sunday, and I’m making focaccia with sea salt and rosemary, and if you make me bake it in a commercial convection oven, I will file for an annulment before lunch."
Luca stared at the wooden scraper hovering three inches from his face.
No one pointed tools at Luca Moretti. No one gave him chores. No one ordered the head of the Lombardy syndicate to chop firewood for bread.
May you like
He slowly reached up, his thick fingers catching the edge of the wooden scraper, gently lowering it back to the table. He didn't let go of the wood. His hand slid forward along the handle until his warm, calloused knuckles brushed against my flour-dusted fingers.
"The woodpile," Luca whispered, his slate-gray eyes boring into mine with a heat that made the gas burners behind me feel cold, "is behind the carriage house. I will have the flue cleared by noon."
