Chapter 5 - The Firewood on Sunday
The courtyard behind the carriage house smelled of damp cedar, curing pine, and the sweet, woodsy fragrance of split birch logs stacked neatly against the old fieldstone retaining wall.
It was 2:00 PM on Sunday afternoon.
The morning fog had burned off into a dazzling, crystalline Alpine sky that painted the snow-capped peaks of the Grigna mountain range in brilliant, blinding white against the deep blue water of Lake Como.
I sat on a wooden bench beside the restored outdoor brick oven, wearing an oversized flannel shirt, wool trousers, and a pair of flour-dusted canvas aprons, slicing fresh rosemary leaves into a bowl of golden Pugliese olive oil with a small paring knife.
Beside the chopping block stood Luca Moretti.
He had stripped off his shirt entirely, wearing only his work trousers and heavy leather logging boots, his massive, six-foot-six frame glistening with sweat in the autumn sun. His broad back was an intricate, terrifying tapestry of physical history: three bullet exit wounds along his right shoulder blade, the long, jagged silver line of an old knife strike running from his ribcage to his hip, and the roaring lion of the Lombardy league tattooed in dark black ink across his muscular trapezius.
THWACK.
The heavy six-pound splitting axe came down with the concussive, surgical force of a pile driver, cleaving an eighteen-inch log of seasoned oak clean in two with a single, effortless stroke.
Luca didn't pause to catch his breath. He kicked the two halves aside, set another log on the chopping block, swung the axe overhead in a fluid, terrifying arc, and brought it down again.
THWACK.
The rhythm was hypnotic. It was the same rhythm I used when kneading forty pounds of brioche: power, balance, momentum, and total, unyielding control.
"You're swinging too fast, Luca," I said, not looking up from my rosemary. "The wood is seasoned. You don't need to kill it. Let the weight of the axe head do the work, or your forearms will cramp before we get the oven to five hundred degrees."
Luca lowered the axe, resting the heavy steel head on the chopping block, leaning his weight onto the hickory handle.
He turned his head toward me, wiping a bead of sweat from his temple with the back of his calloused forearm. His chest heaved with slow, rhythmic breaths, the corded muscles of his abdomen flexing with every intake of the crisp mountain air.
"My forearms," Luca rumbled, his voice gravelly and low, "have never cramped in thirty-eight years of life, Sophia."
"There's a first time for everything," I retorted, setting the paring knife down, picking up a clean linen towel from the bench, and walking over to where he stood.
He didn't back away. He stood like an ancient hemlock tree rooted into the mountain stone, watching me approach with those slate-gray eyes that had spent a lifetime expecting fear.
I stopped right in front of him.
The top of my head barely reached the middle of his chest. Up close, the heat radiating from his bare skin was immense—a living furnace that smelled of woodsmoke, pine resin, bitter espresso, and pure, raw masculinity.
I reached up with the linen towel, stood on my tiptoes, and gently wiped the sweat and wood chips from his scarred collarbone, working my way up the side of his neck to the dark stubble along his jawline.
Luca went completely, utterly rigid.
His breathing stopped. His large hands tightened around the hickory axe handle until the wood creaked under the hydraulic pressure of his grip. He looked down at me with an expression of such raw, unshielded vulnerability that it made my chest ache.
"Sophia," he whispered, the sound almost lost in the wind rustling through the cypresses.
"Hold still," I murmured, dabbing the towel against the faint silver scar on his lower lip. "You have oak dust in your beard. You're going to get it in the focaccia."
"I am a violent man," Luca said.
The confession was torn from him—not as a threat, not as a boast, but as a warning delivered by a man who desperately wanted to protect the fragile thing standing in front of him.
"I have broken bones on the docks. I have ordered executions in the marshes behind Milan. The women who ran from this house... they weren't cowards, Sophia. They were smart. They looked at my size, they looked at my world, and they saw a monster."
I lowered the linen towel.
I didn't drop my gaze. I looked straight into the dark, tormented depths of his gray eyes, reached out with my bare, flour-dusted right hand, and laid my palm flat against the center of his chest, right over the heavy, thundering rhythm of his heart.
His skin was hot. His pulse was strong, steady, and unshakeable.
"A monster," I said softly, my thumb brushing over the jagged edge of his knife scar, "doesn't spend four hours chopping firewood so his wife can bake bread the way her mother taught her. A monster doesn't lift a loan shark off the ground with one hand to protect an old baker’s honor."
I leaned in, resting my forehead lightly against his warm, bare sternum, feeling his large body shudder with a sudden, ragged intake of breath.
"You're not a monster, Luca," I whispered into his skin.
"You're just a very big man who has been living in a very small world."
Luca’s hand let go of the axe handle.
The heavy tool fell to the dirt with a dull thud.
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His massive arms rose, moving slowly, cautiously, as if he were handling a piece of blown glass that might shatter at the slightest pressure. Then, his large, calloused hands settled firmly against the small of my back, pulling me flush against his chest, wrapping me in an embrace so vast, so warm, and so utterly unbreakable that the rest of the world simply ceased to exist.
We stood together in the mountain sunlight, surrounded by the scent of fresh-cut oak and rosemary, while the ancient stone oven waited for the flame.
