Chapter 10
He told her about his grandmother, who came through Ellis Island with three copper pots and a book of poetry; he told her about the architecture of the old neighborhoods, pointing out the masonry styles of the churches he loved as a boy; and for ten quiet minutes, he spoke about Sophie—not with the hollow agony of a victim, but with the gentle, protective reverence of a father whose love was bigger than his presence.
“You miss her,” Nina said softly, swirling the last drops of wine in her glass.
“Every second of every day,” Luca admitted. “When the sun comes up, when I hear a school bus on the avenue, when I see a little girl in a yellow raincoat. But I’d rather miss her from two thousand miles away than lay flowers on her marker at Mount Carmel.”
Nina set her glass down. She reached across the small table and took his hand. This time, she didn't just check his pulse; she laced her fingers through his, their palms meeting warm and flush.
Luca looked down at their joined hands, then up into her eyes.
“You’re dangerous, Nina Kowalski,” he whispered.
“Why? Because I’m not afraid of you?”
“Because you make me want things I traded away a long time ago.”
Before she could answer, the heavy wooden door of the restaurant burst open with a splintering crack.
The violence arrived not with a roar, but with the cold, deafening pop of suppressed gunfire.
Signora Bianchi screamed from the kitchen.
Luca didn't hesitate. His reaction wasn't human; it was the pure, distilled reflex of a predator who had survived thirty years of urban warfare.
In a fraction of a second, his left arm hooked around Nina’s waist, lifting her off her chair and dragging her behind the solid oak bar just as a hail of automatic fire obliterated the brick wall where their table had been. Glass bottles exploded in a blinding shower of amber and red; mirrors shattered; plates turned to flying ceramic shrapnel.
Nina hit the floorboards behind the bar, her breath knocked out of her chest.
Luca was over her instantly, his massive body shielding her entirely from the falling glass and splintered wood. His overcoat was open. In his right hand was a matte-black SIG Sauer 9mm, drawn from a shoulder holster with supernatural speed.
“Stay down,” he commanded, his voice cold, steady, and utterly terrifying in its calm. “Do not move.”