Page 31 of Luca
"More alive. You're not afraid anymore." She shifts her bags to get a better grip. "I like you better this way."
"Thank you," I say.
"Whatever happened to make you change," Rosa continues, "I hope you don't change back. Mr. Luca seems happier too. And more interested in his wife. Which is a good thing."
That stops me cold. "What do you mean?"
"He asks about you. What you like, what you're doing. And he’s staying at home more than before. Marriage is good for Mr. Luca. He seems happier."
Great.
Not only am I failing to convince Rosa that I'm Sofia, but apparently Luca's paying closer attention to me than I thought.
By the time Rosa and I return from the market, the hot sun has worn me out. My shoulders are slightly burned and my new sandals have left faint imprints on my skin.
We unload the groceries into the cool kitchen. Rosa sets her bag down with a sigh and starts moving produce toward the marble counter. I reach for a bunch of mint, but she waves me off, her wrist bangles clinking softly.
“Go on,” she says with that knowing little smile. “You’ve been out in the sun all morning. Go cool off.”
Resting isn’t what I need. My skin feels sticky with sweat, and every muscle in my back is drawn tight from carrying too many bags and pretending to be someone else. The idea of standing under running water until the dust and heat from the market rinses away is almost intoxicating.
The upstairs suite is silent when I step inside. The deep, still quiet that only comes when you’re truly alone. Luca is at work, the guards are stationed outside, and Rosa isdownstairs. Even Paolo, who seems surgically attached to me these days, dropped me off at the front door.
I shed my damp dress in a quick sweep over my head and toss it across the back of a chair. I open a music app on my phone, and my thumb finds a playlist I haven’t touched in years. Heavy German electronic. Industrial bass with a beat that doesn’t walk so much as stalk. I turn it all the way up until it reverberates against the walls.
The shower responds with a rush of sound. A high hiss of water against tile and a moment later the cool spray needles my shoulders, sharp enough to steal my breath before mellowing into relief. I stand there letting it run over me, eyes closed, hands braced on the slick wall.
Then the music pushes in harder. My hips catch the familiar rhythm almost before I notice. The sway starts small, just a shift of weight from one foot to the other. My arms lift without thinking, water streaming down my sides, hair heavy and clinging to my back.
I move the way I used to when no one was watching in a club. The beat drives a pulse through me that has nothing to do with dancing and everything to do with being alive in my own skin.
I hum along to the chorus, the words fractured memories from nights in Berlin clubs where the air was thick with cigarette smoke and bodies pressed too close. My voice joins the singer for a moment, the sound echoing against glass and marble.
I’m not thinking about Sofia. I’m not thinking about Luca, or lies, or the way the walls in this villa seem to watch. I’m thinking about how good it feels to be unobserved, to move for myself, to take up space without restraint.
The steam fogs the glass and curls around my legs. My movements grow bolder, my eyes closing again as I tip my face up to the spray. Water runs between my breasts before dripping to the stone.
And then —
A shift in the air. The faintest disruption, but enough to wake that old, ingrained instinct in me. The one that kept me alive in places where the wrong kind of attention could be lethal.
I freeze mid-turn.
The music’s still pounding, the water still pouring, but my awareness tunnels toward the doorway. I open my eyes.
Through the steam and the blurred glass, a dark shape leans there, perfectly still. Broad shoulders. That unmistakable, dangerous stillness.
Luca.
Watching me.
I don’t flinch or grab a towel.
Instead, I let the beat slide through me again, this time slower, heavier. A long roll of my hips. The deliberate stretch of my arms overhead until my back curves like a bowstring. Water runs down my sides and between my legs in unhurried streams.
I keep my gaze away from him, like he’s not there, like the only audience I have is the bassline. But every nerve in my body is trained on the doorway, on the charged stillness pulsing from it.
My hands trace my own skin, up the outside of my thighs, over my hips, my stomach. I imagine his eyes following every inch, tracking me like prey he’s not ready to take yet.
