Chapter One — Collision
Elara's shift ended after midnight. The Bellini Club's lamps bled light across the slick road as she walked her usual shortcut home, a shortcut that cut through an alley behind an empty bookstore.
She kept her head down, humming a song to herself to drown the city's low hum.
That's when she heard the first crash — glass shattering, a man's cry. Her feet slowed.
She wanted to turn and go back to the well-lit street, but curiosity and an unwillingness to leave someone hurt stopped her.
At the alley's mouth two men wrestled; a third stood above them with a gun. The taller of the two being held struggled — just a scrap of a man, wearing a suit he'd never thought to wear — until he jerked free and staggered forward.
He smacked against Elara, arms flailing, and she stumbled into a second man: Luca Moretti.
Up close, his coat was wet, the collar stuck to his neck.
He smelled of smoke and rain, and his expression was unreadable. The other man — the one with the gun — cursed and fired once. The flash made Elara squeeze her eyes shut.
When she opened them, the tall man was on the ground and the gunman was gone. Luca steadied himself, glancing at the prone man, then at Elara. There was a beat when the alley held its breath.
"Are you all right?" he asked.
Elara's throat was dry. "I — I think so." She looked at the man on the ground; his face was bloodied. "Should I call someone?"
Luca's jaw tightened. "No. Not yet." He reached into his coat and produced a business card he didn't need, smoothing the corner like it was tissue. "Come with me. I can help. You'll be safer inside."
Half of her wanted to refuse and run. The other half — the half that kept picturing how she could be different, how her life could snap out of its pattern — went with him.
They moved through rain to the nearest hotel. Luca's voice was a low thing that asked no unnecessary questions.
His hand brushed Elara's when he steadied her on the slick stairs, and something inside her hummed like a tuned wire.
Inside, the man on the ground woke groggy, bitterly alive. He grabbed at Luca's sleeve. "You—"
"You're safe," Luca said. "Talk later."
Elara sat across from him in the dim breakfast room while Luca checked the other man's injuries. The hum of the city felt both distant and urgent. For reasons she couldn't name, she didn't leave as soon as she could have. Instead she watched Luca lean against the counter, his hands opening and closing. The curve of his profile looked as though he had been chiseled from a problem he couldn't solve.
"Why did you help?" she asked finally.
Luca's eyes met hers with an intensity that felt like being under inspection. "Because you didn't deserve to be in the middle of that." He hesitated. "Because sometimes, I pick people who are honest."
Elara laughed at the last word, a short, disbelieving sound.
"Honest? I'm a waitress."
"Honesty isn't a job."
He smiled once, because he liked the way it disturbed him. "It's rare."
She told him her name. He told her his — but only his first. "Luca." It was not deception. It was just one piece of himself that fit the moment.
They left before dawn. The city was rinsed clean, and Elara walked home slower than she normally did because something new slotted into place behind her ribs: an attention she had not had the right to expect.