The explosion wakes her at two in the morning.
Not inside the estate, but close enough that the windows rattle and her body is out of bed before her mind has caught up. She stands in the middle of the room breathing hard, heart slamming, and stares at the orange glow flickering at the edge of the garden below.
A car. Outside the gates. On fire.
Her door opens within seconds. Luca is already dressed, or never undressed, she cannot tell. He has a gun at his side. His eyes sweep the room once, fast, landing on her and confirming she is unharmed.
"Stay in this room," he says.
"What happened?"
"A message."
"From who?"
"Stay here." His voice is not unkind. But it does not leave room for argument.
Gunfire. Faint, outside, somewhere beyond the walls. Her pulse spikes.
She moves without thinking and grabs his arm just above the wrist. He stops.
"Do not go out there," she says.
He looks down at her hand on his arm. Then up at her face. And for just a moment, something moves in his eyes that has nothing to do with tactics or strategy. Something real and unplanned.
"I have to," he says.
"I know," she says. "But I am saying it anyway."
He holds her gaze for one more second. Then he leaves.
She sits on the edge of the bed and listens to sounds she cannot fully interpret. Shouts. Movement. The low sound of vehicles. Then quiet. Then nothing.
She does not sleep.
Three hours later the door opens again. Luca walks in. His jacket is gone. There is a dark stain on his shirt sleeve. She knows what it is without asking.
She stands.
"Is it over?" she asks.
"For now."
She looks at the stain. "You killed someone."
"Yes."
The word is flat. Not proud, not ashamed. Just honest.
She takes two steps toward him. "You are calm."
"I have to be."
"For your men?"
"For you."
That stops her.
"You do not get to decide that," she says quietly. "What I can handle."
"I decide what reaches you."
"And that," she says, "is the problem."
They are close now. Not touching. But close. The same two feet of space that has been between them all week, humming with the same energy it always carries.
"You think protecting you is a problem?" he asks.
"I think it is for me to decide."
His jaw tightens. She watches him work through it. Watch him argue and then not argue.
"You are right," he says.
She was not expecting that.
"I am used to making decisions," he says. "That is all I know how to do."
"Then learn something else," she says. "With me."
He looks at her for a long time. Long enough that she feels the weight of it.
"I do not know how to do this," he says. Not the tactics. Not the security. Something else. Something that does not have a name yet, between the two of them, in this room, at three in the morning with smoke still drifting in the air outside.
"Neither do I," she says.
The honest answer. The only one she has.
They stand there in the silence of it. Not enemies. Not yet whatever comes after enemies. Something in the space between, where trust has not been built yet but the ground for it is just starting to be cleared.
The first real crack has formed between them.
Not in anger. Not in fear.
In the small, difficult business of two people deciding, without saying it out loud, that they are going to try.