SERENA'S POV
I knew it was him before I turned around.
I knew it because the footsteps were too measured, too unhurried, the kind of walk a man uses when he's already won something and is in no rush to claim it. I knew it because the air in the passage shifted in that particular way it always did when Luca came into a space. I knew it because somewhere underneath all of my planning a small part of me had been waiting for this exact moment, the way you wait for a door to close even when you're still trying to walk through it.
I turned.
He was at the other end of the narrow passage with one hand resting on the wooden frame beside him, his face arranged into something almost calm. The pale light from the chapel candles fell across one side of him and left the other in shadow.
"Going somewhere?" he said.
I straightened my shoulders. I gave him the most reasonable expression I had. "I needed some air. It's heavy in there."
"Air."
"Yes."
