GHOST IN A GARDEN

The bedroom was too quiet.

I didn’t sleep.

Not because I wasn’t tired—God, I was exhausted—but because the silence let my thoughts scream.

And they all screamed one name.

Luciano.

How did he go from the boy who saved baby birds to the man who bought women at underground auctions?

I tried to convince myself he was a stranger.

But the way he looked at me? The way he still looked at me?

That was not the gaze of a stranger.

That was history—complicated, cracked, bleeding history.

The memory hit me like a punch.

Four years ago.

I was seventeen. Living in a falling-apart house with a mother too sick to walk and a father who blamed me for every broken dream he ever had.

Luciano had been a storm even then.

He was nineteen, sharp-jawed, silver-eyed, with a crooked smirk and the kind of quiet power that made everyone shut up when he entered a room.

But with me… he was different.

He softened.

“Close your eyes,” he whispered that day, guiding me through the rusted gate behind his grandmother’s house.

I obeyed.

I always obeyed him back then.

“Where are we going?” I asked, giggling.

“Trust me.”

We stepped onto soft earth.

I smelled roses.

He took my hand and whispered, “Now open them.”

The garden behind his grandmother’s place wasn’t fancy. It wasn’t even that big. But to a girl like me—who only knew hospitals and unpaid bills—it felt like magic.

Sunlight spilled through broken trellises. Wild red roses climbed up wooden posts. There were cracked statues of angels, and a chipped fountain that barely worked.

It was ours.

We spent every Saturday there. Hiding. Laughing. Dreaming.

Luciano would bring me sandwiches. I’d bring my mother’s old poetry books.

He told me he’d get us out one day.

Said he’d become someone powerful enough to make people bow when I walked into a room.

I believed him.

Until the night he vanished.

I sat up in bed, my chest tightening.

He left without a word.

No goodbye. No note. No explanation.

And now, four years later, he walks into my life by buying me?

I clenched the sheets.

He thought he could own me. Use me. Pretend like the past didn’t matter.

Well, I remembered everything.

And I would never forgive him for what he did.

A soft knock interrupted my thoughts.

I didn’t answer.

The door opened anyway.

Luciano walked in, holding a tray with a glass of orange juice, toast, and some kind of omelette that looked far too expensive to eat in pajamas.

“I said don’t lock the door,” he reminded, placing the tray on the nightstand.

“You cooked?” I asked skeptically.

He gave a one-shouldered shrug. “I’m not completely useless.”

I glared at him. “You’re a kidnapper.”

He met my eyes without flinching. “You’d be dead or trafficked if I hadn’t stepped in.”

“You disappeared, Luciano. Left me to rot.”

Something flickered in his eyes.

“I had no choice.”

“Bullshit,” I snapped. “You always have a choice.”

He sat on the edge of the bed but didn’t touch me.

“You don’t know what was coming for me,” he said quietly. “If I’d stayed… you would’ve been caught in the crossfire.”

“You think I wasn’t anyway?”

I stood up, furious now.

“My father’s gambling got worse. My mother died. I dropped out of school. Do you think a few Saturdays in a rose garden kept me safe?”

His jaw tensed.

He looked… haunted.

“I thought you hated weakness,” I bit out. “So why do you look like mine broke you?”

Luciano stood too, suddenly towering over me.

“I hate weakness in myself,” he said. “Not in you.”

I stared at him.

My throat tightened.

I wanted to scream. To cry. To shove him against the wall and make him feel the years I’d lost.

But instead, I whispered, “You left me behind.”

He exhaled, like it physically hurt him to remember.

“I thought it would save you.”

“Liar.”

“Maybe,” he said softly. “But I’m here now.”

He reached for my face again—slowly, gently.

This time… I didn’t pull away.

I should have.

But his fingers were warm, and the way he looked at me—like I was both salvation and sin—made me forget all the reasons I hated him.

“Eat,” he said finally, stepping back. “You need strength.”

“For what?” I asked.

Luciano’s eyes darkened.

“For surviving me.”