Luca stared at them.
What the fuck.
His breath still burned in his throat from the mad dash across Milan, a fire in his lungs fueled by ozone and desperation, but the air suddenly seized in his chest when he saw the scene.
Elena, still lifted in Vittorio's arms, slowly opened her eyes. The movement was languid. Heavy. She turned her head toward him.
Their gazes met in the cone of yellowish light from the streetlamp.
And she smiled.
Unguarded.
He felt a dull thud in his stomach. A sharp, acidic tear, as if someone had shoved a hand into his guts and squeezed.
His eyes remained wide, nailed to the impossible scene before the dark wooden door.
Vittorio.
The lifelong friend. The lifelong rival.
Vittorio, the Untouchable Lawyer, the cynic par excellence. The man who collected relationships like legal cases: won, filed, forgotten.
He doesn't deserve her.
He held Elena with a tenderness Luca had never seen in him. Never even imagined. He supported her as if she were precious, as if her weight was the only thing anchoring him to the ground.
Vittorio's hair was messy, a black lock falling over his forehead, his shirt missing its tie and open at the neck. He looked like a different man.
Or maybe he was the same old predator, only this time the prey was the wrong one.
He shifted his gaze to her. He felt the blood pulsing in his temples, a deafening rhythm.
Elena.
She was clinging to him. Not simply supported. She was fused with him. Her legs wrapped around Vittorio's waist, her head abandoned on his shoulder.
Elena.
The impregnable fortress. The woman who had built an empire from nothing, sacrificing everything on the altar of ambition.
I watched you. I admired you.
Ice-cold. Detached.
That professionalism she used as a shield against the world.
Against me.
Work comes first, Luca. No room for complications.
The excuse he had always accepted. He had waited, patient, respectful, freezing his own feelings while waiting for the thaw. He had deluded himself into thinking he was the one waiting on the shore, the only one capable of offering her a safe harbor when she got tired of sailing alone.
No, not deluded. Aware. Present. Steadfast.
And yet.
Yet she had chosen the storm.
She had stepped over years of friendship and patience to throw herself into the arms of the only man guaranteed to destroy her.
Vittorio didn't know how to build. Vittorio only knew how to win.
Save her.
Luca looked at her, curled up against that chest that knew no emotional loyalty, and felt a protective anger rising inside him, hot and violent like the gasoline he still smelled from his bike.
Why him?
He will use you. He will consume you.
He had seen it happen a thousand times out of boredom or defiance, and when they were broken, he would return to his perfect life leaving the pieces behind.
I won't pick up the pieces. I won't let him break you.
For a long moment, no one spoke.
The silence of the night weighed like lead, broken only by Luca's breathless panting and the metallic ticking of the cooling motorcycle behind him.
He felt like an intruder.
He was witnessing an emotional suicide.
And he couldn't look away.
"Good evening, Luca."
Elena felt the vibration of Vittorio's voice rumble against her ear, deep, calm. A thoracic resonance that transmitted absolute security.
No hesitation in his chest. No missed beat.
She felt his arm tighten imperceptibly under her legs. A silent claim.
Good.
Let him watch.
She lifted her head from Vittorio's shoulder, slow, heavy. Her neck ached pleasantly, muscles still numb from recent pleasure.
She focused on the figure on the porch.
Luca.
He was there, stiff as a post, wrapped in his heavy coat, blue eyes wide, bouncing between her and Vittorio as if witnessing a fatal car crash.
The hero. How boring.
She watched him try to process the image: her messy hair, Vittorio's open shirt, the absolute intimacy of that hold.
She didn't get down. She had no intention to. She felt untouchable up there, protected by Vittorio's animal warmth, far from the moralistic judgment raining down on her along with the night's humidity.
She smelled him by accident. A mix of cold sweat and repressed rage.
Damn. So sexy.
"I'm afraid you caught us in a moment of... return," Vittorio continued. His tone was black velvet, smooth and impenetrable.
Elena felt a smile stretch her swollen lips.
"Luca," she murmured. Her voice came out rasping, scratched, thick with sleep and barely stifled moans. "What are you doing here?"
"I..." Luca sputtered.
Think Luca, think! Find an excuse.
"I wanted... we needed to talk..."
There it is.
"...about the case. I thought..."
He stopped. His gaze hardened as he stared at Vittorio's arm wrapped around her like a chain of possession.
Elena saw the shift in his eyes. She saw the confusion turn into that old, familiar male arrogance disguised as concern.
Here he is.
He was doing the math. He was writing the script in his head: Elena the victim, Vittorio the predator.
Please, don't think you can save me.
Again. Every day.
"You thought what?" she asked. She lowered her voice, making it a dangerous caress.
Vittorio moved fluidly, turning just slightly toward the massive door.
"Luca, you are free to join us for a drink," he said. Neutral. Ice-cold. "If you need to talk, we can do it inside. In a more... comfortable environment."
Elena felt the muscle in Vittorio's shoulder tense against her cheek.
He wanted to send him away. He was putting etiquette and good manners out front. But she... she saw a different opportunity.
Open your eyes. I am not a victim.
She pressed closer to him, a shiver running down her spine, flaunting that contact.
She looked Luca straight in the eyes. She read his thought as if it were written in neon on his furrowed brow: I can't leave her alone with him.
Tender. Foolish.
"Or," she added, letting a smile light up her face in the shadow, lazy and cruel, "you can go home. We are sure you'll be able to process what you saw tonight on your own."
It wasn't a question.
She knew exactly which button to push.
Win win.
Run away and keep your illusions.
Or come in and stop looking at me like I'm prey.
Win win.
Look how much I like the monster.
She awaited his move, feeling Vittorio's heart beat calm and powerful against her side.
Win win.
And then... CLICK.
It wasn't clear what it was, yet.
Vittorio felt Elena's body stiffen imperceptibly against his.
Annoyance. It was something sharper.
He intercepted her gaze even before Luca could respond to the provocation.
In that instant of suspended silence, time dilated.
Vittorio looked into her eyes and saw the frantic calculation behind the lust and exhaustion.
A rapid message. Invisible.
Strategy.
She wasn't looking at Luca with contempt or amusement anymore.
She was evaluating him as a tactical threat.
Vittorio felt her thought reach him as clearly as if she had whispered it in his ear:
He is a bloodhound.
He sees the world through victims' eyes.
He sees me as a victim.
If he realizes I'm not, he'll look for the culprit.
It was only a matter of time.
He remained motionless, struck by that realization.
She was giving up her pride for him.
In the eyes of the world, and of Luca, she was accepting to be the fragile creature in need of saving.
Let's give him the victim.
Not for him. For him, in that moment, she was the guardian of the threshold.
Her gaze said: I won't let him see you. Close is better than far. Close is control.
Ruthless. Perfect. My accomplice.
Vittorio welcomed that silent will. He felt a wave of admiration, dark and deep, mixing with desire.
Mine. Yours.
His features softened, imperceptibly.
Let's open.
With a fluid movement, he bent his knees and let Elena slide to the ground.
Her feet touched the cold stone of the porch.
Vittorio felt the immediate void against his chest, but he didn't move away. He stayed there, a dark tower behind her, casting his shadow over both of them.
"Luca," he said. His voice calm, but now charged with a different gravity. An invitation that was a masked order. "Come in. If we must talk about the case, better to do it inside than on the porch at three in the morning."
He took a step back.
The movement opened the space toward the door, but above all, it cleared the field of action for Elena.
"I think we all need to clarify... a few things."
Elena didn't go toward the door. She moved toward Luca.
Vittorio watched her change skin in an instant. The posture of defiance vanished, shoulders lowered, replaced by a fluid softness.
She stopped in front of him, close enough to invade his space, close enough to see the friend's dilated pupils and smell the scent of cold he carried.
"Luca," she said.
The voice was no longer the provocative lover's. It was soft. Worried.
An instrument tuned to disarm.
"You're trembling."
Vittorio saw Elena's hand reach out toward Luca. A gesture of maternal comfort, almost innocent.
"Come in. I'll make you something hot. Or something stronger, if you prefer."
Her fingers brushed the sleeve of Luca's coat. The contact was light, but calculated.
"You can't go home in this state. Let's talk. It's okay."
Vittorio stayed in the shadows, leaning against the open door.
He watched his accomplice weave the web.
Perfect.
Luca remained motionless.
His clenched jaw hurt. The muscles in his shoulders were marble under the heavy coat.
His eyes, bloodshot from the wind of the race, were fixed on that dark arm that until a second ago was encircling Elena.
A subtle tremor ran down his spine.
Something is wrong.
He felt it in his body before his mind. A visceral unease, like a sound at a frequency too high to be heard but loud enough to make ears bleed.
What is wrong?
He looked at Elena.
She was no longer the woman fused with Vittorio. Now she was curled in on herself, eyes half-closed, a tired smile on her lips.
She looked so... small.
So fragile without shoes, on the cold stone.
She is a victim.
The thought crystallized, clear and terrible.
She needs protection. She seeks it in the man, but he is the wrong one. He is the monster disguising himself as a shelter.
That was why his instinct screamed. Not for her against her, but for her.
"Luca."
Elena's voice reached him. Soft. Worried.
"You're trembling. Come in. I'll make you something hot."
The same words. Again.
There was something in the repetition that triggered a technical alarm in his profiler brain.
Repetition is the first form of hypnosis.
It is the first stage of manipulation.
He knew it. He had studied it. He had taught it to wide-eyed recruits.
But the thought slipped away before he could truly grasp it, washed away by exhaustion and the desperate need to believe her.
He looked at her. He searched her dark eyes for malice, calculation.
He found only warmth. Only concern.
You're paranoid, Luca. It's Elena. You've known her for years.
She isn't manipulating you. She is asking for help.
The trembling calmed. The instinct fell silent, suffocated by the faulty logic of unrequited love.
"Yes," Luca said. His voice was hoarse, unrecognizable. "Yes, maybe you're right. Maybe I need to..."
He didn't finish the sentence.
He climbed the steps.
He passed Vittorio without looking at him. He felt only the cold emanating from him, a motionless column of shadow shifting just barely to let him pass through the gap.
Elena put a hand on his back. A light touch, guiding him toward the darkness of the entrance.
"It's okay," she murmured. "Let's talk."
He entered.
The sound of the lock clicking behind his back was dry. Final.
And as the door closed, sealing the world outside, the unease returned.
A whisper in Luca's mind, barely perceptible in the silence of the elegant foyer.
Something is wrong.
But he ignored it.
As he always did.