Words were Luca Moretti's cleanest weapons.
They didn't draw blood, they didn't leave bruises,
But they broke people all the same.
Elena learned that the night he finally chose to speak to her instead of around her.
They were seated at opposite ends of the dining table—an absurd stretch of polished wood that could have seated twenty men. Candles burned low, the flames steady, disciplined. The staff had cleared out quietly, leaving behind untouched plates and a silence thick enough to choke on.
Elena hadn't eaten, neither had Luca.
He watched her the way he watched everything—without blinking, without urgency, like time itself answered to him. She refused to look away first, even though the weight of his attention pressed against her ribs.
"You're losing weight," he said at last.
The words landed wrong—not sharp, not cruel. Observational.
"I didn't know that concerned you," Elena replied coolly.
"It doesn't," Luca said. Then, after a pause, "But it affects you."
She let out a humorless laugh. "Everything here affects me."
"Yes," he agreed. "That's the point."
Her fingers curled against her thigh beneath the table. "Then why comment at all?"
Luca leaned back slightly, folding his hands. "Because starvation is a weak rebellion."
Her eyes flashed. "You think this is rebellion?"
"I think," he said evenly, "that you are trying to punish yourself because you can't punish me."
The accuracy of it stole her breath.
Silence followed—not the empty kind, but the kind that exposed things. Luca didn't rush to fill it. He never did. He let truth rot in the open.
"You will eat," he continued, voice calm, final. "Not because I order it. Because I won't let you destroy yourself just to feel control."
Elena scoffed. "How generous."
"You misunderstand," Luca said. "This isn't kindness. It's maintenance."
That stung more than cruelty would have.
"I'm not a thing," she snapped.
"No," he said softly. "You're a liability."
She stood so abruptly her chair scraped against the floor. "Then why don't you treat me like one? Lock me away. Silence me completely."
Luca's gaze hardened. "Because liabilities are managed. Not ignored."
He rose then—not towering, not threatening. Just present. Unavoidable.
"You speak when it's safe," he continued. "You argue when it's allowed. You push because you think it gives you leverage."
"And?" she challenged.
"And I'm allowing it."
That stopped her.
He stepped closer, close enough that she could feel the warmth of him, the controlled danger. His voice dropped—not intimate, but deliberate.
"This," he said, "is your verbal welfare. I let you speak so you don't break. I let you fight so you don't rot. But don't confuse permission with power."
Her throat tightened. "So this is mercy?"
"No," Luca said. "This is strategy."
She looked up at him, heart pounding—not with fear, but with something worse. Recognition.
He wasn't trying to silence her, he was studying her endurance.
"You're sharper when you're fed," he added quietly. "Angrier when you're rested. I don't want a ghost at my side. I want a woman who can survive the noise."
Elena swallowed. "And if I refuse?"
Luca's mouth curved—not in a smile, not in a threat. "Then I'll talk you into obedience."
Her breath hitched, Words again, Always words.
He stepped back, reclaiming distance, control, space. "Eat," he said simply. "Argue tomorrow."
When he left the room, Elena sank back into her chair, hands shaking—not because she'd been defeated.
But because she'd been seen.
For the first time, Luca Moretti hadn't used silence to cage her.
He'd used words to keep her standing, and that terrified her far more than cruelty ever could.