Luca

*Introduction: Thorns and Lilies* Milan runs on two currencies: money and silence. Rosa Moretti deals in neither. Her world is small, quiet, and smells like jasmine at 7 AM. “Rosa’s Petals” sits on Via Nera 14, a flower shop her nonna left her, tucked between a closed bakery and a bar that doesn’t wake up before noon. She’s 26, curvy, with long dark hair she never has time to fix properly. She remembers birthdays, hates funerals, and thinks the worst thing in the world is letting a sunflower wilt. Innocent isn’t a brand for her. It’s just how she lives. That’s why the two men in black suits look out of place the moment they walk in. “You’re behind on rent,” the taller one says. “Three months,” the other adds, like it’s a fact she can’t argue with. But Rosa owns the building. Or she did, until the Marino family changed the paperwork. The Marinos don’t run bakeries and flower shops. They run Milan. And when they decide you owe them €47,000, “I don’t have it” isn’t an answer they accept. Rosa thinks she can fight them with receipts and stubbornness. She’s wrong. Because two days later, Luca Marino walks through her door. He’s not there to break her fingers or burn the shop. He’s too calm for that. Tall, sharp suit, eyes that notice everything and give nothing away. The Don’s youngest son. The one who handles problems before they become bodies. “I can fix the paperwork,” he says, setting a single white lily on her counter. “But you’ll owe me.” Rosa doesn’t do deals with mafia. She doesn’t do men who make her pulse spike just by saying her name. But the shop is all she has left of her nonna. And Luca Marino doesn’t take no for an answer. So she says yes to dinner. Yes to a favor she doesn’t understand yet. Yes to walking a line between the life she built with her hands and the world he was born into. She tells herself it’s just business. That it won’t change anything.