Chapter 7 - The Terrace Lessons
The heat of June came with a thick, sweet smell of cut grass and blooming roses. Lena sat on the terrace, a light wool blanket over her useless legs, a thick textbook on neurological rehabilitation open in her lap.
She had spent two months with Dr. Vance’s team, enduring six hours of agonizing electrical stimulation and physical therapy every day. The progress was slow—a faint flicker in her left big toe last Tuesday, a sudden, burning heat in her right calf on Thursday—but her body remained a prisoner to the steel chair.
A shadow fell over her book.
Marco stood there, holding a single, heavy crystal vase containing a dozen deep, dark red roses. He looked uncomfortable, his large hands holding the delicate glass as if he were afraid his grip would shatter it.
"These are from the greenhouse," he said, setting the vase down on the wicker table beside her. "The gardener said they’re called Black Baccara. They look like blood when the sun hits them."
Lena looked at the flowers, then up at his hard face. "Thank you, Marco."
It was the first time she had used his first name without the 'Mr. Duca.' The change was small, but it made his shoulders drop an inch. He sat in the iron chair opposite her, his long legs stretched out across the flagstones.
"Vance says you worked through the noon session without taking your break," he said.
"Vance talks too much," Lena replied, closing her textbook. "If I don't work, the muscle tissue in my quadriceps will atrophy before the nerve pathways finish reconnecting. I don't intend to spend the rest of my life in this chair, Marco."
"You don't have to explain it to me," he said, his eyes tracking the movement of her fingers as she adjusted the blanket. "I know about fighting things that don't want to move."
"Is that what you do in the city?" she asked, her voice quiet, carrying no judgment, only a deep, genuine curiosity. "Move things that don't want to move?"
"I kill things that try to touch what’s mine," he said flatly.
Lena looked out over the green lawn where Danny was currently walking with one of the security guards, his steel braces creaking slightly in the afternoon quiet. "Your mother told me about your father. She said he was a man who built a wall around his family made of iron and bone. She said you grew up inside that wall, and you never learned how to look over it."
Marco’s jaw tightened. "The wall keeps the wolves out, Lena."
"The wall keeps you in the dark, Marco," she said softly, her hand moving off the blanket, her palm open on the table between them.
May you like
Marco stared at her hand for five long seconds. It was a small hand, scarred near the knuckles from an old kitchen burn, the skin pale from months inside the hospital wing. Slowly, as if he were approaching a wild animal that could disappear at any moment, he reached out and placed his massive, scarred palm over hers.
Her fingers didn't pull away. They closed around his thumb, her grip surprisingly warm, holding him to the terrace as the sun began to sink behind the pines.
