Chapter 16

Lina's POV

I placed the hot chocolate at the corner of the desk. My fingertips still retained the temperature of the cup wall, but my mind kept replaying the scene of seeing Luca at the intersection just now—the way he frowned, the look in his eyes after hanging up the phone and looking at me, and that car disappearing into traffic.

A passing classmate accidentally knocked my pencil off. I bent down to pick it up, but saw a small box wrapped in kraft paper in my desk compartment.

My furrowed brow instantly relaxed when I saw the small note on top, because the handwriting was Luca's.

When I left yesterday, I was certain there was nothing in my desk compartment. For it to appear here now, it must have been placed by one of his informants planted in the school.

"A gift for a good girl."

My heartbeat began to accelerate again. I quietly opened the box. Inside was an exquisitely packaged chocolate and a card with a little cat drawn on it.

Maggie nudged me with her elbow from the side, raising her eyebrows suggestively. "Did you receive something good?"

I quickly closed the box and said with feigned composure, "It's nothing. Just a small snack from a friend."

She pursed her lips and turned back to listen to the lecture with a smile.

I secretly held the chocolate in my hand. The temperature of my palm mixed with the lingering warmth of the hot chocolate. I couldn't help it—the corner of my mouth secretly curved up in a smile.

I didn't absorb any of the lesson.

The chocolate was held in my palm, the edge of the wrapping paper pressing against my fingertips.

I shifted it from my left hand to my right, then from right back to left, like a squirrel that didn't know how to handle an unexpected windfall.

Maggie glanced at me with her peripheral vision several times, suppressing a smile at the corner of her mouth, but for once didn't press with questions.

"A gift for a good girl."

I was too familiar with Luca's handwriting. His writing was like him—strokes clean and decisive, without any unnecessary curves.

Yet when the words "good girl" fell from his pen tip, they carried a tenderness completely opposite to his handwriting, like a hand accustomed to holding a knife carefully cradling something fragile.

Good girl. He called me a good girl.

To be fair, I shouldn't count as a good girl, but Luca insisted on praising me this way.

At the Raven base, no one would describe me with such soft words. They would only say "Lina's aim is accurate," "Lina is ruthless enough," or "This girl has a hard life."

I put the chocolate back in my pocket and raised my head, pretending to look at the blackboard and listen carefully.

But nothing the teacher said entered my brain. My mind was full of that look from Luca across the traffic.

I clearly remembered him hanging up the phone and turning his head, looking at me through the taxi's exhaust fumes and the thin morning sunlight, then breathing a sigh of relief.

His shoulders sank slightly, his brow relaxed, his fingers on the steering wheel loosening from tense to relaxed.

That was a physical response of switching from an alert state to a safety-confirmed state—I had learned at Raven how to read a person's emotions from micro-changes in body language.

The moment Luca saw me, he truly breathed a sigh of relief.

What was he worried about? Worried that I would run away without a word?

"Lina." Maggie's voice pulled me back.

"Mm."

"Class is already over! You've been staring at the same spot in a daze for a while." She leaned over, lowering her voice. "Still thinking about the person who gave you the gift?"

"No." I remained stubborn.

"Your ears are red again."

I instinctively raised my hand to cover my ears. After realizing Maggie had tricked me, I somewhat awkwardly lowered my hand and cleared my throat lightly.

"Okay, okay, I won't tease you anymore. Let's go!"

I stood up and stuffed my textbook into my bag.

Maggie grabbed my wrist. "Come on, let's go to the library! The literature homework is due. I don't want to be punished by that old man to stand and read the entire text."

Her palm was warm, carrying that unique, vibrant temperature of youth. I didn't pull away, letting her drag me through the bustling hallway, past the sun-drenched courtyard.

Wind blew in from the window at the end of the hallway, lifting a corner of the scarf around my neck. The soft touch of cashmere brushed against my jaw, making me think again of how Luca's car had been parked under the streetlight this morning.

He was clearly going to handle matters, yet he specifically detoured to the school gate just to look at me once?

Or did it mean he had been watching me from the shadows all along, just like before when I was being bullied?

As soon as this thought emerged, I instinctively tensed my back.

Not from wariness, but from an indescribable warmth tinged with sourness.

Because no one had ever treated me this way before.

All of Dmitri's attention to me stemmed from how sharp a blade I could become.

All of Antonio's tenderness toward me stemmed from the persona I fabricated that matched his expectations.

Only Luca—he had seen me at my most disheveled, seen me at my sharpest, watched me at a loss with math problems, yet still handed me gentleness and patience again and again.

A figure hurried from the other end of the hallway, nearly colliding with Maggie's shoulder.

I only managed to see clearly it was a tall male student in a dark suit, his gait hurried and tense.

As he passed by me, he paused for about half a second, then continued forward, disappearing in the direction of the academic building lobby.

Maggie didn't notice the pause. She was still looking down replying to messages.

But I noticed. His footsteps underwent an extremely subtle rhythm change two steps away from me—the interval between his left foot landing and right foot landing was a few tenths of a second shorter than before.

That was the instinctive physical response when a person identifies a target.

He recognized me.

But I didn't recognize him.

"Who was that person just now?" I asked Maggie.

Maggie looked up and glanced around. "Who? Oh, you mean the one who just passed? Seems like he's from the Verona family, called... Alessandro? Junior year, doesn't usually come to class much."

Verona.

This surname made the hair on the back of my neck stand up slightly.

Moretti and Verona—Luca had mentioned this name when explaining the family landscape to me, using the tone reserved for discussing a temporarily dormant dangerous animal.

Not fear, not hostility, but a kind of sober, calm vigilance.

"What's wrong?" Maggie looked at my somewhat serious expression, her smile fading a bit.

"Nothing," I said.

The library was very quiet. Warm yellow sunlight poured through the huge floor-to-ceiling windows, falling on rows of bookshelves. The air was filled with the scent of paper and ink.

Maggie expertly pulled me to the window seat on the third floor, threw her backpack on the table, and ran to the bookshelf to find the books the teacher required.

I sat in the chair by the window, looking at the lawn outside. A few boys were playing frisbee. Their laughter drifted in on the wind, relaxed and carefree.

This was the life of normal people.

You could have friends, hobbies, freedom.

I took a deep breath. My fingertips unconsciously rubbed the table surface. The hair on my back suddenly stood up.

Someone was watching me.