Chapter 19

Lina's POV

My nose started tingling again. I quickly lowered my head and took a deep breath, forcing myself to pull away from this emotion.

I chose to quickly change the subject.

"What did you handle today?" I asked.

Luca was silent for a while. "Some family matters."

"What matters?"

"Not important."

"You came to find me this morning."

"Mm."

"After you came to find me, you drove to handle things, and then appeared at the school gate in the afternoon." I turned to look at him. "Seems like what you handled today was very simple for you?"

Luca looked at me, the corners of his mouth lifting slightly. "You're analyzing me."

"I'm just asking questions."

"Your way of asking questions is to break down the other person's behavior pattern into a timeline and geographic coordinates, then fill in the blanks with a logical chain."

Luca lightly patted my shoulder. "Lina, that's an interrogation technique, not chatting."

I was stunned. Luca was right—I really didn't know how to "chat."

At Raven, every sentence everyone spoke had a purpose—gathering information, concealing intentions, creating pressure, breaking down defenses.

I had never had a conversation with anyone that didn't have a purpose.

And at this moment, holding Luca's wrist while sitting in the passenger seat, wanting to know what he'd done wasn't because I wanted to assess threats, it was just because I—

Was worried about him.

This thought was like a flashbang with its pin pulled, exploding in a burst of white light in my mind.

"After Antonio died, the forces behind him have been looking for opportunities to strike back." Luca spoke up, his voice neither high nor low. "Today someone held up one of my shipments at the Brooklyn docks. I went to handle it."

"Handle it."

"Right, handle it. But no one died and no one was injured, if that's what you're worried about..." Luca's voice became inexplicably cheerful.

"That's not what I'm worried about." I interrupted abruptly.

"Your left eyebrow moved again."

I took a deep breath and decided to temporarily give up struggling with my eyebrows. "Then why did you come find me this morning?"

Luca leaned back in his seat and was silent for a long time, so long that I started to wonder if he wasn't planning to answer this question.

Then he spoke, his voice very soft, so soft I had to lean my ear slightly to hear clearly.

"Because I wanted to see you."

I opened my mouth trying to say something, but found that my language system seemed to have suddenly malfunctioned.

Those neural pathways that could precisely organize language during interrogations and quickly transmit intelligence during missions all crashed when facing the phrase "because I wanted to see you."

"...ok." I said.

After struggling for so long, I only managed to produce one meaningless, utterly stupid word.

Luca laughed, not the cold laugh from the board meeting, not the perfunctory shallow smile from social occasions, but that kind of hearty laughter that resonates from deep in the chest.

His laughter shattered all the silence in the car cabin, breaking it into shiny powder, floating in the warm air and the melody of jazz music.

"You tried so hard for so long just now, and all you came up with was 'ok'?" Luca laughed so hard the corners of his eyes curved down.

"Shut up." I stared at him, suspecting that if I didn't stop him, this person could laugh himself to tears.

"Won't shut up." Luca let out another snort of laughter. "When you were analyzing where I went, what I did, whether the timeline was right, your mouth was pretty sharp. How come now you can only squeeze out one word?"

"You can shut up now."

I turned to glare at him. The smile on Luca's face hadn't completely faded, but something else was slowly emerging in his eyes—something I didn't dare look directly at or think carefully about.

"Alright, I'll stop teasing you." Luca was the first to get out of the car, then walked to my side and opened the car door for me. "Let's go."

We walked into the parking garage elevator. He pressed the floor button. The elevator door slowly closed, and in the narrow space, only the sound of our breathing remained.

"You said before that you're my uncle." I looked at Luca in the mirror and suddenly spoke. "Is it because you're my grandfather's godson?"

"Sort of." Luca took half a step forward to stand beside me. In the mirror, our shoulders were almost touching. "My father and your grandfather were brothers who went through life and death together. I've called your mother 'sister' since I was little. By generational ranking, you really should call me uncle."

I turned to look at him, raising an eyebrow. "Then when you had me lie across your lap for punishment before, how come you didn't think about generational ranking?"

Luca was first stunned, then cleared his throat and showed an impeccable smile. "An uncle disciplining a disobedient child—what's the problem with that?"

I thought I could finally win one round, but unexpectedly Luca still bested me. Feeling a bit frustrated, I was the first to walk out of the elevator.

The elevator door opened with a ding. Luca followed me out.

I was stunned. "Aren't you going back to your own floor?"

"I'll make you hot cocoa first." Luca walked in very naturally. He took off his coat and hung it on the rack, walked straight into the kitchen. "After all, we still have tutoring later. Can't study without something to drink."

I hadn't expected there would be tutoring again today and immediately put on a bitter face.

I followed him into the kitchen, leaning against the door frame, watching him skillfully take out milk and cocoa powder, open the milk pan, and slowly heat it over low heat.

Warm yellow light fell on Luca. His sleeves were rolled up to his forearms, revealing the smooth lines of his wrists.

This scene was too warm, too ordinary, like a dream I never dared to have.

I had never imagined that one day I would stand in a clean, bright kitchen, watching someone make me a cup of hot cocoa.

During those years at Raven, I had lived in abandoned warehouses, drafty safe houses, and basements full of the smell of blood.

What I ate most were compressed biscuits and cold water. What I drank most was black coffee that kept people alert.

Hot cocoa, friends, sunshine, afternoon cats—these things I never even dared to think about before.

"What are you thinking about?" Luca turned his head, seeing me in a daze, and asked.

The milk in the pan had already started to bubble slightly. The aroma of cocoa filled the entire kitchen, sweet and warm.

"Thinking about whether all this is real." I answered honestly.

Luca turned off the heat, poured the cooked hot cocoa into a mug, added two marshmallows, then walked over to me carrying the cup and handed it to me.

"It's real." He looked into my eyes, speaking word by word. "As long as you want it, you can have days like this in the future."