Chapter 14 - The Boss Who Walked Away
Luca Moretti stood before a federal judge nine months after the night he bled into Wren’s lilies.
The courtroom was full.
Reporters occupied every bench they could reach. Former Moretti associates sat behind defense counsel. Federal agents lined the walls. Rachel Keene had spent the morning describing Luca’s cooperation in language carefully stripped of praise.
He had turned over accounts.
He had identified shell companies.
He had testified before the grand jury.
He had helped prosecutors separate legitimate Moretti businesses from criminal operations and place several companies under independent compliance monitors.
He had also committed crimes.
The judge made that equally clear.
Wren sat beside Claire with an interpreter positioned where she could see both the judge and counsel.
Luca did not look at her during his statement.
He looked at the judge.
“I inherited a system I did not build,” he said, “and for too long I used that fact as an excuse for the parts I chose to continue. I told myself restraint made me good because I was less violent than the men before me. Less wrong is still wrong.”
The courtroom became absolutely still.
“I can explain what shaped me. I cannot use it to erase what I did.”
Wren felt Claire squeeze her hand.
The sentence was twenty months in federal custody, followed by supervised release and strict financial oversight.
Less than prosecutors might once have pursued.
More than Luca’s attorneys had hoped.
Luca accepted it without visible protest.
Wren cried anyway.
He was given four weeks to surrender because of his continued cooperation and medical status.
Those four weeks became a strange season of ordinary things.
Luca helped Wren paint the upstairs apartment above the flower shop, though he was terrible at edges. He attended a deaf-community fundraiser and spent the entire night signing badly but enthusiastically with teenagers who delighted in correcting him. He visited Angelo’s grave for the first time in years and placed no expensive arrangement there—only one white rose from Wren’s cooler.
He sold his interests in businesses tied to criminal activity. Legitimate restaurants and properties went into independently managed trusts subject to federal review. Marco, cleared of wrongdoing, accepted a security-director position at one of the restaurant groups on the condition that no one ever again call him consigliere.
Matteo entered witness protection with his son after testifying against Vittorio.
Silas Rook pleaded guilty to conspiracy, kidnapping, weapons charges, and obstruction. His cooperation came too late to save him from a long sentence, but it helped identify two remaining members of Vittorio’s network.
Vittorio refused every deal.
His trial was scheduled for the following spring.
The night before Luca surrendered, he and Wren closed Ashford Flowers together.
The shop had changed.
The front window carried a small decal showing that ASL service was available. A new security system flashed lights through the building. The dented cooler still stood at the back like a stubborn monument.
The hidden floor chamber remained too.
Wren had cleaned it, removed every trace of blood, and turned it into storage for wedding vases.
Luca found that funny.
“From mafia boss to centerpiece inventory,” he signed.
“Growth.”
They went upstairs.
Wren made pasta. Luca ruined garlic bread. They ate on the floor because her new dining table had not arrived.
There was no dramatic speech.
No promise that prison would be easy.
At midnight, Luca gave her a small box.
Wren immediately frowned.
“If that is a ring, I’m throwing you out.”
“It isn’t.”
Inside was his watch.
The expensive one she had mocked at the safehouse.
“I don’t want this.”
“I know.”
“Then why?”
“Open the back.”
The case had been engraved.
Not with a date.
With one ASL handshape: TOMORROW.
Wren looked at him.
“I want it back when I come home.”
“That sounds suspiciously like an order.”
“A request.”
“Better.”
She accepted it.
The next morning, Wren drove him to the federal facility with Marco following in another car.
At the entrance, Luca turned to her.
He did not say he was sorry again.
They had exhausted apology and moved into consequence.
He signed TOMORROW.
Wren signed it back.
Then he walked inside.
The months that followed were not romantic.
They were real.
Wren worked.
She rebuilt Ashford Flowers into something bigger than it had been under Samuel. She hired two deaf apprentices from the community center and one hearing teenager who became fluent enough in ASL to gossip faster than Wren liked. She expanded funeral work, weddings, and event design. She created a training partnership that helped deaf and hard-of-hearing students find paid placements with local small businesses.
She visited Luca twice a month when schedules allowed.
They wrote constantly.
His letters were terrible at first—too formal, too controlled. Wren sent them back with notes in the margins.
This sounds like a quarterly report.
Try again.
He did.
He wrote about anger, shame, boredom, and a literacy program where he began tutoring another incarcerated man in basic accounting. He wrote about Angelo. He wrote about dreams in which the flower shop had no doors.
Wren wrote about clients, Claire’s recovery, and the fact that Marco had accidentally sent lilies to a wedding because he confused two order numbers.
Their relationship changed without either of them forcing it to stay frozen.
Some visits were tender.
Some were difficult.
Once Wren left angry after Luca tried to tell her she should hire more security instead of asking what she wanted. He apologized in his next letter and did not repeat the mistake.
That mattered more than perfection.
Vittorio’s trial began seven months into Luca’s sentence.
Wren testified for two days.
She explained Samuel’s code. Evelyn’s archive. The shop attack. The white carnations. Vittorio’s confrontation during White Rose Night.
Defense lawyers tried to suggest she had misread lips during stressful events.
Wren answered calmly.
“That is why I’m telling you only what I know, not what you wish I had guessed.”
The jury convicted Vittorio on racketeering, conspiracy, bribery, obstruction, and murder-related counts tied to Angelo’s death. The Ashford crash remained legally more complicated, but evidence of the coverup was included in the broader conspiracy findings.
When the verdict arrived, Wren did not feel triumphant.
She felt tired.
Then free.
Luca was released after serving fifteen months, receiving credit for good conduct and program participation.
Wren did not wait outside with cameras or flowers.
She waited beside an old gray pickup Marco had borrowed because she knew Luca would hate a spectacle.
He walked through the gate carrying one small bag.
For a moment they simply looked at each other.
Fifteen months was long enough for faces to change.
Not beyond recognition.
Beyond fantasy.
Luca smiled first.
Wren lifted his old watch from her pocket.
“Want this back?”
He looked at the engraved handshape.
“Tomorrow?”
She shook her head.
May you like
“Today.”
Then she kissed him in the parking lot like ordinary people who had survived extraordinary mistakes and still had groceries to buy on the way home.
