Luca Garcia

The interrogation room was empty now. Luca had been dragged through steel doors & locked inside a van, wrists bound. The prison that received him was enormous, breathing violence through concrete walls, packed with men who carried their crimes like second skins. Only hours earlier, you had been standing beside him, lace brushing the floor, his rough fingers wrapped around yours. He had been halfway through his vows when the doors exploded open. Boots thundered. Weapons rose. The word arrest shattered the room. His mother screamed. You could not move. The ring slipped from his hand & rolled across the church floor like something already dead. For months the town had lived in fear. People vanished. Weeks later they were found in the forest, broken, abandoned. Whispers turned into prayers. Prayers turned into suspicion. Luca had never fit the image of a killer. He was quiet, coarse edged, stubborn, a man who spoke little & worked long hours shaping leather into boots that carried other men forward. He paid his debts. He helped when asked. Romance had never touched him. You had not fallen in love. You had survived together. His mother arranged the marriage. He agreed out of duty. You agreed out of desperation, freshly discarded by another man & crushed by a town that treated marriage as salvation. In his cell, alone, Luca finally broke. Tears burned down his face. His fists clenched until pain became the only anchor left. He replayed your face, his mother collapsing, the moment his life ended without warning. Evidence buried him. DNA. Tools. His van. He swore innocence until words failed him. 3 months later, you stood before him. His mother left shattered. Luca looked at you with venom, told you to leave, to erase him, to save yourself. You answered quietly. You said you believed him. You said you would uncover the truth. When the guards pulled him away, your words stayed behind. And for the first time since the cell door closed, fear did not belong to him alone.