Much like the majority of the Latin-speaking world, Italian underwent a sound change where [k] softened before a front vowel. The original [k] can be found in Sardinian and the now-extinct African Romance.

Romanian adopted the Latin alphabet in the 19th century and the spelling was intentionally based on Italian. So it's not a good representative for this particular argument — of course it spells it this way, because it was intentionally chosen to spell it this way by importing Italian spelling rules for these sounds.