Now he stops and stands there, his arms folded, making his biceps swell underneath the too-tight jacket. His jaw looks like it was cut from stone. When he glances at me, those blue eyes soften for the smallest fraction of a second, almost like a shadow lifts, and I can see the manwho saved me in the alley, but then his face closes up as if somebody slammed a lid down.
“I wanted to talk to you,” I blurt before I can stop myself.
He looks at me properly, and I feel naked under that look. “Don’t be so stupid again,” he says, the same line as before. Only now it’s colder, sharper. He’s not walking away. He’s planting himself there, like he means it.
My mouth falls open. “That’s it?” I bark. “That’s all you have to say after—after you?—”
He cuts me off with a single, small motion. “Princess,” he says, and there’s something tired in it. “That kiss was a mistake. It shouldn’t have happened.”
A laugh that’s all hurt bubbles out of me and tastes wrong in my mouth. “A mistake?” I spit the word back at him. “How can it be a mistake? I felt it. I still feel it. That kiss wasn’t small. It wasn’t nothing. You don’t—you don’t get to call that a mistake.”
He stares at me coldly, making me feel vulnerable. For a moment, there’s no answer in him, only the line of his shoulders. Then, quieter, as if the sound itself would keep trouble from hearing, he says, “It was a mistake. You need to understand what’s at risk when men see you with me.”
My palms go slick. “What is at risk? You? Me? Because if you’re worried about you—” My voice breaks on the last word. I hate the tremor. I hate how small and eighteen it makes me sound. “You told me you’d do whatever it tookto keep me safe. Are you going to tell me that was a mistake, too? That saving me was a mistake?”
He flinches a little, and some ridiculous, brutal part of me wants to think I hurt him by asking. But then he squares his jaw. “You don’t understand what you’re asking. I’m not in a position to be reckless, and neither are you. You’re eighteen, and you have a family who will tear anyone who gets close into ribbons. My being seen with you will make it worse.”
“So that's what you're worried about? Yourself?” The words snap out of me sharp and raw.
He nods like a man stating facts, not feelings. “You don’t get to put me in the line of fire just because you want to play games.”
I hate that he’s right. The thought coils in my stomach like a live thing: he’s right, I put him in danger, just by being here. It makes heat and shame crawl up my neck. But I’m not going to let him get away with pretending this was some casual thing you can apologize for. I’m not playing games. I step closer until I can see the tiny line at the corner of his mouth, the one that might have smiled in the alley, and I make my voice the blade it needs to be.
“You don’t get to walk away and call it a mistake,” I tell him.
He looks at me, hard and flat and unreadable, like a man who’s learned how to swallow the whole world. For a second, I think I see something like guilt, and then hegives me that formal little bow he does when he’s closing a file.
“Goodbye, Miss Orsi,” he says in a final tone, using the formal address to put distance between us. My heart breaks at his tone, his words, and the purposeful intent in his stride when he turns and walks away.
My hands are shaking with fury and something else, something too big to name—want, grief, humiliation, all tangled together. I lunge for the nearest thing: a small, flat stone from the garden path. It flies from my fingers and thuds against the back of his head. For one suspended heartbeat, he keeps walking; then I think I hear the barest, almost-catlike chuckle slip from him. It might be madness, it might be the wind. Either way, he doesn’t look back.
The sound is a blade. It cuts me open more than the cold rebuke ever did. My chest heaves, and angry, stupid sobs rattle up. I swat them down because I'm not going to make a scene. Not here. Not now. Not with Angelo’s rules ringing in my ears like a gavel. I am eighteen, and I am full of mistakes, but I am also not going to hand him the power to own my shame.
I stand there until his figure disappears into the hedges, until the steady clip of his boots is just another memory, and when I finally turn, I can feel the ghost of his mouth on mine like a brand. I wrap my hands into fists at my sides and shove the churn of feelings down into a tight, hot knot.
Inside the house, the lights feel sharper, the chandeliers accusing. I walk through the halls like a girl holding a secret that will get someone killed if I breathe it out loud. I tell myself the sensible things: I will obey, I will not put him at risk, I will keep my head down. But under that sensible layer is a flame that will not be stamped out, not by speeches, not by threats, not by a stony goodbye.
She walks awaylike I didn’t just gut her. With her head held high, her back ramrod straight, and burning cheeks. She’s trying not to cry. I hate that I notice. I hate it more that I care.
That I can't help but admire her. Her poise, her grace, her beauty. Everything about her. I exhale through my nose and walk down the path, away from the courtyard, away from the place where she stood like some fucking angel of ruin.
Sophia Orsi.
My boss’s daughter.
She is a mafia princess, way out of my league. So far out of my league that it would mean my death getting near her. Even if she hadn’t just turned eighteen, even if she were a grown woman, I would never stand a chance. Notin a million years. I’m nobody—just a soldier with blood on his hands and no name worth saying.
Someday, she'll marry one of the other family's sons. Rumors are it's going to be Roberto Giordano My fists ball at the thought of another man ever touching her. My nostrils flare at the thought of that man calling herhis. But there is nothing I can do. All I have is impotent fury and a twitch in my fingers like they’re missing the weight of hers in them. Stupid. Stupid to let her get to me. Stupid to have kissed her. Stupid to have liked it.
The kiss sits in my chest like a hot coal I can’t drop. For a second, there was nothing but the press of her and the sound of the world narrowing to that one, impossible point. It felt like breathing for the first time after being underwater for too long. It felt like everything I don’t allow myself to feel.
And that's exactly why it must never happen again.
I’ve spent my life in the dark because the dark is useful. It keeps you anonymous, keeps you sharp, keeps you alive. Right now, I’m building something—slow, steady, in the seams—something that can’t be taken away by a loud name or a petty war. Men, money, quiet favors, pieces of turf, and reputations bought in whispers. What I’m making will be the kind of thing that lets a nobody walk into a room and have men clear the way. It will be the kind of thing that makes the daughter of a capo glance up and see a man she can trust, or one she’ll be forced to trust. Someday, that might mean a wife with a name likeOrsi. Someday, that might mean walking in not as a shadow but as the man everyone will have to answer to.
But that future is fragile. Attention kills quietly; it snags you and peels back the dark. If anyone ties me to Sophia, they’ll come for me. Not forher. Forme. It would ruin everything I’ve built. I refuse to risk that. Not for her. Not for anybody.
So I tuck the memory of her mouth away with the magazine in my pocket, a small, dangerous keepsake, and I make a rule in me the way I make rules on a job: it’s a mistake. It stays a mistake. No looks. No favors. No openings. I breathe it in like steel and let the cold set into my bones.
