Desire can wait. My plan cannot.
Like a comet, Sophia Orsi has always been in my orbit—bright, distant, impossible to ignore. I don’tlookfor her, but I always know when she’s near. Like some part of me shifts and realigns without permission.
It’s not desire, not like that. It’s... a disturbance. Interference. Like static in a clean frequency. She rattles something in me that’s been locked down too long to name. It’s not about her face or her body or any of the things that other men might see. It’s the way she looks at the world, like it hasn’t broken her yet. Like there’s still light in it.
And maybe I hate her for that, too. Or maybe I’m just terrified of what it means for me. Because the second I startfeelinganything in this life, I lose. I’ve come too farand bled too much to fall for a spark I was never meant to hold. Not a nobody like me.
The morning after the alley had proved to be as hard as I’d expected. Angelo had called me into Carlos's office, like a dog summoned for a trick. He’d sat there, all smug, and leaned back with his boot on the desk like it was his throne. He hadn’t even offered me a seat. I grimace at the memory.
“You did well last night,” he said, but his voice was flat. “You kept my sister and the other stupid girls safe. You stopped something that could’ve started a war between families.”
“Thanks,” I replied, because that’s what you do. You accept the coin. You don’t ask for warmth.
He tapped ash into a crystal tray and looked at me with that bored, contemptuous glare. “You’re off bodyguard duty. You proved you can handle… other assignments.
“For now,” he added with a sneer wrapped in kindness.
I nodded and pressed out, "Thank you."
He leaned forward, like we were coconspirators. I almost expected him to wink at me. "Thank God the girls weren’t trafficked. We only ever traffic what’s useless to the family. Girls like that? They’re assets. They’re for marriage and babies. Wasting one is wasting product.” He smiled then, all polite and monstrous.
My hand curled around the magazine in my pocket. I didn't return his smile; it was all I could do not to plantmy fist in his face. Just like Carlos, I despise Angelo with every beat of my heart.
Old anger crept up in me. The same anger I had been carrying since I could think. The one that’s lived under my ribs since a man in a suit handed me over to my adoptive mother and told her to raise me to become something useful.
Angelo never had to earn a chair. He sucks the silver spoon and doesn’t even notice the teeth marks.
"Thank you. If this is all?" I managed to say between clenched teeth. I wasn't sure how much longer I could keep my composure around him. With a wave, he dismissed me like he always does.
The worst? I don’t even know who I am.
Carlos Orsi took me in when I was a baby. I don't even have a birth certificate or a name. I was just an unwanted mouth to feed and a debt to collect on. He handed me off to a soldier and his wife, like I was some stray dog—a favor disguised as charity.
Useful. Not loved. Not theirs. Just another tool in the box.
My adoptive father made it clear from the start that I wasn’t blood, that I wasn’t wanted. I was a job—a burden.
My mother… she tried, in her own way. She gave me scraps of warmth between long stretches of cold. A soft voice here. A plate of food there. But she always pulled back when herrealchildren cried. I was never enough to fight for. Never the favorite. Just tolerated, just kept alive.
And even that felt like a gift.
I grew up in that house knowing I was an outsider. Knowing I didn’t belong. And when I was six, Carlos came knocking because it was time to earn my keep.
They didn’t hand me a gun, not then. First, it was errands. Sitting quietly while men screamed about debts, watching bruises bloom on faces, helping to carry ledgers and cash, and listening when I wasn’t supposed to. I learned to read people the way other kids learned math, through trial and error, through pain.
By ten, I was bait. They’d station me on stoops outside apartments, make me cry, and send in the real muscle once someone opened the door to help me. By twelve, I ran collections. Not because I was strong, but because I was invisible. Forgettable. Nobody suspects a quiet kid with dark eyes and silent steps. By fifteen, I could break a man’s kneecap without blinking. By seventeen, I was made. Not because of loyalty. Not because of legacy, but because I’d done the things no one else would. Quietly. Efficiently. Without a trace.
I earned my place in this world through blood and silence. No birthright. No name. Just scars and usefulness.
So what the hell am I doing, thinking about Sophia like I deserve her attention?
She’s a princess in this world. I’m the weapon her father uses to wipe the blood off his throne. And yet… she looked at me like I wassomething.
Something worth talking to. Something worth remembering.
And I hate her for that.
Because I’ve spent my whole life pretending I don’t want to be remembered. Pretending I don’t care. Pretending it doesn’t matter that I don’t know who I am or where I came from.
