His insults are a machine: repetitive and grinding. They thud against the inside of me the way they always do—practiced and familiar—because this is the language I grew up with. I’ve heard the sneer, the dismissal, the way my mistakes are cataloged and stored like receipts. I’ve learned how to flatten myself and let it pass. It doesn’t stop them from hurting, but it teaches survival.
Under the anger and the shame, there’s a shard of something else: a hot, private ache that surprises me. And yet—beneath the sting of Angelo’s words—I’m still humming with the memory of Raffael’s mouth on mine: urgent and terrible and so unbelievably real. The way he pressed into me, the way his hands steadied and claimed without show or boast… it felt like safety and danger at once. It felt like something I’d been starved of and didn’t know how to name.
Angelo paces and keeps talking, every syllable meant to shrink me. I stand through it all and let thewords land, because I learned long ago that arguing with a man like him only makes the punishment sharper. But inside my head, the kiss replays, and with each loop, it grows less like a mistake and more like a wound and a want tangled together.
When I'm finally sent to my room, I still can't help but think aboutthe kiss.Hekissedme. I want to call Izzy and tell her all about it, but Angelo took my phone, telling me to kiss it goodbye for the foreseeable future. So I have no one to share this with.
Under the hot water, the sound of the shots comes back like they're lodged in my brain, loud pops that will loop forever. I close my eyes, and they’re not mine anymore; they belong to the night. I see the white van, the way the man’s head snapped, the way Raffael moved like an animal, all of it in too-bright, too-fast flashes. My skin prickles.
I scrub at the bruise along my arm where his hand was, where a dark, angry welt is blooming, and the soap foams into my fingers. When I shift my arm, the skin hurts, a dull, steady ache, proof that I was touched. Proof that I was almost taken. My stomach twists, and a small, ugly pride rises up within it: he deserved it. That man deserved to die. The blood goes down the drain, and a ridiculous, cold smile tugs at my mouth because I don’t have the faintest sympathy for a man like that. The city will keep breathing without him. So will I.
Then the cold hits. Not from the water, no, this is a sliding, animal chill that curls under my ribs and makesmy knees give out. I sink to the tile and curl in, the shower turning the world into a small, wet cave where the noise of adults and anger and plans can’t get in. Reality arrives in waves: Angelo’s hands on my sleeve, the disgust in his mouth, the way he talked aboutfixing me; the van; the smell of gunpowder and blood; the man’s hand on me; Raffael’s mouth on mine. Each image is a stone thrown into my chest, and I drown in the splash.
My breath comes too fast. I taste copper and shampoo and the faint, obscene sweetness of adrenaline still in my throat. My hands are trembling so hard I can barely scoop water to my face. For the first time since the alley, the real tears come, hot and useless, and they don’t stop at the lashes. They fall, and I let them. Let them be the thing that proves I’m still human and not the polished girl everyone expects me to be.
Some part of me is terrified of what those tears mean—weakness, softness, a crack Angelo will use—and another part is relieved because the knot in my chest needs to unwind somehow. I press my palms to my temples and try to breathe like they taught us in school: in for four, hold for four, out for six. It’s ridiculous. The rhythm stumbles; I can’t catch it.
After a while, the shaking eases enough for me to stand. I wrap a towel around myself and step out into the cool air of my bathroom. The house is quiet in a way that makes the ache louder. My hand keeps finding the place on my arm where the man gripped me, like checking a scar. Icradle that bruise as if it’s a map showing me where I almost died, a marker of what I have to remember.
I am alive. The thought is small, and it does not make the panic leave, but it steadies me enough to move. I force my feet to carry me into my room, toward clothes that will pretend I am whole, toward whatever ceremony my family will decide to perform to turn tonight into a ledger entry and not a wound. My body still hums from the kiss and from the violence; the two things are braided tight inside me, impossible to untangle. I don’t know who that makes me yet—not wholly brave, not wholly broken—only that nothing after tonight will be the same. The most terrifying thing?
It’s not about what almost happened.
It’s that I can’t stop thinking abouthim. Raffael.
The way he moved. The way he shot like he’d done it a hundred times. The way he didn’t hesitate, not even once. Or the way he looked at me after. Not scared. Not sorry. Just… cold.
Detached.
Like saving me was an inconvenience. He didn’t ask if I was okay, didn’t say my name, didn’t even look at me like a person. He looked at me like I was just another complication in his life he didn't want to deal with.
But I can’t stop replaying it. That moment. That look. And of course, that kiss. Even now, hours later, when I press my fingers to my lips, I can still feel his on them.
He could’ve turned away. Could’ve stayed out of it. Nobody would have ever known. But he didn’t. He stepped in when there was nobody else to do so.
And then another thought hits me.
He could have been killed.
He killed for us.
He killed for me.
If I had a crush on Raffael before, it's now ten times worse. I know Izzy and Camilla both have a crush on him, too. Not Gigi, though, she's crushing on her own bodyguard. The rest of us, though, are infatuated with Raffael. Raffael, with his dark looks, tattoos, and that lethal bad boy vibe, is every girl’s wet dream. It doesn’t help that he’s hot—scorching—in the kind of way that makes you wonder if touching him would leave a mark. We used to whisper about him when he stood by the doors at parties, silent and still like a panther in the dark. He never talked to us. Never looked twice. But we looked.
God, we looked.
After last night, he will no longer be just the hot soldier we whisper about. He's something else entirely now for me. Something permanent. I don’t care that I’m only eighteen. That I don’t have arealboyfriend yet. That I’ve never had sex or been in love or done half the things my friends brag about.
Because I know one thing now with absolute, soul-deep certainty: There will never be another man for me. Raffael is it.
Despite my rambling thoughts and the turmoil in my head, I finally fall asleep only to wake up to Angelo’s voice downstairs, barking orders like we’re under siege. And then I hear Father Dearest's dreaded voice, "Sophia Orsi, get down here. Now!"
I know better than to make him wait. I throw on a bathrobe and hurry down the stairs, following the sounds of more yelling, straight into my father's study. He and Angelo fall silent the moment I enter. "Close the fucking door," Angelo finally presses out.
As soon as the door is closed, Father walks forward to slap me squarely across the cheek. So hard, my head turns to the side. I push my tears of anger, hurt, and humiliation down. Deep down, to join all the others I collected over the years.
"That is only the beginning," Father snarls. "Forget college, you’ve proven that you can't be on your own. And God knows I can't watch you twenty-four-seven."
