She's sitting down.
Good.
My hands still burn from touching her.
I pour myself another whiskey from the bottle I keep in here—every room in this building has one. The amber liquid doesn't wash away the memory of her skin through that thin dress, the way she stood perfectly still while I searched her.
Like a deer caught in headlights.
Like prey.
Except prey doesn't offer to strip naked for a security check.
"Fuck." The word escapes before I can stop it.
I've patted down hundreds of people. Men who reeked of fear-sweat and desperation. Women who tried to use the search as an opportunity, pressing closer, making promises with their bodies. I've never hesitated. Never felt my hands shake.
But withher, I could barely make myself do it properly.
The search was half-assed at best. If Dante knew how sloppy I'd been, he'd lose his mind. Any professional could have hidden a dozen wires in the places I didn't check. Under her breasts. Along her inner thighs. Taped to her lower back where I barely skimmed.
I drain the whiskey and pour another.
Twenty years old. Christ. When I was twenty, I was already made, already killing for the family. But she's not made for this life. There's an innocence in her eyes that the violence in our world hasn't touched yet. Even asking for my protection, even betraying Francesco, she still looks like she believes in good outcomes. In salvation.
Luna had that same look once.
No.
Sophia is nothing like Luna. Luna was twenty-five when we met, already deep in her family's business. She knew exactly what she was doing when she played me. When she gathered intel through pillow talk and got four of my soldiers killed.
Sophia is just a scared girl trying to escape a monster. But even if she is not, I will not make the same mistake. I won't trust a Torrino again.
A scared girl who remembered something from twelve years ago that I'd almost forgotten myself.
I sink into the leather chair by the window, staring at the wall that separates me from her. The memory crashes over me like ice water.
That day on Michigan Avenue. Christ, I'd buried it so deep I almost convinced myself it never happened.
Luna had wanted to go shopping. "Just one more store, Lorenzo. Please?" She'd kissed my neck, knowing exactly how to get what she wanted. We'd been together six months by then. Six months of me thinking I'd found something real. Somethingworth breaking my father's rules about keeping business and pleasure separate.
We were walking past Saks when it happened.
"That's my cousin," Luna said after they'd gone and she appeared next to me. Just like that. Casual. "Francesco's niece."
"Your cousin?" I'd been stunned. "You didn't say anything."
Luna shrugged. "We're not close. Francesco keeps that side of the family separate from the business. Wants his sister's kid to have a normal life."
I should have known then. Should have seen the calculation in her eyes. The way she filed that moment away like ammunition for later use. But I was too busy being the hero, too caught up in Luna's praise that night about how brave I'd been.
Two weeks later, Luna burned me. Four of my men dead because of intel she'd gathered.
And now here's that little girl, all grown up, sitting in my locked room.
Francesco's niece.
Luna's cousin.
