I tilt my head, allowing my hair to cascade over one shoulder. "I've been told I have a talent for getting burned."
His hand comes up, not touching me but hovering near my face. I refuse to flinch.
"Is that what you want?" His voice drops lower. "To cause trouble?"
"What I want..." I say holding his gaze. "Is for you to get out of my room."
Damiano's laughter fills my bedroom, rich and deep, echoing off the walls before he backs away toward the door.
"Sweet dreams,lupacchiotta," he says, his eyes still gleaming with amusement as he pulls my door closed.
I flop back against my pillows with a frustratedgroan. The man is infuriating—dangerous and arrogant and completely unpredictable. I pick up my book again, but the words blur together. After reading the same paragraph three times, I snap it shut and turn off the light.
Sleep refuses to come. I stare at the ceiling, my mind replaying Damiano standing in my doorway, the way his eyes traveled over me, how my body responded with that unwelcome heat.
"Stop it," I whisper to myself. "He's the enemy."
But my traitorous mind keeps circling back to those dark eyes, the tattoos on his forearms, the way his voice drops when he's trying to intimidate me.
I roll over, punching my pillow into shape. I need to focus on something else—anything else.
My father's face appears in my mind's eye. Dad as he was when I was little—laughing as he taught me to bait a hook at our lake house upstate.
"Hold it firmly but gently, Zoey-bird," he'd say, his hands guiding mine. "That's it. You've got a natural talent for this."
I smile in the darkness, remembering those golden summers. We'd spend whole days on the lake in our little rowboat. Dad would tell me stories about his childhood, about meeting my mother, about adventures in places I'd never been.
At night, we'd build a campfire and roast marshmallows. He'd point out constellations, making up silly stories about the stars that had nothing to do with the actual mythology.
"See that one? That's Zoey the Brave, who fought off a dragon with nothing but a fishing pole."
Tears prick behind my eyelids. My father was my rock, my everything. When nightmares scared me awake,he'd sit beside my bed and tell me there was nothing in this world I couldn't face.
"You have your mother's heart and my stubborn chin," he'd say, tapping me gently under my chin. "That's an unbeatable combination, kiddo."
I wonder what advice he'd give me now, lying in the home of the man who murdered him, playing this dangerous game. Would he tell me to run? To fight? Or would he simply hold me and tell me I was strong enough to handle whatever came my way?
I turn over again, hugging a pillow to my chest, trying to imagine it's his comforting embrace. Sleep feels impossibly far away.
My thoughts drift to the day everything changed. I was thirteen, sitting on the couch in our little apartment, eyes fixed on the clock. Dad was late—three hours late. He was never late, especially not without calling.
I kept dialing his number, watching the hours tick by. Six o'clock. Seven. Eight.
Then came the knock.
I rushed to the door, relief flooding through me—but it wasn't Dad standing there. It was Byron Easton in an expensive suit, his face a careful mask of sympathy.
"Hello, Zoe," he said, his voice gentle in a way that made my stomach twist. "Your father and I had business together. May I come in?"
I stepped back, confused. Dad had mentioned his associate a few times, but they weren't close friends—at least not that I knew.
"Where's my dad?" I asked, my voice small.
Byron's eyes changed then, softening with something that looked like pity. "I'm afraid I have some very difficult news."
The words that followed tore my world apart. Myfather, murdered. Found in an alley near the docks. Police were investigating, but Byron already knew who was responsible.
"The Italian. Damiano Feretti," he'd said, the name falling like poison from his lips.
