Then I kiss her.
Not a brush. Not a question.
I take her mouth with mine, slow and deep and viciously careful, claiming her like territory I’ve been bleeding toward for years. Her gasp spills into me. She fists my shirt and drags me closer, opening for me like she’s been balancing on this edge as long as I have.
Her lips are soft, but nothing about this is.
I taste salt and iron and something sweet buried under the ruin. Her teeth catch my lower lip. I groan into her, hand sliding to the back of her neck, holding her while I devour the last distance between the man I was and the man I’m choosing to be.
The kiss isn’t clean.
It’s a vow.
An oath written in breath and blood and the press of her chest to mine while bodies cool around us.
Heat rolls through me, dark and hungry, dragging my thoughts into places I don’t have time to go. I want her against the railing, fingers bruising her hips, her moaning my name like a prayer she finally means.
I yank myself back from that edge before I cross it here on this floor.
We break for air—barely. Our mouths hover close, breaths colliding, hearts pounding in a fucked-up, tangled rhythm.
“You’re insane,” she whispers, voice wrecked. “Swearing yourself to me.”
“Too late to talk me out of it,” I murmur against her lips.
That’s when it hits.
A soft mechanical click slices through the moment.
Gun.
Not from the mezzanine.
From the far end of the warehouse.
Every muscle in my body locks. I turn my head, keeping Pia tucked tight to my side, my body between her and the sound.
A shadow stands in the open mouth of the main entrance below, framed by the sick yellow wash of streetlight leaking in.
Boots.Dark clothes.A familiar way of holding a gun—easy, confident, bored.
“Brother.”
The voice is calm. Unhurried. Edged with something I can’t read.
Ice spills down my spine.
Romeo.
He steps fully into the light and looks up at us, one hand steady on the gun aimed in our direction. His face is a blank slate—no rage, no grief, nothing I can use to predict which way he’ll fire.
His gaze flicks from me to Pia.
Back to me.
The silence stretches—thick, strangling.
“Step away from her, Santino,” he says at last, voice smooth as a blade. “We need to talk about our father.”
