My chest tightens as I stare at her, and for the first time since Red Hook, fear moves through me cleanly, sharp and unmistakable.
Not fear of Bellandi, because thatvecchiu babbu’sdays are numbered. Not even the fear of war that needs to happen for change to come.
No. This fear is entirely comprised of the thought of losing her again.
So I reach out, gripping her wrist with enough force to anchor her, not to hurt her.
“You do not get to test that,” I say, voice low with restraint. “Not now. Not when they’re watching you.”
Her eyes flicker, caught between fury and exhaustion.
“So she can call and toy with me all she wants, and I can’t do anything about it because I’m a prisoner in my own home?”
“Not a prisoner. You’re my priority.”
“That sounds the same,” she shoots back, because she cannot help herself.
“It is not,” I say immediately, because I need her to understand that I don’t know how to separate care from protection, or protection from control, when the world wants her dead. “And I promise, this will end soon.”
Her breath shakes.
And then I hear it.
“Giovanni.”
Not the Don or the Dragoni I’ve been hearing far too much of lately, whispered in fear or in reverence.
Just my name, spoken softly, humanly, as though she has reached past the empire and found the man.
Something inside me twists.
We’re balanced on the edge of something here, and I know it.
Trust.
Or ruin.
I step closer until my forehead touches hers, the contact almost unbearable.
“You stay,” I say, voice rough with promise. “You stay because I will not lose you again, and I will toss a million grenades in this city before I am forced to watch you vanish.”
Her whisper is raw, stripped of everything but truth.
“And what if I don’t know how to live inside what you are?”
My answer comes without hesitation.
“Then I will learn how to make it safer for you despite it.”
Her eyes close.
The suitcase sits behind us, a silent accusation.
And outside these walls, the war tightens its grip, patient and waiting, because it knows that this is where it can hurt me most.
17
LUCIA
