Giovanni doesn’t even pretend this is awkward.
“Breakfast,cara,” he murmurs.
We eat in bed. Still bound together. I want to dissolve into the mattress and never re-emerge.
Finally, when half of the mouthwatering feast has been polished off, he sets down his coffee cup with quiet finality. “It’s time.”
My stomach drops.
Two hours later, I’m strapped into a private jet seat beside him, wrists mercifully free now, my body sore in places I refuse to catalogue too closely.
The New York skyline rises out of the horizon like a jagged crown, sharp and glittering and merciless.
I stare at it through the window as my heart pounds too fast and my throat tightens with everything I refuse to feel all at once.
Somewhere down there, beyond the towers and the rivers and the glass and steel, is Queens.
Home.
Not the Antigua version of home I built from sand and lies and borrowed names, but the real one, cracked sidewalks,bodegas on every corner, the smell of frying onions drifting out of basement kitchens, the brutal comfort of a place that never pretended to be gentle.
I didn’trealisehow much I missed it until it rises up to meet me like this, until something low and traitorous inside me loosens at the sight of it.
A part of me is glad to be back. And the admission shocks me.
I shift in my seat and don’t need to glance sideways at him to know Giovanni is studying me. I simply know him too well now not to feel it.
I look away quickly, heat rushing to my face, furious with myself for that tiny betrayal.
And that’s when the memory hits me. It slams into me whole, vivid and merciless.
Queens.
Late afternoon almost two years ago. A crosswalk on Steinway Street.
I’d been yelling into my phone, already late, already irritated, already halfway to a full meltdown about a pencil-pusher who thought my time was decorative.
And then the black town car rolled through the crosswalk.
Too fast and too close.
I’d leapt back instinctively, heart exploding into my throat, my phone flying out of my hand and skidding across the pavement.
“What the hell is wrong with you?” I’d screamed, pure Queens fury ripping out of me before fear could catch up.
The driver had slammed the brakes.
The door had opened.
And Giovanni Dragoni had stepped out into my life.
Six foot three of tailored Italian menace, dark hair perfectly cut, suit that probably cost more than my rent, eyes hidden behind sunglasses like a cliché I instantly despised.
He took one look at me and said, calmly, “Are you injured?”
And something in my world had tilted off its axis.
“No, I’m not injured,” I’d snapped. “I’m furious. You don’t get to mow people down in crosswalks just because your car is expensive. I should sue your arse bankrupt for emotional distress.”
