Lucia’s fingers curl weakly in my shirt. “About… this?”
“About you being with me tonight,” I correct, voice rough. “If they didn’t know before, they know now what I would do for you.”
Her lashes flutter. She is still catching up to the fact that she is alive, that I’m alive, that we have crossed a line neither of us can pretend doesn’t exist.
I cup her face, gentler now, my thumb brushing her cheekbone.
“Look at me,” I say quietly.
She does.
And the tenderness in her gaze nearly undoes me more than her defiance ever has.
“You’re safe,” I tell her. “I have you.”
“For now,” she whispers, because she is not a fool.
“For always,” I correct, letting the promise sharpen. “Even when you hate me for it.”
Her lips part, an argument forming out of habit. Then she stops. Because she knows. Because she felt it in the street, in the way I stepped into gunfire like my body was nothing compared to the idea of losing her.
I kiss her once more, slower, reverent, the kind of kiss that belongs in a bed, not against a warehouse wall with blood drying on my skin.
When I pull back, her eyes are glossy.
“We have to go,” I say.
She exhales shakily. “Your men?—”
“They’re alive,” I cut in. “And if they’re smart, they’re pretending they heard nothing.”
A faint, exhausted smile tugs at her mouth.
Impossible woman.
I adjust her clothing with hands that still want too much, then shrug out of my ruined jacket, draping it around her shoulders like armour.
“Giovanni,” she murmurs.
“Yes.”
Her throat bobs. “I know what I said before. But… I didn’t mean for it to happen like this.”
“Neither did I,” I admit, the honesty tasting strange. “But I meant for it to happen.”
Heat flickers in her gaze as I bend, scoop her up before she can protest.
She gasps. “Put me down.”
“No.”
“I can walk.”
“I know,” I say calmly. “I simply don’t want you to.”
Her hands clutch at my shoulders anyway, and I carry her through the dim corridor towards the exit where my men wait like shadows.
The night air hits us like a slap when we step outside, the city indifferent, the street already being swallowed by sirens in the distance.
