I stiffen despite myself.
“Anyone I should meet?” Moreno lifts his eyebrow knowingly. “Anyone you’d care to introduce?”
I hesitate.
“No,” I say. The answer comes faster than the reasoning behind it. “She’s not… she’s not here to stay.”
He watches me closely, too closely to miss what that costs me. “Ah,” he says. Then, after a beat, “I know I'm not who I used to be, but I still don't think that's reason enough to be ashamed of your old man.”
The words hit harder than they should.
“No,” I say immediately. I lean forward without realizing it, hand tightening on the arm of the chair. “I would never be ashamed of you.”
He nods slowly, accepting it, but his gaze doesn’t soften. He knows me too well.
What I don’t say—what I can’t—is that shame isn’t the fear. Weakness is.
My father is the only family I have left. The last living proof that I once belonged to something before blood and power hollowed it out. He’s my fault line, the place where everything would crack if struck hard enough.
Losing Marco nearly destroyed us both. I barely held us together then. I won’t risk that again.
I can’t afford for anyone to see where I bend. Not my enemies. Not my men.
Not even Rose.
Dad exhales slowly, the sound rasped but steady, and shifts against the pillows. “It’s late,” he says, the way a father does when he knows the conversation has gone as far as it’s going to go. “You should get some rest.”
I nod, rising from the chair. “I’ll let you sleep.”
He looks at me for a long moment, eyes soft but sharp, taking stock the way he always has. “Goodnight,figliolo.”
“Goodnight,papà.”
I pause at the door, listening to the machine settle back into its steady rhythm, then slip out quietly and close it behind me.
The corridor feels longer on the way back.
11
ROSE
Ispend most of the next day in the gardens, avoiding the part of me that is screaming about last night's almost-kiss.
It replays anyway.
I remember the way the room went quiet. The way his hand lingered on the page a fraction longer than necessary. The way I knew—knew—that if I leaned forward, he wouldn’t have stopped me.
Which is exactly the problem.
I tell myself it was just proximity. The cozy atmosphere. The adrenaline leftover from fear and gratitude and too many late nights reading. I tell myself this is what happens when you’re isolated with a man who looks like him and listens the way he does. My brain produces a dozen reasonable explanations, lines them up neatly, and none of them stick.
Because reasonable explanations don’t make my pulse jump when I think about the sound of his voice saying my name.
So I do what I always do when my thoughts get dangerous. I relocate them.
On plants.
Today, the gardens are as glorious as always. Every path is trimmed, every hedge shaped with care, nothing left to chance.
