Ottavio exhales. “Hard to pin him down without alerting her?”
“Unfortunately, yes.”
Across the street, traffic moves on like nothing is wrong. People laugh. A cab honks. The city keeps breathing.
Somewhere underground, Rose is alone.
After a beat, Ottavio says, “I heard something else on the street.”
“Go on,” I urge.
“The drugs coming into our territories,” he says. “Word is, they might trace back to the Pavlov brothers.”
That makes me grimace.
Of all the Bratva names to surface, theirs is among the worst. Violent, unruly, and raised by a father who made a sport out of breaking people just to see where they bent. If they’re involved, this isn’t some half-assed incursion. It’s deliberate.
“Manhattan and Queens too?” I ask.
“Smaller outfits," he says, "but all under Pavlov protection. Nothing solid yet, but it’s lining up.”
"And you're sure this isn't just drunks talking out of their asses?"
"Oh, I'm always sure." He grins. "Isn't that why you picked me?"
It is, and I believe him. It's why he’s my second. Ottavio doesn’t deal in rumors; he deals in patterns, in quiet conversations and loose tongues. If he says the street is talking before anyone else has picked it up, it’s because he knows how to listen.
Bratva pushing into all our boroughs changes the equation. It means pressure points I don’t like. It means Notte Bianca isn’t as insulated as it should be.
It also means Rose’s problem might be bigger than a man who doesn’t understand the word no.
Or it might not.
For all I know, she’s dealing with a persistent ex who can’t take a hint. She has no reason to be connected to my world and its darkness.
But I can't take that chance.
Rose.
The name rings in my ears. The florist that has had me coming back for dinner at Notte Bianca every night for the past year.
Sometimes, I catch myself watching her longer than I should. Not because I mean to, and not because I don’t know better, but because there’s something about the way she carries herself that pulls the eye and refuses to let it go. She moves like someone who’s learned to live inside the smallest version of herself possible, careful steps, guarded shoulders, chin lifted just enough to pretend it isn’t fear that keeps her upright.
She doesn’t know she’s mine—my flower, my littlefiorellino—not in any way she should ever accept. Right now, she’s in the little world she’s built brick by brick out of caution and stubbornness.
I remember her warm smile. I know exactly how many kinds of men would see those soft edges and decide they’re an invitation.
That’s where I come in.
It isn’t love. It isn’t kindness. It isn’t anything that would make sense if I tried to explain it to anyone else. It’s a promise I made without speaking—that nothing and no one is going to touch her as long as I am breathing.
And she can never know that.
Because if she did, then I don’t know that I could restrain myself any longer.
There are moments when the restraint hurts. When she leans over the bar to reach for something and the hem of her shirt shifts, revealing just a sliver of skin at her waist—tan, warm, soft—and I have to look away before my thoughts turn into something I’d never forgive myself for. The curve of her throat when she tilts her head to read, the small, unconscious motions of her mouth when she concentrates, the way her fingers cradle books and flowers with the same tenderness. I notice all of it.
I catalog it. And then I bury it.
