“Not a love match,” I say though it’s obvious.
The words taste like old lies. The kind you swallow until they become normal.
“You don’t do Amore, I remember.”
An overhead camera blinks. He sees it, too. His mouth curves.
There it is. The humor that isn’t humor. The flash of teeth. The heat that knows exactly where the power is and how to use it.
“Want to leave him a show?”
I should say no. I should stay clean and efficient and focused on the drives.
I should think about the folder, the files, the proof. I should think about tomorrow.
But the camera blinks again like a heartbeat, like a dare.
Instead, I observe the blinking lens and feel something sharp rise in me. Not arousal first. Defiance first.
Because I remember the island. I remember Luca. I remember how easy it was to pretend I was the kind of woman who can choose pleasure without consequences.
Then I remember who Luigi really is. The same man, different name, sharper edges. What his hands can do when they are not pretending to be gentle for a stranger.
And I remember that I’m not the same girl I was on La Sirena, smiling into a mirror because a beautiful man asked for a word and made me feel safe enough to want.
I am a Valentine walking into my own trap with my head up.
Adrian built his life on watching women. Measuring them. Collecting them like proof that he can. He even caught me, a big, prized fish.
I imagine him replaying footage of me later, alone, smug, telling himself he owns the narrative.
I decide he will watch something else.
I step into Luigi because I want Adrian’s last record of me to be this.
Not obedient.
Not alone.
Not afraid.
Chosen by a man who is my equal, even if he’s my rival.
And not just chosen.
Claimed in a way that looks like consent and feels like revenge.
I shrug out of the jacket. His hands find my waist. My mouth finds his. We kiss hard. The flavor of cured meat and warm bread from earlier pulls me back to him cleaning my hand and feeding me.
It shouldn’t be intimate. It is.
It’s also dangerous, because I feel it in the way his body locks in like a door. Like the second I touch him, he decides there’s no going back to pretending he’s careful.
He brackets my jaw, kisses me slow, then rough, then slow again until my spine stops remembering to be made of steel.
My pulse starts to race, not because I’m scared.
Because I’m finally letting myself be seen.
