“Luigi,” she breathes like a plea.
“That’s it,” I answer, rough with it. “Say my name. Keep your eyes on me.”
Then I give it to her. The deeper stroke. The rhythm she wants. The pressure at her throat that turns into a promise instead of a threat because she asked for it and I’m listening.
The bed groans, the radiator hisses, and the whole damn city could be outside that window with knives and cameras and I’d still keep moving like this, like I can fuck the fear out of her and replace it with certainty.
When her body finally gives, it isn’t polite. It’s a shatter. A sob she can’t swallow, an arch that looks like surrender and is actually power because she chose it. I won't let her go out by herself, so I'm going with her. I don’t pullout. I jerk empty inside her and watch her feel it.
Sliding out, I see the mess I’ve made. I grab the tissues from the bedside and wipe both of us before collapsing. Isabella lies against my chest like she did that first night, palm over my heart, as if she’s confirming we made it through another hour alive. I hold her. I press my lips to the top of her head.
We breathe. The tailor’s bell rings downstairs again.
A customer.
A life.
After a while, she shifts and looks up at me.
“I thought,” she says slowly, “that if I ever stopped moving, I would die.”
“You might,” I tell her, because she asked for truth. “But you can stop moving in my arms and live. I’ll do the moving for both of us when you need it.”
Her mouth tightens. Her eyes shine, but she doesn’t let anything fall. Isabella doesn’t waste tears.
“Dangerous thing to promise,” she says.
“I’m a dangerous man, Miss Valentine,” I reply.
She huffs a laugh. “Yes, you are, Moretti.”
Her fingers trace my scar again, then slide down to my wrist, finding my pulse. Steady. She looks satisfied with it.
“What happens after?” She asks, and the question is quiet but it holds the whole future. “After tomorrow. After we drag the truth into daylight. After the ink dries and everyone pretends they planned it.”
I know what she means.
Not the paperwork.
The two of us.
The thing we have made that neither house asked for.
“We build,” I say. “We keep the docks honest. We keep the week quiet and turn it into a year. Then another. We make the fund real. We don’t let the Commission treat safety like a photo op.”
“And us?” she presses.
I look at her. Hold her gaze to admire her green eyes.
“I don’t want to be your secret,” I say. “I don’t want to be a truce ornament. I don’t want to be a lever your father can pull.”
She watches my face like she’s looking for a trick. There isn’t one.
“I want a life that I chose,” I continue. “Not negotiated. Not traded for routes. Mine to name. Yours to keep with me.”
Her breath catches, soft.
“That sounds like a promise,” she says.
