Chosen now.
We don't go back to speeches. We go where we can take off the faces we wore for strangers. That makes both our places off limits for tonight. I tell the driver to lose the paparazzi. He knows to lose more eyes than them. We drive for an hour before we end at the safe apartment above the tailor. No lobby cameras. No doorman. The driver leaves.
We wait until the street noise settles, then I check the stairwell camera and the alley twice, because triumph is when men get stupid.
Coats off. Phones in a drawer. Locks checked twice. Habit is what keeps a man breathing after triumph, because triumph makes people lazy and lazy gets you buried.
Isabella stands by the bed and exhales like she's letting go of an anchor. Her cheek still carries the faintshadow of her father’s hand, and something sharp lifts in my chest at the sight of it.
She steps close and touches the scar on my shoulder with her mouth, gentle as forgiveness and cruel as a reminder.
“I still can’t get over the fact you were there,” she murmurs. “With my brother.”
My throat tightens, because I've carried that night alone. I still smell diesel when I think about it. Still feel the bullet. Still taste blood. Still hear the water slap stone like applause from the crowd responsible. And I didn’t know who was cheering.
“Yes,” I say, because truth is safety with her. “Your brother was my enemy, but he was after the same thing I was. The truth. Our parents’ killer. I tried to pull him out. Carraway’s crew came in hot. Second shooter took his heart.”
“And all this time, you took the blame,” she says.
Her eyes lift to mine, sharp and soft at the same time.
“No more,” she says.
It isn't a request. It's a new law.
I kiss her like I accept the sentence.
We don't have to prove anything now. The city already knows. The clause is law. The record exists. Butour bodies still need to speak what the rest of the world will keep trying to turn into strategy.
The safe room is too small for what’s in us. Steam clings to the window. Wool and iron like a blade that got rinsed and put back in its sheath. Outside, the city keeps moving with its new lie. Inside, there’s only the truth of breath and skin and the way her eyes keep looking for the next threat even while her mouth is on mine.
I press her back to the wall for a second, not to trap her, to anchor her. To make her feel the hard line of my cock and the harder line of my decision.
“You’re shaking,” I murmur, and it’s not gentle. It’s hungry. It’s a check.
“I’m not,” she lies.
I slide my hand under her jaw and tilt her face up until she can’t hide behind that calm. The light catches the bruise her father left like an insult, like a signature he thought would hold.
My voice goes low enough it belongs to the dark.
“I’m going to make you forget every man who ever tried to make you smaller,” I say. “Not because you need saving. Because I need you mine.”
Her pupils flare. She doesn’t flinch. She lifts her chin like she’s offering me the one thing she never offered the world without payment.
“Then do it,” she whispers, and the words scrape my ribs on the way in.
I move my mouth to her throat, where her pulse betrays her, where she always gives me the truth even when she’s trying to keep her face clean.
“My pace,” I tell her, mouth at her throat. “One word stops me.”
“Nemico,” she whispers, smiling like trouble.
The smile is a knife. It says I know what you are. I want it anyway.
I let out a low laugh. “Until you say otherwise?”
“Until I say otherwise,” she repeats.
