"Boss has never lost a strategic engagement," Angelo said with a confidence I desperately wanted to share.
"There's a first time for everything." I resumed pacing, unable to stay still. "Can you at least tell me what's happening? Where he is?"
Angelo's expression became carefully neutral. "Phase one is complete. Giuseppe has been secured at the Queens location with zero casualties on our side."
"And Phase two?"
"In progress."
The clipped answer told me everything—he knew something but wasn't telling me. The old pattern. Men making decisions about what information I could handle, protecting me by keeping me ignorant.
"That's it? 'In progress'?" Frustration sharpened my voice. "My husband is out there risking his life and all you can tell me is 'in progress'?"
"Those are my orders, ma'am. Boss was very specific—"
"Of course he was." I laughed bitterly. "Even now, even after everything, he's still controlling the narrative. Still deciding what I get to know."
Angelo's jaw tightened. "With respect, Mrs. Romano, he's trying to protect you. Knowing the details won't change the outcome. It'll only make the waiting harder."
He was right. I hated that he was right.
I sank onto the couch, wrapping my arms around myself. The apartment was climate-controlled, perfectly comfortable, but I felt cold down to my bones. Fear had a way of doing that—making you feel the chill no amount of heat could touch.
"When did you know?" I asked suddenly, needing a distraction from my spiraling thoughts.
Angelo looked up from his monitors. "Know what, ma'am?"
"That you'd found something worth dying for. Someone worth dying for."
His expression softened. "My wife, Maria. She's home with our daughter right now, probably worried sick because I can't tell her where I am or when I'll be back." He pulled out his phone, showing me a photo—a woman with kind eyes and a little girl with dark curls. "This is what I fight for. What makes the risk worth it."
"You're lucky," I said quietly.
"I know. Eight years married, and every day I'm grateful the boss understands that some nights I need to be home for dinner, not in a warehouse with a gun." He met my gaze. "What you and the boss have—it's rare in our world. Most marriages are arrangements, transactions. What you two found despite the circumstances... that's worth protecting."
"He only married me because of the alliance. Because of strategy."
"Maybe at first. But I've seen the way he looks at you when you're not watching. The way he says your name." Angelo smiled slightly. "That's not strategy, Mrs. Romano. That's a man who's terrified of what he feels."
My throat tightened with emotion. "What if he doesn't come back?"
"He will. Because he has something to come back to now."
I wanted to believe that. Wanted to trust that Luca's choice—choosing me over his empire—would somehow protect him from the bullets and violence waiting in the dark. But the world didn't work that way. Love didn't make you bulletproof.
My mother had loved my father. It hadn't stopped the crossfire that killed her when I was twelve.
Minutes crawled by like hours. I tried sitting. Tried reading the book Luca had given me days ago. Tried focusing on anything except the gnawing fear that he might not come back.
The artificial daylight from the screens slowly shifted toward evening, the algorithm mimicking the passage of time above ground. How long had it been? An hour? Two?
"Any updates?" I asked for the tenth time.
"Still in progress, ma'am."
I wanted to scream. Instead, I pressed my palms against my eyes, trying to breathe through the anxiety crushing my chest.
This was what it meant to love someone in this world. Constant fear. The knowledge that any goodbye could be the last. The helplessness of waiting while they walked into danger.
