"Drop it."
"No." Rafael's voice loses its easy edge, going somewhere harder underneath. "I've been watching you two circle each other since forever and it's exhausting. I can only imagine what it's doing to you."
"Nothing. It's doing nothing to me."
"Right. That's why you looked like you were about to crawl out of your own skin all evening. And that's why you crossed the room in about four seconds the second you saw she was struggling." He pauses. "And that's why your hand is currently about to go through the arm of that couch."
I look down. Ease my grip. Say nothing.
"She's into you."
"She hates me."
"She hates you the way people hate things they want too much," Rafael says simply, like it's obvious, like everyone can see it except me. "There's a difference and you know it."
I know it. Of course, I know it. I've spent four years knowing it and choosing to do nothing because knowing it and doing something about it are two completely different things.
"Matteo will kill me."
"Probably." Rafael doesn't sugarcoat it. "He'll be furious. He'll break things. He'll spend days not speaking to either of you and make everyone around him miserable." He tilts his head. "And then he'll get over it. Because you're his best friend and she's his sister and if anyone was ever going to end up here, it was always going to be you two."
"You don't know that."
"I've known you for fifteen years." He looks at me steadily. "I know exactly that. And if you go to him first, before anything happens, before it becomes something he finds out about instead of something he's told, he'll be pissed but he'll listen. He respects you. He respects honesty." A beat. "And he loves her. He wants her to be happy, even if it takes him a while to accept what that looks like."
"It's not just Matteo."
"Then what the hell is it?"
I lean forward with my forearms on my knees, staring at the floor. "She deserves better than this, Rafe. Better than me. Better than a life where the people trying to kill her are doing it because of what I am and what I've done. She deserves someone whose hands are actually clean."
"She's already in this life, Enzo."
"That's different."
"How? How the fuck is that different?"
"She was born into it. She didn't choose it." I can hear how thin the argument sounds even as I'm making it. "I've made every choice I've made with full knowledge of what it costs. I've done things—" I stop. "She deserves someone who can give her something real."
"She doesn't want real," Rafael says quietly. "She wants you. And you know that too."
I don't say anything.
"She doesn't love me." I say it out loud because it's the truest thing I know. "Not anymore. I made sure of that."
Rafael is quiet for a moment. "You sure about that?"
"Yes."
"Because the woman I see, who flinched away from me like I was a stranger but leaned into your hand like it was the only safe place in the room—" He lets that sit between us. "That's not a woman who's over you, Enzo. That's a woman who's trying very hard to convince herself she is."
My jaw tightens hard enough to ache.
"It doesn't matter," I say finally.
"Jesus Christ." Rafael drags a hand through his hair. "You're going to let her walk down the aisle to another man because you've decided on her behalf what she deserves. Do you hear yourself? Is this some bad tv show or what?"
"She does deserve better."
