He looked like he might smile, but that smirk never came to the surface. “Because they’re better in every way. Morally. Emotionally. Physically. My father was a good man, and I loved him dearly. He taught me how to punch, but my mother taught me how to fight. He taught me how to fish, but my mother taught me how to cook. Whenever he’d catch a cold, he’d be sick in bed for days, but when my mother had the flu, she’d still get us ready in the morning, cook breakfast, and take us to school. My mother carried and birthed three children while running the house and taking care of everyone else. I’m the man I am today because my mother raised me that way.”
And just like that, he pulled me in deeper. He trapped me in his magnetism like a moth to a flame.
“Emperor Augustus had a daughter. Her name was Julia. She had six children, and my line comes from one of those six.” He propped himself up on his arm, looking down at me slightly. “But when his reign ended, he chose to adopt his nephews and make one of them the next emperor.” He gave a slight shake of his head as if he was personally offended by something that had happened two thousand years ago. “Took away her birthright simply because she was a woman rather than a man. It’s fucking bullshit, because this world would be a much better place if more women were in charge. The world we inherited would be better. Fewer lives would be lost because fewer wars would have been fought. Because women think before they punch. They can fight an entire battle and eviscerate you with just words, while most men can barely put a few words together and form a sentence.” He looked awaylike he was reflecting on a memory. “My job is to protect women, so no, I don’t employ them. But if I ever have a daughter and she ever wanted a job, it’d be hers.”
“You wouldn’t worry about her?”
“Of course I would. Every moment of every fucking day. But any daughter of mine would be fucking tough, and she could handle herself.”
We sat at the round dining table together, me wearing his black T-shirt while he wore only his boxers. Thankfully, the apartment came with plates, eating utensils, and drinking glasses, so we were able to take everything out of the containers and eat a meal like I’d cooked it from scratch.
He’d ordered a steak with a side salad, and he’d ordered mecacio e pepewith a side salad. The perfect meal to hit the spot. We ate together in comfortable silence. His elbows were on the table, and he ate like he’d skipped breakfast and lunch.
“How was your week?” I asked.
“Same. Busy.”
“What do you do when you aren’t working?”
“Work out. Eat. Sleep. That’s about it.”
“You don’t get burned out?”
“No,” he said before he took a bite of his steak and chewed it. “It’s not the kind of job that comes with burnout.”
“But you must be tired.”
He laughed uproariously. “Oh, I didn’t say I wasn’t tired. I’m always fucking tired.”
“What have you been working on?”
He finished his bite before he sank back into the wooden armchair. “You really want to know?”
“Yes.”
“Because every time I talk about it, you pull away—and I fucking hate that.”
I pulled away because I was scared of what I was getting myself into. Scared what this relationship might cost me—an arm or a leg, or maybe my life. “Well, I can’t keep my head buried in the sand.”
He set his plate aside, only the juice from the meat left behind. I’d found a bottle of wine in the cabinet and we shared that, but it was practically vinegar compared to the stuff he usually ordered. But he was nice enough not to complain. “President Barsetti has received intel from MI6 that a terrorist attack is on the horizon. But that’s all we know. No further details. We’ve forged an agreement with the European countries to make sure arms aren’t being sold to enemies of Western civilization, but I fear some are slipping through the cracks. I usually confer with the First Emperor of the Fifth Republic on this matter, but that power recently changed hands. I’m waiting for the dust to settle. I fear a violation may be happening there. I’ll know more soon. Within our borders, we’ve had issues with black market dealings. Young people have been disappearing in pockets throughout Italy, mainly Rome, and we know someone is harvesting their organs for a secret transplant list. I caught on to their scheme and tracked them down, but the head of the operation was killed by his own men, and they moved their operations. Now, I have to start over. But make no mistake, I will find them and kill them all.”
He was a different man when he spoke about these things. No hint of a smile or bemusement. No jokes. His tone dropped, and a lethal stare burned in his eyes. Even his composure and body language changed, his muscles stiff and flexed, his jawline tight.
“We also implemented a new hotline, for lack of a better description. Do you know what the number one cause of death is for women under thirty-five?”
Frozen by his tone, I didn’t speak.
“Murder. They’re fucking murdered by their partners. If women ask for help at the wrong time and it comes back to them, they’re murdered.If their abuser goes to jail, he gets out eighteen months later and kills her. There’s never been a good solution to it, because even if a woman is lucky enough to get away from him, he just finds another woman ... and does the same to her.”
“Then what is the hotline?”
“It’s a service we started about six months ago. You call the number and hit one if it’s an emergency. As in, she’s gonna die in the next couple minutes if help doesn’t get there. That location is broadcast to the entire force, and whoever is closest to that location heads over there. Because the police take forever and will just take him to jail, so the cycle continues. We kill him and make him disappear.”
I was terrified and also deeply impressed.
“They hit two if it’s not an emergency. As in, they’re in an abusive relationship and need help getting out of it. We interview them and review their case, just to make sure their account is true before we ruin someone’s life. And depending on the severity of the situation, we either kill him or we implement our own rehabilitation service.”
“What’s the rehabilitation service?”
