The sun is already up, promising another scorcher when I leave the casino. One moment I'm surrounded by cool artificial air, the next I step into desert heat that even the misters can't keep at bay. My men peel off in practiced formation, clearing space without breaking stride. The SUV waits at the curb, engine running, door already opening.
Routine. Control. Just the way I like it.
"MASSIMO!"
The sound slices through everything. My blood, my cold heart, my flesh, every scar on and inside my body.
I stop.
Time doesn't slow—itshatters.
I turn.
She's there.
Right there.
For a split second, ten years disappear. The street becomes a locker room. Concrete becomes tile. Blood becomes blood. Her hair is loose, her clothes are torn, her skin is smeared andbruised, and everything about her is the same as it was that night. There is even the same raw desperation that knocks the breath out of me in her eyes.
The same look.
The same silent plea.
Like the decade between us never happened.
Then the present crashes back in.
She's reaching for me again.
Just like she did before.
And I remember exactly what it cost me to answer.
A man has her arm twisted tight in his grip. One of Kingsley's bodyguards, I bet. Big. Confident. Smug enough to believe he can touch what doesn't belong to him. Her fingers stretch toward me, trembling.
"Please," she gasps. "Massimo?—"
Every instinct I own detonates at once. This is the moment. The one I swore I'd never face.
I can walk away.
I can let the senator clean up his own mess. Let her disappear back into the cage she came from. Let my rule stand.
No mercy.
Or—
I can step forward.
I can take one more breath and undo ten years of discipline. I can put my hands on a man who doesn't know what he's holding. I can shatter the promise I made to myself with my own blood.
If I move, everything changes.
If I don't?—
She screams my name again.
And the city holds its breath.
