My gaze sweeps the crowd, a scan I pretend is casual even as my pulse trips over itself, and then I see him.
Matt.
Hidden just enough in the fourth row to pretend he doesn’t want to be noticed, but watching me with a focus that strips the breath from my lungs. Dark shirt open at the collar, hair a littletoo perfect for this late in the evening, posture relaxed in that deceptive way I’ve always read better than anyone.
He shouldn’t be here.
Every thread of logic screams it—the Mafia politics, my exile, the mess of half answered questions that he’s trying to hunt down answers for.
But none of it mattered enough to keep him away.
He came anyway. Forme.
The realisation hits with a warmth I wasn’t prepared for. My shoulders relax. My chin lifts a fraction higher. The silk follows every line of my body as though it was waiting for this exact moment—for him in the crowd, for me seeing him there.
His gaze doesn’t waver.
Not for a heartbeat.
He looks at me like he’s been holding the world together by sheer force of will and finally has something worth breathing for again. Pride softens the lines of his face, the kind of pride no one ever wore for me—not my mother, not the people who pretended to be family, not anyone.
He’s risking everything just by being here, and yet he looks… steady. Certain. Like the weight of a hundred wrong turns and lost years has finally found its anchor.
Like he wouldn’t have forgiven himself if he’d missed this. If he hadn’t been here to watch me take the first steps towards my future, the future he’s watched me long for as long as he’s known me.
The certainty in his eyes presses against me, heavy and unyielding, and suddenly all my careful walls feel paper-thin. Every pulse of restraint, every beat of distance I’ve clung to,is being stripped away by the fact that he’shere, steady, unshakable, and completely unwilling to let me go.
The runway lights shift, casting a pale stripe across his face, and his mouth curves—small, almost secret, but it hits me low in my stomach. My steps fall into sync with the music, sharper now, cleaner, as if his presence rewired my spine.
I walk because this is my moment.
But also because he came to witness it.
When I reach the end of the runway and hold the final pose, the room hums with cameras and murmured praise. But none of it touches me. None of it matters.
It’s his gaze that holds me prisoner.
The quiet tension in his jaw.
The slight lean forward, like he’s afraid to blink.
The unmistakable tenderness hidden beneath all that brawn and ruin.
For the first time in days, something inside me loosens just enough to shift the weight that’s made itself at home on my chest and finally let me breathe.
Backstage, the sound hits first—cheers, camera shutters, the thrum of bass vibrating through the floorboards. I slip behind the curtain, my pulse still racing, lungs dragging in uneven breaths. My body hums with energy, every nerve still alive from the runway.
Isabella is the first to reach me, arms thrown wide around my shoulders. “Youkilledit,” she breathes, her voice bright with pride.
Jamie appears next, half laughing, half tearing up as he waves his phone at me. “Everyone’s talking about you. Even one of the judges whispered something to his assistant. You might have just made history, darling.”
Their excitement crashes over me like a wave, and for a heartbeat, I let myself drown in it. But beneath the rush of noise and perfume, one thought claws its way back to the surface—Matt.
He was here. Watching.
I can still feel the heat of his gaze like a hand against my skin. The weight of what his presence means coils tight in my stomach.Why now?When things are so volatile, and he’s in the thick of playing mole?
A voice cuts through the chaos. “Lily?”
