Antonio sees my eyes land on it and pauses.
“For safety,” he says immediately, voice calm, steady. “That’s all. And everything’s going to be all right.”
I swallow. My throat is tight again, but not from panic this time. From the reality of him. The reality of what he is and why he’s here. What he’s been carrying this whole time.
“I’m not going to let anything happen to you,” he adds, and he says it like it’s a fact, like he’s just given me the traffic report.
He checks it with the kind of practiced efficiency that makes my skin prickle, then sets it on my nightstand. Like it’s no different than a glass of water.
For him, it probably isn’t.
Only then does he push his pants down and step out of them, unapologetic. He climbs into bed beside me, the mattress dipping with his weight, and then his arm slides around me, and he pulls me in against his side.
Heat. Solidness. That familiar, anchoring presence that makes my body relax before my brain consciously thinks of it.
I sigh and curl into him without thinking, my cheek against his chest. My fingers drift, as if drawn, to the scar.
I trace it lightly, the pad of my finger following the line.
He goes still for a beat, not flinching—just… bracing.
“Will you tell me what happened?” I mumble, my voice thick with sleep and softness. “What really happened?”
A slow exhale leaves him, and I feel it under my cheek.
Then, quietly, he starts.
“Nico, my nephew, and I,” he says, voice low, “we were meeting new suppliers at a warehouse. We’d never worked with them before, so I wanted to see the product myself before we made a deal.”
My finger stills at his ribs, then continues, gentler.
“It was just supposed to be the first meet,” he says. “But we’re not careless. We had a couple of other guys with us. Told them to hang back. We walk in. Everything looks normal. But something about it felt off. Wrong. Like it was all for show.”
My throat tightens.
“Something felt wrong,” he says again, and there’s a flicker of frustration in it, like he’s angry at himself even now for not realizing it sooner. “I wanted to back out, but it was too late.”
His chest rises under my cheek.
“They came out of the shadows,” he says. “First shot came from right next to us. Nico almost—”
He stops.
Silence drops into the room like a weight.
My hand is still on his scar, and I can feel his heart beating under my cheek, pumping just a littlefaster.
I lift my face just enough to look at him in the dim light. His jaw is set. His eyes are open, fixed on the ceiling, as if he looks anywhere else, it will pull him back into that night.
I finish the sentence for him, quietly, because he won’t say it himself. Antonio may joke around a lot, but when it counts, when it’s real, he wouldn’t think of painting himself as a hero.
Even when he is one.
“You took the shot for him,” I whisper.
Antonio doesn’t respond.
Not with words.
