I sink deeper, letting the water lap at my collarbones, and my mind does what it’s done all day: replays everything on a loop until it feels like my own skull is going to explode.
But not all of it is the danger. Not all of it is Bellandi and the acquisition.
I’ll expand mine to fit you.
Antonio said it like it was a done deal already, like it wasn’t a life he’d have to dismantle and rebuild.
Move to New York.
The idea lands in my chest with a strange, sharp mix of relief and terror. Because a part of me wants it so badly it hurts. Wants to wake up and have him there. Wants to walk into my apartment and smell him, feel him, hear him in the next room like it’s normal.
But it isn’t normal.
Nothing about this is normal.
He says he can do his job from New York, but what job is that, really? It’s not a laptop-and-headset situation. It’s not emails and Zoom calls. It’s… him.
Being in rooms with people. His presence and charm. And that’s just the front-facing part of it. I don’t even know what kinds of things he does for the Family that the world doesn’t know about. Those are things you can’t do behind a screen either.
And then there’s the matter of security.
They were already stretched thin when he was with me in the city for that short time. I know that now. I know now what it takes to keep someone safe when men like Bellandi decide I’m a problem.
But Antonio isn’t just “someone.” He’s the don’s brother. A target.
No matter how capable he is—no matter how efficiently he’s protected me all week, no matter how easily he moved through my office ceiling as he led us out of danger—distance is a risk. Being far away from hispeople is a risk. A big city like New York doesn’t protect you. It just gives them more crowds to disappear into and more places for danger to hide.
And more than all of that… the thing that makes my stomach twist even worse—
He loves his family.
It’s in the way he talks about them, the way he checks in, the way he says their names. It’s in the way he looks when he talks about a niece or nephew or a brother or a family dinner, like it’s not optional, like it’s oxygen.
How would he live that far away from them?
He would miss the dinners. The loud table. The arguments that end in laughter. The nieces and nephews he adores. The babies on the way.
Could I really do that to him?
Could I really accept that sacrifice and pretend it wouldn’t sour eventually?
Because I know how resentment grows. Quietly. Patiently. It doesn’t show up the first month or even the first year. It shows up after enough missed moments and swallowed wants and small compromises that turn into a life.
And then it becomes my fault, and then I’m the one he’ll resent.
I close my eyes and let my head rest back against the tub. The heat is starting to make me light-headed, or maybe that’s justthe day catching up to me again—Northstar, the ceiling, the gunshots, the death threats while hiding in a closet. It was a mistake.
The thought is brutal, but it’s honest.
Not him. Not the way he makes me feel.
The mistake is what it costs.
Because where does that leave me?
If this becomes public, if the board decides I’m compromised beyond repair, my reputation is trashed. My career is trashed. Even if I leave Northstar, what then? What do I do then? Throw it all away? I don’t know if I can do that, no matter how much I love him.
I have no interest in going back to modeling. None. Not after everything I saw. Not after the way it made me feel like a commodity instead of a person. Even if I have the name, and the connections, and the face for it, I don’t want it.
