I pick up my phone on impulse and open the camera. The screen shows my naked body, pale and vulnerable in the soft lamplight, the blue tips of my hair brushing against my shoulders. I snap a few photos, turning this way and that, documenting this moment before everything changes. Before my body starts to show the evidence of my one night of freedom.
I pull up a photo app and add text to one of the images:2 months pregnant.Then I scroll through the others, choosing the best angle, wondering if years from now I'll show these to my child and tell them the story of how they came to be.
I pick the photo that feels truest, the one where my palm covers the place where my baby grows, and tap the share icon. Messages opens first, the share sheet laying out a tidy row of recent contacts above the keyboard. I want to send it to myself as a digital diary entry, locked away in my own thread, waiting for the day I'm ready to look back at this version of me.
My thumb finds the first contact in the row, the one closest to my hand. The little circle beside the name holds nothing but a default gray icon, no photo attached, and my eyes are too heavyto track the letters. The blue arrow glows under my fingertip. I tap it before exhaustion drags me under.
I think of Dante. Of his hands on my skin, warm and reverent. Of the way he whispered my name like a prayer when he finally pushed inside me. Of his scent, sandalwood and smoke, and the taste of him on my tongue. I wonder what he would say if he knew. I wonder if he would even care.
"I already love you," I whisper to my belly, pressing my palm flat against the skin where my baby grows. "Whatever happens, whatever we have to face, I love you. You're mine. And no one is going to take you from me."
I toss my phone on the bed and rummage through the drawers for clean undergarments still with tags just as Luna promised. I pull those on and go back for a pair of pajamas.
I find a soft cotton set in pale blue. I pull on the shorts and then button the top. I’m bone tired when I turn back to the bed and crawl under the covers, exhausted in ways I didn't know a person could be. The sheets are cool against my heated skin, the pillow soft beneath my aching head.
Sleep pulls at me, heavy and irresistible. My last thought before I drift off is that tomorrow, everything changes. Tomorrow, I take the first step toward a new life.
I don't notice the phone screen still glowing on the pillow beside me.
I don't see the notification that pops up.Message delivered. I don't see the small green check beside a name that isn't mine.
I don't know that my naked photos, complete with the caption2 months pregnant, are currently winging their way through the digital ether toward the phone of Luca Valentina.
I'm already dreaming by the time his phone chimes across the city.
Dreaming of dark eyes and gentle hands and a future I convinced myself I could never have.
Five
Luca
The Rosetti brothers are giving me a fucking headache.
I lean back in my chair at the head of Redthorne's executive boardroom, watching two middle-aged men in suits designed to project power they don't actually possess argue about territory lines like children fighting over who gets the bigger piece of cake. Floor-to-ceiling windows frame the Chicago skyline behind them, all steel and glass and power, but these two wouldn't recognize power if it walked up and introduced itself. The afternoon sun slants through the glass, casting long shadows across the polished mahogany table and illuminating the dust motes that drift lazily through the climate-controlled air.
"The north side belongs to the Castellanos," Ambrose Rosetti insists, his aging face flushing an unflattering shade of purple. Sweat beads at his temples despite the perfect temperature, and his cologne, something aggressively musky and far too strong, wafts across the table every time he gestures. "It's always belonged to the Castellanos. You can't just waltz in and claim half of it for your casino."
"Half?" His brother Giorgio leans forward, his gold cufflinks catching the light from the domed lights overhead. His jaw tightens, the muscle jumping beneath skin that speaks of too little sunlight and way too much rich food. "I'm asking for three blocks. Three blocks that are practically abandoned anyway. You're being unreasonable."
I drag my hand down my face, my fingers catching on the beard I've been growing out from pure lack of giving a fuck. The scrape of coarse hair against my palm grounds me in the present when my mind wants to drift elsewhere. Eight weeks since I woke up alone in that glass room at Scarlet Thorn, reaching for a woman who had already vanished like morning mist. Eight weeks of knowing exactly where to find her and choosing not to. Eight weeks of waking in tangled sheets that smell like nothing but laundry detergent when they should carry the scent of jasmine and green grass after a summer rain.
The scent of her.
Eight miserable fucking weeks of a situation that should have stayed operational and didn't.
"Gentlemen." My voice cuts through their bickering. Both brothers fall silent, their attention snapping to me with the wariness of men who understand, on some primal level, that the man at the head of this table is far more dangerous than either of them will ever be. Ambrose's hand freezes mid-gesture. Giorgio's spine straightens against his leather chair.
"Now that I have your attention, let me clarify something for you."
I rise slowly, buttoning my jacket as I move to stand at the windows. The leather cord holding my hair back pulls slightly asI tilt my head, surveying the city spread beneath us like a map of possibilities. The glass is cool when I rest my fingertips against it, a sharp contrast to the restless heat simmering beneath my skin.
"You don't get to cut up Chicago. It doesn't belong to you." I turn to face them, letting them see the cold certainty in my eyes. Both men shift in their seats, their expensive suits suddenly looking like costumes on boys playing dress-up. "The Syndicate controls territory distribution in this part of the city. You want to open a casino? Fine. You rent space from us. You follow the rules laid out in the contract. You operate within the boundaries we establish, and you pay tribute on a quarterly basis. Everyone makes a shit ton of money, to put it bluntly. More than any one of us will spend in our lifetimes. Problem solved because you’re following the rules."
Giorgio opens his mouth to protest, his lips parting around words that die in his throat. I silence him with a look that has made harder men reconsider their life choices.
"Let me be even clearer. Those are not suggestions. Those are terms. Take them or leave them, but make your decision in the next thirty seconds because I have somewhere else to be."
The brothers exchange glances, a silent conversation conducted in raised eyebrows and tight jaw muscles. Whatever they see in each other's faces convinces them that arguing further would be inadvisable. Smart men. Annoying, but smart.
