Romeo studies me for a moment, his eyes narrowing slightly. He's known me for years. He can read me better than anyone. And right now, he's seeing something that's making him concerned.
"Go," he says finally, but there's a warning in his voice.
I don't wait for him to change his mind. I turn and walk out of the dining room.
The cool night air hits my face, but it doesn't help. Nothing helps.
I need to fucking go home.
I head for my car, well aware of the insult I’ve given Dante Ciresa but hoping Romeo will shield me from it. It would be a lot fucking worse if I assaulted one of his guests at the dinner table.
My apartment is on a high level of a building in downtown Manhattan, sparsely furnished by a decorator whom I paid a lot of money to. I go straight for the bar cart and pour myself a drink—whiskey, neat—and stand at the window, looking out at the city lights below.
All I can see is her face—the careful smile, the resignation in her eyes. The way she held herself like she was trying to disappear even while being the center of attention. And I keep seeing Alessandro's hand on her arm, Enzo touching her. The possessive certainty in their expressions, the way they looked at her like she was already one of theirs.
The glass cracks in my hand. I look down and see blood welling up from where a shard has cut into my palm, but I barely feel it.
This has to pass. This attraction, this obsession, whatever the fuck it is—it has to fade. I just need time to adjust to her being back. I need to remember who I am and who she is and why this can never be anything more than a fantasy. A fantasy that I shouldn’t indulge, no matter how badly I want to.
I pour another drink, then another. The whiskey burns going down, but it doesn't help. Nothing helps. She's going to marry one of those men. Probably Alessandro, based on the way Dante was watching them tonight. She's going to marry him and have his children and live the life that was decided for her before she was old enough to have a say in it. And I'm going to watch it happen, because that's what loyalty means. That's what being Romeo's right hand requires.
I down the whiskey in one swallow and pour another.
The apartment feels too small suddenly, the walls closing in. I pace to the window and back, my mind churning with thoughts I shouldn't be having. Thoughts about what it would be like to touch her, to kiss her, to hear her say my name in the dark. Thoughts about taking her away from all of this, giving her the choice she's never had. Thoughts that will get me killed if I ever act on them.
Because Romeo would kill me. Dante would kill me. The entire organization would see it as a betrayal, and they'd be right. I'm an enforcer, a weapon, the man who's supposed toprotect the family. Not the man who falls in love with the daughter. Not the man who wants to claim her as his own.
I look down at my hand, at the blood still seeping from the cut. The pain is distant, irrelevant. Physical pain I can handle. It's this other kind—this aching, impossible want—that's destroying me.
By the time the bottle is half empty, I've almost convinced myself that I can do this, that I can bury these feelings deep enough that they'll eventually suffocate and die. That I can watch her marry one of those men and smile through it, and pretend my heart isn't being ripped out of my chest.
But then I close my eyes, and I see her standing in the doorway of the dining room, beautiful and sad and so far out of reach she might as well be a ghost. I see the future stretching out before me—years of watching her with another man, years of maintaining this distance, years of wanting something I can never have.
I'm fucked. And the worst part is, there's not a goddamn thing I can do about it.
The whiskey bottle is empty now. I set it down on the counter and stare at my reflection in the window—a man I barely recognize, consumed by something I can't control.
I have no idea how I'm going to survive it.
3
GIULIA
I've been in love with Luca Moretti since I was sixteen years old.
I spent that entire last month of summer watching him, cataloging every detail before I had to go back to school. The way he took his coffee black, the scar on his left hand that he never talked about. I memorized him like he was a book I’d never read again, storing every detail for the semester away.
And then I left, and I told myself it was just a crush. An infatuation that would fade with time and distance.
It didn't fade.
If anything, it got worse. I tried to forget him, but late at night in my dorm room, I'd imagine what it would be like if he touched me. If he kissed me.
If he could be my first.
I knew it was impossible. I knew that even if he felt something for me—which he probably didn't—Romeo would never allow it. My father would never allow it. The family has rules, boundaries, lines that can’t be crossed. Luca is Romeo's right hand, his enforcer, his most trusted friend. And I’ve always been the daughter being groomed for an advantageous marriage.
But in my fantasies, none of that mattered. In my fantasies, we could have something—maybe not forever, but something. A passionate affair before I was married off. One person who chose me because he wanted me, not because I came with the right connections or the right last name.
