1
The autumn air bites through my suit jacket as I step onto Mama Bavga's front terrace, the heavy oak door closing behind me on the controlled chaos of Sunday dinner cleanup.
Congratulations, October. You're basically the mob boss of seasons—showing up uninvited, making everyone uncomfortable, leaving a trail of dead things in your wake. Very on-brand.
I stop mid-step—halfway down the stone stairs leading to the driveway.
What the fuck was that?
I replay the thought, dissecting it like evidence at a crime scene. The rhythm. The absurd comparison. The self-aware humor wrapped in cynicism.
I just… created an Emmaleen-ism.
All by myself.
A laugh erupts from me as I continue descending the terrace stairs and start walking towards the Aventador.
Somewhere in the past weeks—between the contracts, and the positions, and the poems she writes in perfect terza rima while I fuck her senseless—Emmaleen Rourke has infected my internal monologue.
Her chaos has leaked into my carefully ordered mind like water.
The corner of my mouth twitches. An expression I don't recognize on my own face. Something dangerously close to amusement.
Oh, she would love this. October as a mob boss. She'd spiral it into a fifteen-minute monologue about seasonal intimidation tactics and pumpkin spice as a protection racket.
The thought of her voice—breathless, rambling, somehow both anxious and confident—settles somewhere behind my ribs.
A place located suspiciously close to my heart.
The front door opens on the terrace above me, leaking sounds from inside, then Jino is skipping down the stairs. He passes me, clicking his key fob to make his car chirp. "Gotta swing by my place," he calls over his shoulder. "Need to grab clothes, some gear for tomorrow's session."
"All right. How long?"
"Twenty minutes, probably. I'll meet ya at home."
Home. He's looking at me when this word comes out. The word lands between us like a loaded weapon.
Jino shrugs up one shoulder—a gesture that splits the difference between acknowledgment and dismissal. Half apology for the slip, half defiance that he doesn't particularly regret it.
The movement is casual enough to dismiss, deliberate enough to notice.
I don't correct him. Don't point out that my mansion isn't "home" in any traditional sense of the word. It's just the current operational base, temporary like everything else in this business.
But I also don't miss the implication threaded through his choice of words.
That Emmaleen has become his gravitational center.
That her space—and by extension, my space—has expanded to include him in its orbit.
We bump knuckles—brief, efficient contact that says everything required without wasting words. Then he slides into his black Challenger.
I turn toward the Aventador.
The matte black body gleams under the estate's exterior lights. The scissor door lifts and when I lower myself into the driver's seat, the cockpit wraps around me like a second skin.
When I press the start button, the engine doesn't roar. Itdetonates—a sound engineered to remind everyone within earshot that power isn't always subtle.
I Follow Jino down the driveway, then we diverge, turning in opposite directions and Sewickley Heights stretches out before me like a carefully curated museum of old money.
