I'm aware I'm babbling, but exhaustion and stress have apparently turned off my filter entirely.
"Does it come with the property when you sell? 'South Boston waterfront estate, includes original brick, custom chef's kitchen, and one slightly impractical monster truck permanently entombed in the garage. What a selling point.'"
A laugh bubbles up before I can stop it—high and slightly unhinged, the kind that happens when you've cried too much, and slept too little, and your brain has simply given up on processing things normally.
Lorcan is looking at me now. It's a look I recognize. It says, is shecrazy-crazy? Or just crazy?
He jerks his chin toward a sleek metal door. "Come on. For someone who just slept seven hours, you look dead on your feet."
I am. I'm so tired I could sleep another ten hours in Position One if someone commanded it, which?—
Stop. Stop thinking like that.
I follow him.
The door opens to a stairwell that looks like it belongs in a luxury hotel—brushed steel, recessed lighting, each step perfectly clean. No creepy basement vibes. No dungeon energy. Just… expensive minimalism.
"How many floors?" I ask, because talking keeps me from spiraling.
"Three, technically. But the ground floor's just the garage and storage. We're goin' to the second floor—main living space. Third floor's my bedroom and office."
We climb in silence, my legs protesting every step. I'm sore everywhere—not just from Jino's training or Giovanni's punishment bench, but from the whole catastrophic disaster that's been the past ten hours.
The stairwell opens into a massive loft space that makes me stop dead.
"Oh, fuck you," I breathe.
Because it'sgorgeous. Vaulted ceilings with exposed beams painted matte black. Floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the harbor, boats bobbing in the darkness, city lights reflecting off the water.
A fireplace you could park a car in, surrounded by stone that looks imported from some Irish castle.
Leather furniture—deep, comfortable, lived-in. Bookshelves lining an entire wall, crammed with actual books, not decorator spines. Persian rugs over polished concrete floors. Art that looks real, not mass-produced.
It's the kind of space thatArchitectural Digestwould beg to photograph.
It's also nothing like Giovanni's mansion—no excess, no dark wood paneling, no rooms designed to intimidate. This place feels… grounded. Masculine but not aggressive. Expensive but not showy.
Livable.
"You hate it," Lorcan says, watching my face.
"I hate that Idon'thate it." I drift toward the bookshelves like a magnet, scanning titles. Philosophy. Irish history. Literary fiction. Poetry—Yeats, Heaney, Kavanagh. "You actually read these?"
"Most of 'em, yeah."
I pull out a worn copy ofUlysses, pages dog-eared and annotated in the margins. Actual marginalia. Actualengagementwith the text.
Something twists in my chest.
Books.
Real books. A whole library of them. Not staged, not inherited from the previous owner like Giovanni's collection he's never touched. These areLorcan'sbooks. Read. Loved. Kept.
"You alright?"
I shove the book back onto the shelf before I can do something humiliating like cry over James Joyce. "Yeah. Fine. Just—tired. You said that already. I'm repeating myself. That's how tired I am. Tired enough to develop echolalia apparently, which is?—"
"Emmaleen," he says, pulling me out of my rambling. "You're safe here." His voice is quiet now. Gentler. Like he's talking to a stray dog, trying to get it off a busy street before it gets slaughtered by a trucker. "I know that probably doesn't mean much comin' from the man who shoved you in a trunk, but—you are. Nothin's gonna hurt you in this house."
