At five, I put on my coat, slung a bag over my shoulder. I checked the locks. Then I paused, hands on the knob, and looked back.
She was at the window, staring down at the city. Her shoulders were rigid, but her hands had gone soft, one resting on the glass.
“I’m at the carriage house if you need me,” I said. “Call any time.”
She didn’t turn. “I know.”
I left.
Atthecarriagehouse,Tonio was already at the table, Olimpo sprawled across his feet. The place smelled like tomato sauce and the ashes from last night’s fire.
Tonio poured me a glass of whisky, set it at my elbow, and went back to his paperwork.
I drank it in two swallows, then stared at the wall for a long time.
He didn’t ask, and I didn’t tell.
I went to bed at eleven. I did not sleep.
At midnight I stood at the window, watching the dark. I watched for headlights. I watched for her number to flash on the screen. I watched until two, until the city had gone quiet, until it was just me and the silence and the sense that, this time, if she called, I’d be ready.
I wasn’t the man who’d failed a woman at Catania.
Not anymore.
Chapter 8
Angela
Theapartmentwassilentafter Pietro left. Not the regular kind of silent—more like an underwater silence. I could feel the weight of him gone, his absence sitting on the air and pressing down on every surface. I heard the door click, heard the elevator cycle once, and then I was alone for the first time in a week.
Technically, I wasn’t alone. Sal was in the building. He’d texted when he arrived—In lobby, let me know if you need. That was it. He never said more than was required. Which I respected.
But it felt like the first time in a week that I was not actively being watched by someone. Sure—Pietro had left briefly, but I’d be alone overnight. No one was listening for my breath on the other side of a door. No one was going to walk in and ask if I’d eaten or slept or if I wanted to join them at the table. There was only the room, and the cold light off the river, and the echo of last night burned into every square foot of my skin.
I went to the kitchen. I sat at the table. I brought my laptop, plugged it into the wall, and waited for the screen to boot. I checked the VPN—three layers, stacked. Tor ran in the background, a nested onion of fake locations I’d built the first night Pietro showed me the WiFi password. All my old tools, all my old paranoia, still worked. That was good. I needed them.
I started clinical.
First tab: Psychology Today. Search: “daddy dom little girl.” I got a list of pop articles, most of them clickbait. I opened six at once, then tabbed through them, highlighting anything that looked relevant. A lot of it was “how to spot a predator,” which was interesting but not relevant. I hoped. I ignored it. I was not here to pathologize. I was here to understand.
Second tab: sex therapist’s blog. This was better. Longer entries, citations. Several case studies, written in the style I remembered from grad school—anonymous but specific, rich with first-person quotes. I copied the most useful sentences into a blank document, setting up columns. Left column: source. Middle: claim. Right: notes. The way I used to do at Halberd, when I was tracking shell company ownership across seven layers of offshore. There was something satisfying about lining it all up, seeing the whole structure in one grid.
Third tab: peer-reviewed article, Journal of Sexual Medicine. “The D/s Dynamic and Attachment Theory: An Empirical Review.” Abstract was promising. Full text paywalled, but I had my tricks. Ten minutes later, I had the PDF.
I cataloged.
Key points, in order:
- DDLG is not, per se, a kink for people with actual childhood trauma. That was a myth. Most participants had stable backgrounds, but preferred the clarity of defined roles.
- The “Little” role was often about relinquishing responsibility. A way to turn off the anxiety that came from always being in control.
- The “Daddy” role was about containment, guidance, and discipline, but the emphasis was always on care.
- There was a large overlap between Littles and people with high-functioning, perfectionist tendencies.
- Some participants described the feeling as “coming home.” That phrase got quoted three times, in three different articles.
