Chapter Fourteen
Elena
I wake up sore.
For a second, I don’t know why. It’s that floaty moment between sleep and awake where everything feels like a dream.
Then I drop like a stone right back to earth when my memory comes crashing back.
Luca!
I shoot up, sheet falling to my waist. The room tilts, then steadies. The other side of the bed is empty.
The pillow beside me is dented. It smells like soap and something warm—his cologne, faint, threaded into cotton. The sheet is twisted around my thighs. My nightgown is in tatters around me and on the floor.
My skin itches with desire in places that feel used. Shoulder, hips, inner thighs. A little rasp at my throat where his stubble found me. I touch it without meaning to and pull my hand back guiltily.
The clock on my nightstand says 6:41. The light through the blinds is thin and gray. Morning has barely come.
He’s gone.
Of course he is.
My heart spikes anyway, ridiculous and immediate. I throw the sheet aside and swing my legs over the edge, standing too fast. Knees complain.
I press a palm to the mattress where his weight was, and it’s cool. He’s been gone long enough for his heat to leak away.
On the nightstand, my phone is plugged in. I reach for it and hiss as my sore shoulders complain.
I remember my arms bound tight with my own nightgown. Held hostage in my own bed.
And how much I loved it.
I shiver.
I should be embarrassed. I should feel ashamed.
I can’t believe I let him do that to me.
More than once!
After we were done the first time, I had barely recovered when he was hard and ready to go again.
And again.
And again.
I can still feel him inside me.
It aches, but the ache is a sweet, delicious reminder.
I don't think I'll ever stop feeling him inside me.
And now he's gone.
I find myself disappointed, even knowing exactly why he had to leave.
We aren't exactly compatible.
And if the marshals found him here, they'd arrest him immediately.
The thought stops me short.
Wait, how did he come here?
His ankle monitor...?
I was so caught up, I didn't even think to ask.
The questions start piling up, and the guilt settles in.
He was here, in my house, breaking the terms of his parole.
I'm a federal prosecutor trying to put him back in prison. I could have had him arrested.
I should have.
I know this, but it doesn't change the fact that the only thing I want right now is for him to come back.
"Shit," I whisper, closing my eyes.
What have I done?
I open them again, and my gaze lands on a note next to the lamp.
I pick it up and unfold it.
"Panini," the note says.
I read the word, then read it again.
"Panini."
I refuse to smile at his stupid little nickname for me.
“Panini, I had to run. You know why. Drink plenty of water and eat something.”
I press the paper to my nose, hoping to catch a trace of him, but there's nothing.
It's just a piece of paper. My disappointment shocks me.
Last night was amazing, and I should be happy with that. It was amazing, and I was stupid—really, really stupid—and now it can be over.
But my brain doesn't want to accept that. My brain is stubborn, and my brain wants more.
My phone chirps and I snatch it up, but it's not Luca.
It's Lawrence.
Morning check. You up?
I swallow down the tiny rush of disappointment that it isn’t someone else.
Awake. All good.
My phone buzzes immediately. He’s calling.
“Pennino.”
“Morning,” Lawrence says. His voice is the same steady gravel as last night. “Did you add us to your ‘Allow’ list?”
“Yes,” I say, my tone flat. “I did it last night.”
“Good. Today,” he continues, “we’re adding an overnight beacon at Conti’s residence. Pretrial will push me for the install confirmation. Doesn’t affect your schedule, just a heads-up.”
“Copy.”
“Two more items,” he says. “We’ve got a press car sniffing around your block again. White SUV, amateur tint. Use the garage this morning, vary by fifteen. Second, we’re rotating an extra body in your lobby during commute windows. Don’t engage. Just wave and keep moving.”
“Got it.”
There’s a beat. I can hear him weighing whether to ask something he has a right to ask. “Anything unusual overnight? Calls, visitors, noise?”
I swallow, and my eyes slide to the note on my nightstand, the tattered ruins of my nightgown.
My stomach misbehaves.
“No,” I say and congratulate myself when my voice doesn’t crack. “All quiet after you guys left.”
“Good. I’m glad,” he says. “Text before you leave.”
“I will.”
“And eat something,” he says, his tone softening.
I huff out a laugh. He’s almost become a doting father at this point. “I will.”
“Good,” he says and hangs up.
I stare at the phone like it might confess the truth. It doesn’t.
The apartment is the same, except it isn’t. I put the note back on the nightstand and then pick it up again, caught in the stupid loop of where to put a thing that shouldn’t exist.
Trash would be smart. Shredder would be smarter. My fingers don’t cooperate. I fold it once, then again, and slide it into the back of my mother’s recipe tin on the dresser, behind a card that says “Torta di mele” in looping script. I tell myself it’s because no one will look there.
I walk to the bathroom, not even bothering with a robe. I catch myself in the mirror. Hair wrecked, lips swollen. There’s a small mark on my breast, and I remember Luca’s teeth nipping my delicate flesh right there, marking me.
I look like a woman who did something she can never say out loud and is already paying for. Heat crawls up my neck at the image and then, traitor that I am, I smile. It’s small, but it’s there.
God, Elena.
Shower. Water hot enough to bite. The sting on my skin, my sore muscles, feels like heaven.
I tilt my head into the water and let it slide down my well-used body.
By the time I’m towel-drying my hair, the sore has changed from ache to awareness. Every movement is a reminder.
I dress like a woman who has something to hide: high-collar blouse, navy slacks. No necklace to draw eyes.
The little mark is well hidden beneath my clothes, but it doesn’t stop me from being paranoid.
I should be panicking. I should be listing consequences in order of career-ending potential. I should be drafting the world’s most humiliating recusal memo in my head. Instead, I just… continue getting dressed. Breathe.
It happened. I let it happen. I wanted it, and that is the part I can’t excuse as an accident or an ambush or a lapse brought on by wine and exhaustion. I wanted him. I want him now, which is the part that scares me more than anything else.
Halfway to the kitchen, I smell something in the air.
Coffee?
I pad into the kitchen and stop. The little drip machine I barely use is humming, red light on, steam fogging the under-cabinet.
I didn’t set that.
I stare at it, bewildered. There’s an obvious answer, but it doesn’t stop my mind from racing with possibilities.
My throat tightens. Luca made coffee for me.
Something warm and traitorous fills my stomach.
Lawrence’s voice runs in my head: no outside food or drink. Control what you can. The coffee in the pot is… mine. My machine. My water. My grounds. But my mind has already attached it to his hands, his timing, his mouth at my ear.
If he wanted to kill me, I reason, he would’ve last night. I gave him plenty of opportunity.
My face reddens, and I bury it in my hands.
I gave him so much opportunity. I let him tie me up, make me helpless.
He could’ve strangled me at any point.
But he didn’t.
He could’ve, but he didn’t.
He said he got me the latte because he wanted to, and… I believe him. I don’t know why, but I do.
I reach for a mug, then stop. I take a breath, pick up the carafe, and pour a cup. The smell punches me in the face, dark and tempting. My fingers tighten on the handle.
I lift the mug and take a careful sip.
It’s strong without being harsh, the kind that hits the front of your tongue first—dark chocolate, a little smoke—then smooths out as it goes down. No burnt edge, no watery afterthought.
Warmth blooms in my stomach and spreads, loosening my aching muscles. I take another sip, bigger this time.
How the hell did he do that? I’ve been trying to get this machine to make good coffee since I got it.
Well, he probably doesn’t just dump grounds and pray, but… I don’t even need sugar. I don’t reach for milk.
It tastes… perfect.
A stupid sound catches in my throat. I set the mug down, steady my hand on the counter, and swallow one more mouthful just to feel that calm slide through me again.
“Damn it,” I whisper, because it’s delicious and because that makes this harder.
I finish the cup anyway. Then I pour the rest of it into my travel mug because there’s no way I’m wasting a drop of this. It would be worth dying for.