Chapter 7
Pietro
It was four in the morning and I was still awake.
I’d run out of things to do an hour ago.
Kitchen cleaned, every knife in the block checked and sharpened, coffee set up for morning and staged for a pour-over even though I liked the moka pot better.
I’d showered and changed, stripped the couch, remade it, checked the locks, rechecked the windows, sat down and stood up again twice for no reason but to move.
She was asleep. I could hear her. Every breath called to me. Every breath a temptation.
I lay on the couch, hands locked behind my head, eyes closed, and tried not to replay it.
The piano bench. The way she’d sat so close, the warmth of her thigh against mine, her knee angled in so I could smell the soap on her skin and see every small shiver in the muscle there.
The way her hand had fit under mine so perfectly, like it was meant for me, like she was meant for me.
The way her mouth had tasted, even through the wine and the hours and the edges of the old pain.
The way she’d put her hands on the sides of my face, deliberate, like she was claiming it, and the sound she’d made when I kissed her.
I’d meant to be good. I’d meant to set the lines, hold the boundaries. But then she’d kissed me. She’d made a noise when I kissed her back. She’d pulled me onto her, her weight barely enough to tip the bench, but enough to make me want to fuck her right there, hard enough to break something.
It would have been easy, to blame her for it. To say that she’d wanted it. To say that she’d started it. That was what men did, men like me, men in my family. We blamed everyone else for everything. Not me, though. I blamed myself for everything.
She’d wanted it, sure. She’d wanted it as a move, a counter, a play. Or maybe she’d just wanted to see what I’d do. Maybe she’d wanted to know if I’d let her.
But the truth was, I’d wanted it more.
I wanted her.
The honesty of it shocked me. No dancing around it, no justification, just pure, unbridled need.
I wanted her, not just as a problem to solve or a package to deliver or a duty.
Not as a favor to Dante or Marco or even Serafina, who would have said, “just take care of her, Pi,” and meant it with her whole heart.
I wanted her the way a man wanted something he could not have.
I wanted her in every possible iteration of the word.
I wanted her laughing in my lap at a stupid movie.
I wanted her on her knees with her mouth open for me.
I wanted her asleep in my bed, hair in my face, the weight of her thigh across my waist. I wanted to make her eat, and sleep, and not worry for a day.
I wanted to see how she’d look with a rope around her wrists.
I wanted to see how she’d look if she trusted me enough to let me hold her down.
It wasn’t the wanting that was the problem.
The problem was the love.
I’d had feelings for women before. Lust, fondness, even a shot at what passed for long-term attachment in my world.
And of course, the woman in Catania. That hadn’t been love, but it had been something.
A desire to protect, a need to save? But always, even then—especially then—it had been easy to walk away.
This, though, wasn’t easy. It wasn’t even close to being easy.
It hurt to think about her leaving, and it hurt worse to think about her staying.
I could feel it—raw, like a wound, in the place behind my breastbone that had never fully healed from Catania.
Fuck.
I was in love with her.
Fuck.
There. I’d said it, in my head, even if I’d never say it out loud.
And that made everything a thousand times more complicated.
Because the second you admitted you loved someone, every fucking thing you did to them mattered twice as much.
Every choice was a hinge, a way you could ruin it forever or make it better or make it something she could stand to live with.
Every time you touched her, you were making a record of your own failures and strengths, and you’d have to answer for it. There was no way out.
I thought about her again. Not the mouth or the thighs or the way she shuddered when I palmed her ass on the bench, but the way she’d looked at me when I told her I couldn’t. The hurt in it. The disappointment, but also the relief.
She didn’t want to be fucked without knowing why.
She wanted to know what it was I was offering.
And that was where I was fucked. Because I couldn’t just tell her, couldn’t just say: this is what I am, this is what I want, this is how it would go.
Because the words weren’t enough, were they?
She had to see it, had to feel it. But words were all I had.
I couldn’t just take it, either. I wouldn’t be the next man in the chain who made her body a transaction.
She was a trauma case. She was running on fear and willpower and the next cup of coffee. If I moved too fast, I’d break her. If I moved too slow, I’d lose her.
And I didn’t want to lose her.
I needed to tell her. I needed to tell her everything, and I needed to do it today, before it twisted into something ugly.
I needed to lay it out: that I was a Daddy Dom, that I wanted her in the specific way men like me wanted, that it wasn’t about pain or humiliation, that it was about structure and care and the way I could make her feel safe, even if everything about the way I looked screamed danger.
That I would never take from her what she did not give.
That she could stop it at any moment, and I would not hate her for it. That the power was hers, not mine.
That was the only way it could work. Otherwise, I was just another asshole with a hard-on and a complex.
I closed my eyes.
Breathed.
Tried to picture what it would be like, to say it. To watch her face as I told her. Would she laugh? Would she be afraid? Would she walk, or would she listen?
It didn’t matter. I was going to do it. Had to.
I sat up. The couch creaked under my back. My shirt was wrinkled, damp at the collar. I looked at my phone: 4:08.
I was not going to sleep. There was no world in which I slept.
I laced up my running shoes, put on the jacket, and left the apartment without a sound. The elevator was as silent as the lobby, the halls lit with a low blue that made every surface cold to the touch.
Outside, the city was empty. The river was black glass, the wind clean and bitter off the water. I started running. I didn’t stop for blocks.
The air burned in my chest, but the decision held.
Today. I’d tell her today.
Ifinished up the run just after six. The sun was coming up, but you couldn’t tell unless you knew where to look—thin line of dirty yellow just visible under the smog, river still black with cold.
Inside, the apartment was too quiet.
I shed the jacket, peeled off the running shoes, walked straight to the bathroom and let the shower burn my skin raw.
I soaped twice, rinsed, stared at the tile until my head stopped spinning.
When I came out, I put on black—jeans, a long-sleeve thermal, a zip-up hoodie with the cuffs rolled.
My hands still shook, but only a little.
Kitchen. I prepared the coffee machine, filled it careful, set the heat just under a boil. I went through the motions: wiped the counter, checked the windows, watered the basil. The world was clean and sharp for the first time in months.
She came in without a sound.
She wore sweats, grey, the kind that fit loose but hung on her hips just so.
The sleeves were too long, so she’d rolled them up, exposing the thin line of her wrist, the old scar I’d noticed when she’d played the piano.
Her hair was wet, combed straight, no product, just damp and hanging in two flat planes on either side of her face.
She looked like someone who had not slept well, but was pretending.
She didn’t look at me. She went straight to the cupboard, took out a mug, then stood at the edge of the kitchen island, waiting. The air was different now, charged, like we were both waiting for the other to fuck up first.
The kiss hummed between us, physical. I could feel it, pulling us together like magnets across the void.
I poured the coffee into two mugs. Hers, then mine. I set hers in front of her. She took it, fingers around the handle, and lifted it to her mouth without meeting my eyes.
The silence was heavy. In the old days, I would have filled it, said something to make her laugh or roll her eyes or snap back. Now, I let it breathe. I let the room fill up with the weight of it, and I did not apologize.
I said, “Angela.”
She didn’t flinch, but she gripped the mug a little harder.
“I need to talk to you,” I said. “Not in here. A walk.”
She didn’t answer right away. She sipped the coffee, then set it down, then looked past me, out at the river, not at me. “Why outside?”
The question was a test, so I answered it like one.
“What I have to say is easier in the open.”
She raised an eyebrow, just a fraction, like she was calculating the odds of this being a line. “You want to get rid of me. Drop me in the river. Concrete overcoat?”
“If I wanted you gone,” I said, “I wouldn’t waste good coffee on you.”
That got a noise from her. Not quite a laugh. Something closer to a grudging respect. She put the mug down. “Let’s go, then.”
I reached for my coat. She put hers on in the entryway, zipped it to the neck, hands deep in the pockets. She watched me as I laced my boots, not directly, just through the mirror on the closet door. Her reflection was all angles—cheekbones, jaw, the hard planes under the softness of her skin.
We went out without another word. The lobby was empty except for the doorman, who nodded at us with the careful indifference of a man who saw too much and never talked about it.
The city outside was awake now, but only just—delivery trucks on the side streets, a jogger on the path, some asshole yelling at his phone in a parking lot.