Chapter 3 Angelina
three
Angelina
Cole Tanaka is standing in my living room.
The thought keeps circling, refusing to land anywhere that makes sense.
Because the Cole I remember was lanky and awkward in his own skin.
The guy who hunched over computer science textbooks and blushed when I touched his hand across the library table.
The guy who kissed me like I was something precious and then walked away like I was something he could survive losing.
This man is not that boy.
Broad shoulders strain against his black shirt, and his forearms show a scar I don't recognize, pale against his tan skin.
He stands like someone who learned to be dangerous.
Military, then. He actually went through with it.
All those conversations about duty and service that I thought were just talk, just a young man trying to figure out who he was.
He figured it out. And then he left me to figure out who I was alone.
He watches me with the stillness of someone who knows exactly when to strike. My hindbrain screams danger, every nerve firing at once. The same survival response I'd have to any threat in my space.
That's all this is. Biology. Nothing more.
"No." My voice comes out sharper than I intended. I turn to Uncle Sal, desperate for an ally even though I know I won't find one. "Absolutely not. He needs to leave."
"Angelina." Sal's tone carries that warning I've heard since childhood—the one that means you're embarrassing yourself, tesoro. "This is serious. The pattern that they told me about—"
"I don't care about the pattern." The words come out too fast, too raw. Get it together. "I want him out of my house."
Cole hasn't moved. Hasn't spoken since saying my name in that low voice that shouldn't affect me after twelve years but does anyway. It slides under my skin like muscle memory, like my body forgot to stop responding to him even when my brain learned better.
His gaze drops slowly down my body. Sleep shorts. Bare legs.
The thin long-sleeve shirt I threw on for comfort suddenly feels like nothing at all. The fabric clings in ways I didn't think about when I was just reading in my living room, and I'm painfully aware that I'm barefoot and underdressed while he's fully clothed and probably armed.
Goosebumps rise on my arms, the damp May cold seeping through the cracked window, nothing more.
Keep telling yourself that.
One arm wraps across my stomach like I can hold myself together through sheer force of will. He tracks the movement, those dark eyes returning to my face with something that looks like hunger before he controls it.
Good. Let him want. Let him choke on it the way I choked on his absence.
"Kade sent him personally." Sal's voice drops into command territory—the voice that doesn't accept arguments. "Centurion Protection Group is the best private security in the country. You know this."
"Then have him send someone else." My nails dig into my arm. "Anyone else from their team. I don't care if they send someone who speaks in grunts and communicates through interpretive dance. Just not him."
"He stays." Sal's jaw tightens. "At least tonight. We'll discuss alternatives tomorrow if you insist, but for now, he stays."
I open my mouth opens to argue, to throw them both out because this is MY space and I get to decide who invades it—
But Sal's expression shifts, goes deadly serious in that way that always makes my stomach drop.
"Your father would want you protected, Angel."
Bastard.
The words hit hard. Papa's face flashes behind my eyes. Once brilliant and loving, now lost in a fog that steals more of him every day. Last visit, he called me Maria for twenty minutes before the confusion cleared. His sister. Dead forty years.
Does his brain hurt, Mamma?
"So does Chesca's great-uncle." Sal's tone gentles, but the steel underneath remains. "This isn't negotiable."
Papa. Chesca. The two people who make me swallow fury and nod like a good Castellano woman, even when everything in me screams to fight.
He knows exactly what he's doing. He's known since I was twelve years old and he figured out which buttons to push. Which levers to pull. How to make me comply without ever raising his voice.
Family, Angelina. Always.
I dig my fingers harder into my arm until my nails probably create crescents that'll bruise tomorrow. The pain grounds me when everything else spins out of control.
A muscle tenses in Cole's jaw, the only visible reaction to me reacting to him with such venom.
Good. Let him feel unwelcome. Let him feel one inch of what I feel right now—invaded, ambushed, and stripped bare in my own living room.
Sal moves toward the door, apparently satisfied that he's won this round.
"Keep her safe." It's not a request. An order, delivered to Cole like I'm not standing right here, capable of speaking for myself.
Cole nods once, sharp. A soldier receiving mission parameters.
Is that what I am now? A mission? A package to be protected?
The thought makes my skin crawl.
"Talk to him." Sal looks at me, expression softening slightly, the uncle who used to sneak me cannoli when Mamma wasn't looking, buried somewhere under the boss who just steamrolled my objections. "Hear him out. Then decide."
We both know I don't actually get to decide. Not if Sal thinks there's a threat I need to be protected from. Not with Chesca sleeping upstairs, innocent and trusting, with her stuffed rabbit and her purple pajamas and her complete faith that Mamma will keep her safe.
The door closes behind him with a thunk that echoes through the quiet house.
Silence stretches between us, heavy and suffocating.
Fifteen feet of hardwood and furniture create a barrier I desperately need, because when he looks at me like that—like he knows me, like twelve years dissolved the moment he walked through my door, like he has any goddamn right to stand in my living room—every defense I've built feels paper-thin.
The clock ticks near the kitchen. Too loud. Our breathing fills the space, and I hate that I can hear his, and hate that I'm attuned to the rhythm of it like no time has passed.
The evening wind rattles the window, and I flinch before I can stop myself.
Fantastic. Now he knows you jump at shadows. Now he knows you're not the girl he left behind; you're this broken thing that can't even handle a breeze.
Cole tenses immediately, weight shifting forward like he's ready to throw himself between me and whatever threat the wind might pose.
Stop it. Stop acting like you care. You lost the right to care when you walked away.
Chesca's backpack sits by the stairs, bright pink, covered in unicorn stickers she applied herself with painstaking concentration. A reminder that my daughter sleeps above our heads, trusting me to keep the monsters out.
And I just let one come in through the front door.
Family photos line the walls. Birthday parties and holidays. Beach trips and school plays. Just me and Chesca, building a life that doesn't include ghosts from college or nightmares from my marriage. A life I constructed from the wreckage of everything else.
Now he's standing in the middle of it like he belongs here.
My throat goes dry. Getting water means walking past him to reach the kitchen.
Not happening. I'd rather die of thirst.
"If you're going to invade my home, you can at least tell me why." I force my voice into something resembling judicial authority. "What exactly is this threat Sal mentioned?"
Cole's expression doesn't change. "That's need-to-know."
"I'm a federal judge." The words come out sharp, incredulous. "I have security clearance higher than most of the people in this city. I think I need to know why a man I haven't seen in twelve years is suddenly standing in my living room."
"You'll be briefed when the time is right."
"When the—" I cut myself off, a bitter laugh escaping. "Are you serious right now? You show up unannounced, my uncle strong-arms me into letting you stay, and you won't even tell me what I'm supposedly in danger from?"
"It's not that I won't." Something shifts in his jaw, the first crack in that infuriating composure. "It's that I can't. Not yet. There are protocols—"
"Protocols." I spit the word like it tastes rotten. "You want to sleep under the same roof as my daughter, and you're hiding behind protocols?"
His eyes flash, frustration, maybe, or something darker. "Angelina—"
"No." I hold up a hand, too exhausted for this fight but unable to stop. "You don't get to 'Angelina' me while refusing to answer basic questions. Either tell me what's going on or get out of my house."
The silence stretches between us, thick with twelve years of absence and whatever he's not saying.
"Tomorrow." His voice drops lower, almost gentle. "I'm sure they'll want to brief you soon. At our headquarters, where everything can be explained properly. With evidence."
Evidence. Dio, what kind of threat requires evidence?
"And tonight?"
"Tonight, you let me do my job." He holds my gaze, steady and certain. "You sleep. I watch. That's all."
It's not enough. Not nearly enough. But the exhaustion is winning, dragging at my limbs, and the fight drains out of me like water through cracked stone.
His hands hang loose at his sides. They're rougher now, harder. Fighter's hands, scarred and capable. Not the soft student hands I remember tracing patterns on my bare shoulder while we talked about everything and nothing in his cramped apartment.
I cross my arms tighter, trying to cover what my thin shirt doesn't hide. He tracks the movement, gaze returning to my face with something I refuse to name flickering in those dark eyes.
"You need to get out." My voice sounds steadier than I feel. Small victory. "Tonight. You can stay outside. But I'm not letting a stranger stay here."
Stranger. The word lands deliberately, a weapon meant to wound.