Chapter 4 Angelina
four
Angelina
Chesca's halfway through her cereal, humming something from school. Sal looks up from his newspaper at the kitchen table. He let himself in at six, claiming he couldn't sleep and wanted to make sure we were settling in okay after last night. We both know he's checking up on me.
I'm on my second cup of coffee, running on maybe a few hours of fractured sleep, and my hand tightens on the mug before I can stop it.
Don't.
I know who it is. The same way I knew when I checked the locks three times last night.
"I'll get it!" Chesca slides off her stool.
"No." I was too sharp. Her face falls and guilt twists in my chest. I soften my voice. "Finish your breakfast, piccola. I've got it."
But Sal is already moving toward the door with that deceptive ease of his. Seventy-three years old and still faster than men half his age when he wants to be. I follow out of the kitchen. He opens it, and Cole Tanaka fills my doorway.
Dio. Did he get bigger overnight? Shoulders blocking the morning light, that same patient stillness radiating off him like he could wait there until the sun burned out. My pulse kicks hard before I can tell it not to.
"Ms. Castellano." His voice is level. Professional. Like last night didn't happen.
"The sedan was back this morning." Cole steps inside without waiting for an invitation, and something hot flares in my chest at the presumption. "Parked on Divisadero. Same plates as last night."
So I wasn't paranoid. The sedan I spotted was real.
"You shouldn't be here."
"The sedan says otherwise." His dark eyes sweep the kitchen, noting everything. Chesca finishing her cereal, Sal folding his newspaper, me in my work blouse with my coffee clutched like a weapon.
"I have security. I have Sal—"
"Sal is seventy-three." Cole's voice stays level, but something sharp edges into it. "He's good. But he's not enough. Not for this."
Sal makes a sound that might be agreement or might be offense. Hard to tell with him.
"And you are?" The words come out more bitter than I intended. "Enough?"
Something shifts in his expression. Not offense. Something older.
"I am."
The arrogance. The absolute certainty that I need him, that he's the answer to a question I didn't ask.
Except I checked the locks three times last night. I slept with my phone in my hand and the security app open, and I couldn't stop seeing that sedan every time I closed my eyes, couldn't stop imagining what might happen if whoever was inside decided to stop watching and start acting.
You already decided, remember? Last night. You decided not to send him away.
"One week." The words leave my mouth before I've fully decided to say them. Sal's eyebrows rise, but he says nothing. "You stay in the guest wing. You don't speak to Chesca without me present. You don't enter my bedroom. And if I find out you're doing anything beyond basic security—"
My voice hardens into something that sounds almost like Judge Castellano. Like the woman who sentences traffickers and stares down defense attorneys without flinching.
"I will have you arrested. Capisce?"
"Understood."
No argument. No negotiation. Just acceptance, simple and immediate.
That's... not what I expected.
"I'm doing this for her." I jerk my chin toward the kitchen where Chesca's bowl clatters into the sink, oblivious to the negotiation happening twenty feet away. "Not for you. Not because I trust you. Because that sedan means someone's watching, and right now, you're the devil I can see."
He inclines his head and doesn't argue. Doesn't try to reassure me with empty promises.
Small mercy.
I step aside. "Living room. You can wait there until—"
He's already walking past me toward the kitchen like he owns the place.
He passes close enough that I catch his scent, sandalwood and something warm underneath, familiar in a way that makes my chest ache.
My breath catches and I hate it. Hate him.
Hate the way my body remembers before my mind can stop it.
Twelve years. Twelve years and he still smells the same. How is that fair?
"That's not the living room."
He doesn't answer. By the time I catch up, he's reaching for the French press.
He pours coffee in the blue mug, my favorite, the one with the chip on the handle that I keep meaning to replace. One sugar. Cream until it turns the color of caramel. Then sets it on the corner of the counter, away from the edge.
Exactly where I always put it.
"Stop it."
He pauses, coffee pot still in hand. "Stop what?"
"Stop—" I gesture at the kitchen, at him, at the coffee that's exactly right. "Stop knowing things."
"Would you prefer I pretend?"
Yes. No. I don't know.
"I'd prefer you weren't here at all."
Chesca bounds back into the kitchen, teeth bared in a grin. "I used the purple toothpaste!"
She stops when she sees Cole. Studies him with that frank, assessing look she gets, the one that reminds me so much of myself at her age that it makes my heart hurt.
"You're still here."
"Chesca—"
"It's alright." Cole crouches to her level. Not looming. Deliberate. The fabric of his pants pulls across his thighs and I look away fast. Don't. "Yes. I'm staying for a little while. To help your mom."
"Like a helper?"
"Like security." His voice is patient, careful. "Like the guards at your school, but for your house."
"Oh." She considers this with the gravity only an eight-year-old can muster. "Do you have a gun?"
"Chesca!"
"It's a reasonable question." His face stays completely serious, and I can't tell if he's mocking me or genuinely respecting her curiosity. "Yes. But it stays locked up. Always. You won't see it, and you won't touch it. Understood?"
She nods solemnly. "Do you know how to make pancakes?"
"I make adequate pancakes."
The word is so unexpected, so deadpan, that the laugh escapes before I can stop it.
One huff of air, barely a sound. Cole's eyes flick to me.
Something passes between us—recognition and the ghost of Saturday mornings in his cramped apartment when he'd burn eggs and I'd laugh and we'd end up eating cereal instead. .
Stop. Stop remembering. It doesn't help.
"Adequate means okay," Chesca informs him with the confidence of someone who's learned a new word and intends to use it. "Mommy makes excellent pancakes."
"Then I'll defer to her expertise."
"Defer means—"
"He knows what it means, piccola." I set down my coffee, grateful for something to do with my hands. "Get your backpack. We leave in ten minutes."
She scampers off, and I'm left alone with Cole in my kitchen. The silence feels different now. Less hostile, more... weighted. Like we're both aware of how normal it could look to anyone peering through the window.
It's not normal. None of this is normal.
I start gathering my things for court, trying to ignore the way he watches me move through my own kitchen. The way his presence fills the space without him doing anything at all.
We're halfway down the front steps when Chesca stops dead.
"Wait." She tugs my hand, nearly pulling me off balance. "My booster seat's in Nonna's car."
I open my mouth to tell Cole we'll take my vehicle instead, but he's already at the black SUV, opening the rear door.
Inside, strapped into place, is a purple booster seat.
Not lavender. Not violet or "close enough". The exact shade of purple Chesca picked out for her bedroom walls two years ago. The color she refers to as "my purple" like it belongs to her personally.
"Is that for me?"
Chesca breaks away before I can stop her, running to the SUV with the complete trust of a child who hasn't learned yet that the world will hurt her. She climbs in, settles into the seat, runs her fingers over the fabric with wonder.
"It's purple! Mommy, look, it's my purple!"
My stomach drops.
I always know where you are. His voice is in my head. The tracking app. The smile when I found it.
No. Stop. Cole isn't him. He isn't—
But the knowledge sits in my chest like a stone. How did you know her exact color? How long have you been watching my daughter? How much do you know?
Cole stands by the open door, watching me. Expression giving nothing away.
"California law," he says. "She's eight. Requires a booster until four-foot-nine or eighty pounds."
"How did you know the color?"
The question comes out accusatory. Chesca's too busy examining her new seat to notice, but Cole's jaw tightens almost imperceptibly.
"California law," he repeats
That's not an answer. That's not even close to an answer.
But Chesca's already buckling herself in, chattering about how it matches her room and asking if she can keep it forever, and I can't ask more questions in front of her.
I get in the car.
The drive to school passes in a blur of Chesca's questions and Cole's sparse answers. Favorite color? Gray, apparently. Favorite animal? He doesn't have one. Does he like dinosaurs? He respects them.
Respects them. Who says that? Who talks to an eight-year-old about respecting dinosaurs?
But Chesca giggles, delighted by the strange answer, and something complicated twists in my chest.
She likes him.
Cazzo. She likes him already, and he's been here less than four hours, and I don't know if that makes me want to scream or cry or both.
At drop-off, I walk her to the gate like always. Kiss her forehead. Watch her disappear into the crowd of backpacks and lunchboxes, her purple backpack bobbing until I can't see it anymore..
When I turn around, Cole is leaning against the SUV, scanning the parking lot with quiet vigilance that should be comforting and instead makes me want to shake him until answers fall out.
Other parents glance at him. Look away. Something in his stillness warns them off.
"She's smart," he says when I return.
"I know."
"She asked if I was your boyfriend."
My step falters. "What did you tell her?"
"That I'm here to keep you both safe." His dark eyes meet mine. "Nothing more."
Nothing more. The words should reassure me. They don't.