Chapter 5
Idon’t open my eyes right away. I catalog the sensation of waking in his bed first—the expensive sheets against bare skin, the weight of his arm across my waist, the solid heat of him pressed against my back.
His breathing is deep and even against my neck, and when I shift slightly, his arm tightens reflexively, pulling me closer even in sleep.
This is dangerous—more dangerous than the gun on his nightstand. This quiet intimacy, this perfect fit of our bodies, the way my own breathing has synced to match his. I've woken up next to men before, but never like this. Never feeling like I've found something I didn't know I was searching for.
His hand splays across my stomach, and I study it in the morning light—those fingers that have killed, that know exactly how to take apart a weapon or a person, now holding me with infinite gentleness.
There's a small scar across his knuckles I didn't notice last night.
I trace it with my fingertip, and his breathing changes.
"Don't stop," he murmurs against my hair, voice rough with sleep.
I continue mapping his hand with mine, learning each line and scar. "How long have you been awake?"
"Long enough to memorize how you feel against me." His lips brush my shoulder. "Long enough to think of forty different ways I want to wake you up tomorrow."
Tomorrow. The word hangs between us, impossible and perfect.
We both know there might not be a tomorrow, not like this.
The storm won't last forever. But right now, in this bed that smells like him and us and everything we did last night, I let myself pretend this is real.
That I could wake up every morning exactly like this.
"Turn around," he says softly.
I roll in his arms to face him, and the morning light catches on the scar across his chest. The jagged line runs from his collarbone to just above his heart, old and white against his olive skin.
My fingertips follow it gently. In the soft morning light, the perpetual tension in his jaw has relaxed.
Christmas morning. The realization hits me with unexpected force. It's Christmas, and I'm naked in bed with a Rosetti, his gun still on the nightstand beside his phone, loaded and ready. I trace another scar across his ribs.
The good girl in me whispers about ethics violations, about sleeping with the enemy, about careers destroyed. But the woman who's seen his restraint, who's felt him choose gentleness when violence would be easier, that woman understands this is bigger than law.
"Stop thinking so loud," he murmurs against my hair, voice rough with sleep and something darker.
"How do you know I'm thinking?"
"Your breathing changes. Gets shallow when your mind races." His hand slides up my spine, fingertips tracing each vertebra with possessive precision. "What's the verdict, counselor? Guilty or innocent?"
"Of what?"
"Whatever crime you're charging yourself with in that relentless head of yours."
I prop myself up on an elbow to look at him properly. His black eyes are already sharp despite just waking, already tracking the door, the window, scanning for threats even while holding me. "It's Christmas morning."
"So?"
"So… what does Christmas look like for you? Normally, I mean."
Something shutters in his expression, a wall slamming down. "It doesn't."
"Everyone has some kind of Christmas tradition. Even criminals."
His laugh is bitter. "Especially criminals. But not the kind you'd recognize."
I sit up, pulling the sheet with me though modesty seems pointless after last night. After the way he claimed every inch of me. "Well, we're changing that. Today you're getting a real Christmas morning. Starting with my grandmother's pancake recipe."
"Pancakes." He says it like a foreign word.
"Don't tell me the terrifying Tomas Rosetti doesn't know how to make pancakes."
"The terrifying Tomas Rosetti knows how to make people disappear. Pancakes weren't in the curriculum." But there's something vulnerable in his eyes, almost curious.
I slide out of bed, noting how his eyes track my movement, how his body tenses like he's fighting not to pull me back. I grab his shirt from the floor. "Lucky for you, I'm an excellent teacher."
In the kitchen, I pull flour from the pantry, eggs from the refrigerator, arranging ingredients on the marble counter like evidence for trial.
He watches from the doorway, wearing only low-slung sweatpants, that gun tucked at his waist even for breakfast. The juxtaposition of deadly weapon and domestic scene just feels like him. Like us.
Every few minutes, his gaze shifts to the windows, checking sightlines, watching for movement in the snow. Even in paradise, he's ready for war.
"First," I say, measuring flour into a bowl, "you need the dry ingredients. My grandmother always said the secret was in the ratios."
He moves behind me, arms bracketing me against the counter, his chest solid and warm against my back. "Show me."
I guide his hands through the measurements, trying to ignore how natural this feels, how right. His chin rests on my shoulder, but I can feel the tension in his body, the readiness for violence that never fully leaves him.
"Now you whisk the eggs," I say, cracking them into a separate bowl.
"I know how to handle eggs," he retorts.
"Oh really? Show me your technique then."
He reaches around me for the whisk, and I catch his wrist. There's a small scar there too, circular, like an old cigarette burn. The kind parents give children when they're angry. The kind that makes me want to hunt down everyone who ever hurt him.
"Tomas…"
"Don't." He pulls his hand back, but gently. "It's Christmas, remember? Your rules."
But I can't let it go. These scars are a map of violence I'm only beginning to read. "What was Christmas like? When you were young?"
His whole body goes rigid behind me. For a moment, I think he'll walk away, retreat into that cold distance he wears like armor. His hand moves to his gun, an unconscious tell when he's agitated.
"You want to know? Really?" His eyes turn dark, menacing. "Christmas was broken glass and blood."
He stops himself, jaw clenching. The muscle in his cheek ticks. I watch him fight with himself, watch him calculate whether to trust me with this. Snow slides off the roof with a soft whoosh, breaking the silence.
"Tell me," I whisper, turning in his arms. "Please."
The words come out like they're being torn from him. "Christmas was my mother crying in her bedroom while my father destroyed anything that looked like joy. It was learning to hide the presents relatives sent because he'd burn them to teach us that happiness was weakness."
My hands find his chest, feeling his heart race under my palm.
"It was fear," he continues, voice dropping to something lethal. "Every holiday, every celebration, just another excuse for him to remind us who held the power. Until I got big enough to fight back."
"How old were you?"
He turns away, but I catch his arm. He could break free easily, I've seen his strength, but he lets me hold him.
"How old, Tomas?"
"Sixteen." The word comes out sharp, brittle. "I was sixteen when I killed him."
The confession hangs between us like a loaded gun. Everything I was trained to believe wars inside me. The law says he's a murderer, guilty of patricide, first-degree murder. But my heart sees a boy who had no choice. How many cases did I prosecute where I ignored this kind of context?
"Tell me," I say softly.
"He had his hands around my mother's throat. Again. But that time…" His fists clench. "That time I could see he wasn't going to stop. So I got his gun. Three bullets to the chest. I watched him bleed out on our kitchen floor while my mother screamed."
The weight of his confession settles over us. Pine scent from yesterday's branch-gathering mixes with coffee and the promise of pancakes, such normal smells for such an abnormal moment.
"Your mother?"
"Alive. Safe. She lives in Italy now, far from all of this." His hands come up to cup my face, grip just tight enough to remind me of his strength. "She sends me Christmas cards every year. I never respond."
"Why not?"
"Because I'm the son who killed her husband. Who chose blood over fear. What kind of Christmas greeting covers that?"
My hands slide up to cover his, holding them against my face. "You were just a child. A child who did what he had to do to save his mother."
"I was a killer." His thumb traces my cheekbone with treacherous gentleness.
"You were a boy who deserved better. Who deserved Christmas mornings and pancake recipes and love that didn't come with bruises." My voice breaks on the words. "You're allowed to grieve the father you should have had, Tomas. The childhood that was stolen from you."
Something cracks in his expression, a fault line straight through his careful control. "Natalie…"
I press my palm against the scar on his chest—the one that runs closest to his heart. He covers my hand with his, and I feel his pulse racing beneath the old wound.
He kisses me then, different from last night's desperate hunger. This is gentle at first, almost reverent, like I'm something holy he doesn't deserve to touch. Then his hand fists in my hair, tilting my head back, and the kiss turns possessive, claiming.
"Say it," he demands against my lips. "Say you choose this. Choose me, knowing what I am."
"I choose you," I gasp. "Not the story they tell about you, not the reputation or the violence. You. The man who quotes philosophy and does crosswords and saved my life even though I was hunting your family."
"You can't mean that."
"Watch me."
I take his hand, lead him to the living room where last night's fire has died to embers.
Morning light streams through the windows, painting everything golden and soft.
I pull him down onto the thick rug, the same one where I nearly died, where he brought me back to life.
His gun clatters to the floor beside us, forgotten for once.