Chapter 47
Princess
Two Years later
T he buzzing neon outside the window is the only thing that hasn’t given up on the night. It flickers red, blue, red again—like a bad pulse, steady and cheap.
I’ve paced the length of this shitty room seventeen times. I know because I counted.
We’ve been on the run for two years now. Francesca is sleeping in an old cot in the corner by the bed.
The carpet’s threadbare, the kind that burns if you kneel on it too long. The walls are jaundiced yellow, like they’ve soaked up years of cigarette smoke and secrets. A motel Bible sits on the bedside table—drawer half-open, like even God doesn’t want to be here.
Lucio’s not answering. I called twice. Texted once. That’s restraint for me.
I check the time again. 2:47. He was supposed to be back by midnight.
I chew the inside of my cheek and sit on the edge of the bed, but I only last a second before I’m back up, pacing again. The motel hums around me: a distant cough from the next room, a car pulling in, the mechanical wheeze of the A/C unit like it’s dying slowly.
Three goddamn hours.
I grip the windowsill and stare out into the parking lot. Nothing but shadows and a beat-up Impala that’s been there since we checked in. I squint at the shape moving across the lot. And then I see him.
Lucio.
He’s walking like he’s got nowhere to be. Calm. Unbothered. Like I haven’t been sitting in this dump stewing in my own fury and fear.
I unlock the door before he can knock and throw it open. “Where the hell have you been?”
He blinks, rain clinging to his lashes, hood pushed back. “Good evening to you too.”
“Don’t do that.” My voice cracks. “Don’t you dare pretend this is normal.”
He pushes past me into the room, dragging the chill in with him. “You done?”
“No,” I snap. “Not even close.”
He shrugs off his jacket and drops it on the chair. “Didn’t realize I needed to check in like a damn teenager. I was working.”
“You could’ve said that. A call. A text. Anything.”
He finally looks at me. Really looks. His jaw’s tight, hair damp from the rain, shirt clinging to him like he ran through a storm without stopping.
“I wasn’t playing around,” he says, voice low. “You need to learn some patience.”
I flinch like he slapped me. My arms cross over my chest automatically, like they can keep the words out.
“Patience? You left me here with nothing. No information. No protection. Just a half-broken lamp and a vending machine that doesn’t work.”
“You think I don’t know that?” he growls. “You think I don’t want to be in a fucking palace instead of this cockroach graveyard?”
“Then why aren’t you acting like it?”
He steps forward, eyes dark. “I’m out there making sure we survive. That we get a life after all this. And you’re in here...what? Taking inventory of motel flaws and writing me off?”
“You don’t get to gaslight me,” I say, voice rising. “Not when you disappear for hours without a word. You don’t get to make me feel like I’m crazy for caring.”
Silence. He breathes through his nose, fists clenched.
“I didn’t mean that,” he mutters.
“Yes, you did.”
“No, tesoro . I didn’t.”
The nickname lands somewhere between a wound and a balm.
I shake my head, arms trembling now. “You always do this. Shut down, act like you’re the only one carrying weight. Like I’m just…here.”
He swallows, chest rising. “You want the truth?”
“Yes.”
“I was meeting with a guy from the inside. Getting confirmation that Vegas is fractured worse than we thought. I’ve got three people who want my help putting it back together and a brother breathing down my neck for betraying the family. I’m not just juggling this for fun.”
I stare at him. The motel light flickers above us like it’s listening.
“I didn’t know,” I say quietly.
“I didn’t want you to,” he replies, just as soft. “Because if you did, you’d look at me the way you’re looking at me now: like I’m one mistake away from turning you in to them.”
I inhale sharply. “Lucio…”
He runs a hand through his hair and sits on the bed like he’s aged a decade in a day. “I didn’t ask for any of this. But I chose you. And I’d do it again.”
I want to tell him I’m scared. That I’ve spent every hour since New York waiting for him to regret me. That I don’t know what we are anymore when the dust settles.
But I don’t. Instead, I sit beside him, our knees touching, barely breathing.
“You smell like smoke,” I whisper.
He smiles faintly. “Had to burn a few bridges.”
I laugh, bitter and small. “You always do.”
Another silence, but it’s not empty this time. It’s full of all the words we can’t say. Finally, he reaches for my hand.
“I’m not going anywhere,” he murmurs.
“I wish I believed you,” I whisper.
His grip tightens. “Then I’ll prove it.”
I don’t look at him. Can’t. But I let him hold my hand.
Because despite everything—the chaos, the silence, the motel room we’re both too tired to hate—he came back.
The silence stretches—not thick this time, but loose, like it could fray apart at any second. I’m still holding his hand, and that’s saying something. My fingers tremble slightly against his, a tremble I hope he doesn’t feel. But of course, he does.
“You eaten?” he asks, voice rougher now.
I shake my head. “Didn’t feel like it.”
He nods once, pushes up from the bed, and walks to the little kitchenette like this is normal. Like we’re normal. Opens the mini fridge, rummages, finds a pack of yogurt and a stale granola bar.
“This all you bought?” he asks.
“No,” I say flatly. “There’s also half a bag of hot Cheetos and a soda that tastes like battery acid.”
He snorts—soft, involuntary. It’s the closest we’ve gotten to a truce all night.
He tosses me the granola bar, and I catch it mid-air, ripping it open with my teeth. It tastes like cardboard, but I eat it anyway. He leans against the counter, arms crossed now. Watching me.
“What?” I ask.
Lucio shrugs. “You just look like you haven’t slept in three years.”
“That’s funny,” I mutter. “Because I haven’t.”
I toss the wrapper onto the table, then stand up and cross to the window again. The curtains are thin, and beyond them the Vegas sky is turning gray—not dawn, but the kind of pre-morning where everything feels too still. Like the world’s holding its breath.
I don’t hear him move, but I feel him behind me.
“You’re scared,” he says.
“No shit.” I turn to face him. “You think I don’t have a right to be? You think hiding in motel rooms like we’re criminals makes me feel safe? I didn’t grow up like you, Lucio. I didn’t grow up expecting to be hunted.”
His expression doesn’t change, but something in his eyes flickers.
“You think I wanted this for you?” he says quietly.
“I don’t know what you want anymore,” I say, softer now.
“I want you,” he says with the kind of simplicity that makes my stomach drop. “I want this to work. I want a life. A real one.”
I blink at him. “Then why does it feel like you’re pushing me away every chance you get?”
He exhales hard, turns from me, and starts pacing—one, two, three steps before he turns back.
“Because I’m scared too,” he snaps. “Because every day, I wake up thinking this—us—is borrowed time. That one of these days, someone’s gonna drag me back and make me pay for all of it. And when they do, you’ll be standing right beside me. That’s what terrifies me.”
“You think that’s something I haven’t already accepted? You think I haven’t already decided you’re worth that risk?”
He stops pacing. “You never said that.”
I cross my arms, heart thudding against my ribs like it’s trying to break out. “Yeah, well, I didn’t think I had to.”
Lucio’s silent for a beat, then crosses the space between us in three steps and pulls me to him. Fast. Rough. Like if he hesitates, I’ll slip through his fingers.
“I’m sorry,” he breathes into my hair. “For being a dick. For disappearing. For all of it.”
I bury my face in his chest, pressing a fist against his ribs. “You keep saying that.”
“I mean it.”
“I know.”
We stand there, locked in the kind of embrace that feels like it could either anchor you or drown you. Outside, the wind rattles against the thin windowpane. He pulls back slightly, eyes searching mine.
“I didn’t just meet with some informant tonight,” he admits. “I went to check the new safehouse. South end of the city. We might need it if things keep going sideways.”
I blink. “You’re planning an exit strategy.”
“I’m planning for survival.”
“And you didn’t think I should know?”
“I was trying to protect you.”
I pull back completely, arms falling to my sides. “Lucio, I don’t need protection. I need partnership.”
He looks at me like I just slapped him. And maybe I did, but with the truth.
“You’re right,” he says after a long pause. “You’re absolutely right.”
For a second, I don’t believe he said it. Then he steps back, grabs his jacket, and tosses a burner phone onto the bed.
“That’s for the safehouse,” he says. “Only use it if I tell you to.”
I stare at the phone, then at him. “You’re not going to tell me where it is?”
“I will. Just not yet. If someone turns you—tortures you—I don’t want you giving it up without meaning to.”
“You really think I’d break?”
“No,” he says. “But I can’t take that chance.”
I hate that he’s right. I hate even more that he’s calm about it.
“Lucio…” I start.
He turns to me again, stepping close. “This life…it’s going to ask everything from us. It already has. But if we’re going to make it, really make it, we can’t do this halfway. I need you with me, Princess. Not just angry and brave and brilliant. I need you in it. All the way.”
My chest tightens.
“I am,” I whisper.
He kisses me then—not soft, not desperate. Solid. Anchored. Like we’re agreeing on something bigger than either of us. When he pulls away, we don’t say anything. Just let the silence settle like dust.
Then he walks over to the bed and drops onto it like a man who’s carried a world on his back all night, and pats the space beside him. “You coming?”