Chapter 28
Chapter Twenty Eight
Vito
July.
Three months.
The deadline.
The reason I brought her here.
It sounds ridiculous now that it’s out in the open. Worse than ridiculous. Desperate. Small. Like some overgrown teenager panicking over a school deadline instead of a man with blood on his hands and a future waiting for him, whether he wants it or not.
I glance at her.
There’s no triumph in her face. No got you. Just that same infuriating, compassionate certainty that makes me want to tell her everything and nothing at the same time.
I laugh once to try to ease the tension. “You make it sound like I kidnapped you because I got into graduate school.”
Her eyebrows lift slightly. “No. I make it sound like you kidnapped me because you’re terrified of what saying yes would mean.”
That hits me right in the gut.
Hard enough that I go still.
I can feel the warmth of her body under the sheet, the weight of her hand on my face, and beneath all of it the sick, familiar pressure of being seen too clearly.
I hate it.
I want more of it.
“What if I say no?” I ask.
“That’s a choice.”
I give her a look.
“You’re very good at making both options sound unpleasant.”
She almost smiles. “I'm just bringing them into the light.”
I scrub a hand over my face and stare up at the ceiling. “You don’t get it.”
“Then tell me.”
I shake my head once. “It’s not the same thing as Rutgers.”
She waits.
Rutgers had been manageable because I made it manageable. Because it was close enough to lie about. Because I could drive there when I needed to and be back the same day. Because I could fit it inside the life everyone already thought I was living.
I say, “Rutgers was two hours away. Carnegie Mellon isn’t.”
She doesn’t interrupt.
“It’s hours away. Different state. Different setup. I can’t just get in the car, disappear for a few hours, and come back with some bullshit explanation.” I look at her. “It’s not something I can hide.”
“There’s an online program,” she says.
I nod once. “Hybrid. Intense. And longer. I still can't hide it.”
“You've done a lot of research on this.”
Of course I have.
I’ve looked at schedules, formats, calendars, requirements.
I know exactly how long the online option takes and exactly how much harder it would be to make it fit.
I know because I’ve gone down the rabbit hole too many nights in a row, staring at the screen as if having enough information might somehow turn into courage.
“It’ll take longer than the in-person one,” I say. “And even then, I’d still have to explain things. Travel. Time. Why I’m disappearing. Why I’m suddenly not available when everyone expects me to be.”
“So explain it.”
I turn back to her sharply. “What?”
“Tell them the truth.”
The words are so simple, so direct, that for a second, I just stare at her.
Then I laugh again, sharper this time.
She doesn’t flinch.
“You say that like it’s nothing.”
“It’s the obvious answer.”
“It’s not obvious.”
“Why not?”
Because it just isn’t.
Because they see me one way, and that way doesn’t include lecture halls or case studies or graduate seminars or any of the other things I have spent years wanting in secret.
Because once something becomes fixed in my family, it calcifies. It stops being one part of you and becomes the lens everything else gets filtered through. Because if I tell them, I don’t just risk disagreement. I risk ridicule.
The problem is that I know all of that intellectually, but still have trouble putting it into words.
“I can’t,” I say.
Her hand drops from my jaw to the bed between us. “Why not?”
“I just can’t.”
“Vito.”
I hate the tone. Gentle and patient. Like she already knows this is the point where I want to shut down and is trying to keep me from doing it without pushing so hard I bolt.
“I don’t know how to explain it,” I say.
“That’s not the same as impossible.”
I turn onto my side to face her fully now, propped on one elbow, because lying on my back beneath her gaze feels too much like surrender.
She doesn’t move away.
Her hair is still sleep-tangled. Her face is open. Blue eyes fixed on me with that combination of intelligence and softness that I still don’t know how to survive.
I say, “They see me a certain way.”
“And?”
“And that way is not a college-educated business graduate.”
She says nothing.
So I keep going, because now that I’ve started, I can feel the rest of it clawing its way up, whether I want it to or not.
“It was easy with Caterina,” I say. “School made sense for her. It fit. She’s smart, sharp, organized, ambitious in the right kind of way. Nobody blinked when she went off and built something with that.”
Teresa’s expression shifts slightly, but she lets me talk.
“Hell,” I say, “nobody would bat an eye if Nico suddenly decided he wanted to take classes. That would just become another interesting thing about Nico. Another angle.”
“And you?”
I look away for one beat and then back.
“And me,” I say, “I’m not that.”
And because I can’t help myself, more words spill out. “I’m good for nothing but finding the right man for the job, following my father’s orders, and kidnappings.”
The words feel ugly between us.
They sound worse out loud than they did in my head.
That’s saying something because they were ugly in there.
Teresa’s mouth parts slightly, but she doesn’t interrupt.
“That’s it,” I say, heated. “That’s what I do.
That’s what I’ve always done. I’m useful because I know who to call, where to go, who can handle what, who needs to be dealt with.
I’m useful because I can break something when it needs breaking.
” My jaw tightens. “And I am good at it. I know that. I’m not pretending otherwise. ”
Her eyes stay on mine.
“But it’s all they see,” I finish.
The room goes quiet again.
Except the blood rushing in my ears.
And because she’s Teresa, because apparently, she is constitutionally incapable of leaving anything painful untouched once it’s in the open, she says, “Who is ‘they’?”
I almost roll my eyes.
“Come on.”
“No.” Her voice stays calm. “Who is ‘they’?”
I look at the ceiling again, then back at her.
“My father,” I say first.
That one is obvious.
She nods once, encouraging without saying a word.
“Some of the men.”
“Giovanni?”
I don’t answer quickly enough.
Her eyes sharpen.
“Not Giovanni exactly,” I say.
“Meaning?”
I hate this part.
Because the truth is messier than resentment and therefore harder to hold onto.
“Meaning Giovanni is not who I’m talking about.”
“Okay, so why not tell him? Start there.”
“Because if Giovanni ends up thinking it was a good idea, then I’d have to deal with the fact that maybe I could have told him all along.”
I did not intend for those words to come out, and go silent immediately in defense.
Teresa watches me very carefully now.
“So part of this is shame,” she says.
I bristle immediately. “No.”
Her brows lift. “No?”
“No.”
“Then what?”
I sit up, suddenly too restless to stay lying down. The sheet drops to my waist, and I scrub both hands over my face.
“It’s not shame.”
“Then what is it?”
I turn back to her, irritated all over again. “I don’t know.”
She sits up too, not backing down an inch.
“Yes, you do.”
I let out a breath and look away toward the windows.
Maybe I do.
Maybe I just don’t like the answer.
The truth is, I don’t know if I can handle it.
Not the logistics. Not the work. Not even the distance, though all of that is real enough.
I don’t know if I can handle the mocking tone I can already hear in my head.
The laughter. The disbelief disguised as amusement.
The look on my father’s face if I say the words out loud.
You want what?
You think you’re what?
Carnegie Mellon?
I can take bullets. Knives. Fists. Bad odds. Bad men.
I don’t know if I can take being looked at like I’ve finally lost my mind for wanting more than the role I was assigned.
And she sees that too.
Of course she does.
Her expression softens—not with pity, thank God, but with that terrible understanding that gets into places I’d rather keep locked.
“It embarrasses you,” she says quietly.
I don’t answer. I don’t have to.
The silence does it for me.
She says it more carefully the second time. “Not because the degree itself is embarrassing. Because it doesn’t fit the version of you they’ve been using for years.”
My mouth tightens.
“That’s not—”
“It’s exactly what you just described.”
I let out a sharp breath through my nose.
I hate when she’s right.
I hate it even more when she’s right about things I haven’t let myself say clearly.
Teresa shifts closer under the sheet, a comforting pressure against my side.
“Vito,” she says, “what if the reason it feels impossible is because you’re imagining their reaction as a verdict instead of just a reaction?”
I look at her.
“That sounds like psychologist bullshit.”
“It probably does.”
That almost gets me.
She keeps going anyway. “But think about what you’re actually saying. You’re not telling me you don’t want to go. You’re telling me you can’t bear the version of yourself that might exist if you admit that you do.”
I stare at her.
For a second, all I can do is stare.
Because she just said it more clearly than I’ve been able to think it.
Then I shake my head once. “You make it sound like I care too much what they think.”
“You do.”
The answer is immediate.
And it pisses me off immediately.
“No, I don’t.”
She just looks at me.
No drama. No argument. Just that look.
And because it is her, because she doesn’t need to raise her voice or corner me physically to make her point, I hear the weakness in my own denial even as I say it.
Of course, I care what they think.
I care what my father thinks.
What Giovanni thinks.
What they all see when they look at me.
Not because I’m weak.
Because those looks have helped build me.
Or boxed me in.
Maybe both.
I drop my gaze to my hands.
“They already think I’m a problem,” I say.
Teresa’s voice drops a little. “You’re not.”
Emotion clogs my throat. Hearing those words from her is almost a physical blow. Something I've been wanting to hear my entire life.
“I am,” I say, my voice rough. “You don't know me.”
“Yes,” she says. “I do.”
I shake my head. “I am. I always have been.”
“Who said that?”
When I don't answer, she says, "Your father."
I don’t correct her.
I glance back up at her, and the words come faster now, sharper. “You know how many times I’ve heard I’m too impulsive? Too quick to anger? Too hard to handle? That’s the story. That’s the role. I’m the risk they have to manage. The point is they know what to expect from me. They know where I fit.”
“And college and graduate school don’t fit.”
“No.”
The word comes out too fast.
Then she says, “Maybe that’s exactly why it matters.”
I look back up at her.
She’s leaning into me, one hand resting on my arm. Morning light catches in her hair, in her eyes, in the soft seriousness of her face. She’s beautiful, obviously. I’m aware of that every second.
But this… this is the version of her that gets me in other ways. The one who sees the wound and keeps her hand near it without jabbing a finger in just for the hell of it.
She says, “You keep talking about fit as if your life is a slot and you either force yourself into it or break. But that's not how it works. Your life is what you make it, not what other people have decided it is.”
She continues before I can speak. “Yes, even your life, Vito. You have choices too.”
I shake my head, but something in me eases despite myself.
Then she ruins it by adding, “You got into Carnegie Mellon.”
I groan and drag a hand over my face. “Don’t.”
“Why not?”
“Because you say it like it’s some miraculous thing.”
“Well, it is a big thing.”
“Not here.”
“No,” she says. “Maybe not here. But outside the little prison in your head about what kind of man you’re allowed to be? It absolutely is.”
I look at her over my hand.
“You know,” I say, “that’s a hell of a sentence to say to the guy who literally kidnapped you.”
Her mouth twitches.
Briefly.
“See? That. That right there,” she says. “You do that every time.”
“Do what?”
“You make yourself smaller by making yourself seem worse than you are.”
That one hits me harder than I expected.
I can tell by how fast my face goes still.
She sees that too, but she doesn’t back off.
“You drag the conversation back to the most brutal or ugly thing about you,” she says, “because if you define yourself by that first, then nobody can do it for you.”
For a second, neither of us says anything.
The only sound is the sea.
And my own pulse.
And the low, sick feeling of another truth dropping into place.
I don’t have a comeback for that one. I don’t even have a dodge.
So instead, I look away and say the only thing that comes to mind.
“You make everything exhausting.”
“I’m aware.”
That gets me smiling despite myself. Just barely.
Then the smile is gone again, and the real thing is back between us.
I say, “It doesn’t matter anyway.”
Her brows draw together immediately. “Why?”
“Because even if I wanted to go—”
“You do.”
I ignore that.
“—it changes things.”
“Yes.”
“You say that like it’s not a reason not to.”
She looks at me for a long second.
Then: “No. I say it like that’s what choices do— they change things.”
I hate that answer too.
Because it leaves no room for the fantasy that maybe adulthood is supposed to hand you the right path neatly lit, with all the collateral damage labeled and manageable.
“What if I choose wrong?” I ask.
She studies me.
“But what if staying is the wrong choice?” she says quietly.