Chapter 17 Marcello
Marcello
My fingers brushed Samira’s wrist.
It was nothing. Barely a touch. Meant to guide her, not take. Careful and controlled.
She recoiled like I’d burned her.
The reaction was instant—violent in its restraint. Her arm snapped back, her breath vanished, her whole body locking in on itself like a trap springing shut. The air around her thickened, panic rolling off her in waves I could feel from where I stood.
I knew then.
Not what had happened. But that something had.
“I’m sorry.”
The words were out before I’d even finished thinking them. Instinctual.
“I won’t touch you,” I added, steady and firm. “I should have asked.”
The moment stretched.
Then I felt it shift—the tension cracking, the past loosening its grip on her just enough to let her breathe again. She was shaking. Strained but contained. Like someone used to surviving everything alone.
She nodded.
She didn’t need to speak for me to understand what it meant.
For once, when her body revolted, someone had listened.
“I’m going to feed you now,” I told her, my tone steady.
She shook her head.
I took it for refusal. Fear. Control slipping through her fingers.
“You have to eat.”
Her frustration showed in the sharp movement of her head. Then she lifted her wrist and gestured for the pen.
I placed the tablet in one hand, the stylus in the other, watching the careful way she anchored herself before writing. When she finished, she held it up to me.
Tone.
The name landed heavier than it should have.
“Tone,” I repeated softly. “Tone had to step out for an appointment she couldn’t cancel. She’ll be back soon.”
Her shoulders eased just a fraction—but not enough.
“But you still need to eat,” I added.
That was when it hit me.
I hadn’t understood what Tone’s absence would do to her.
Tone Moretti wasn’t just my cousin—she was my anchor to something resembling normal.
The only woman born into a family that made monsters like it was a sport.
Her mother and mine were sisters. Raze—her brother—was the worst of us.
The kind of man people whispered about. The kind who smiled before he blew something up.
And then there was De Marco. The forgotten one. The black sheep. He’d walked away years ago after a blowout with his father and vanished like the world had swallowed him whole. No calls. No sightings. Just vanished.
Tone had survived all of them.
She was calm where the rest of us were violent. Steady where we were ruin. She made spaces feel safer just by standing in them—and Samira had felt it too.
That comfort wasn’t accidental. And I’d taken it away.
I looked at Samira again, really looked. Blind. Voiceless. Clutching a name like it was a lifeline.
Letting her into my world had been a decision made too fast, too instinctive. Now I was seeing the cost of it—not in blood or retaliation, but in this fragile trust she’d placed in the only woman here who didn’t terrify her.
I lowered my voice. “She’ll be back. I promise.”
I didn’t know if promises meant anything to her. But I was starting to understand just how careful I was going to have to be—with her, with Tone, and with the world I’d dragged her into without asking.
I fed her slowly.
Not because she asked me to. But because rushing felt like another violation. I kept my movements deliberate, careful, watching the way her throat worked as she swallowed, the pause she took before each spoonful. The soundless decision she made every time the metal touched her lips.
She didn’t flinch. She didn’t pull away. She trusted. And that kind of trust—given this easily, this soon—was fragile. Almost reckless.
I’d already fractured enough of it. I wouldn’t be the one to shatter what was left.
When she finished, I set the bowl aside and waited. I watched her breathe, watched the tension in her shoulders ease by degrees, like her body was learning the room the way a wounded animal learned new ground.
When she finished eating, she didn’t push the bowl away.
She sat there with her hands folded in her lap, spine straight, waiting. Not resting. Waiting—like she expected to be told what came next.
“You can relax,” I said.
She nodded, but nothing in her posture changed.
After a moment, she lifted her wrist and tilted it slightly. The tablet. I brought it to her and placed the stylus between her fingers, guiding her hand just enough that she knew where she was.
She paused before she started to write. When she did, it was careful. Deliberate.
I must be keeping you from your work.
The words sat there longer than they should have.
“No.” My voice was immediate. Too fast. I reined it in. “You’re not.”
She wrote again.
You don’t have to stay.
I leaned back in the chair across from her, keeping my voice level. “I do.”
That earned a pause. A longer one.
Her fingers moved again.
I can sit quietly. I won’t be in the way.
There it was. The training. The survival instinct that told her safety came from being small.
“You’re not a burden,” I assured her. “And you’re not interrupting anything.”
She didn’t respond right away. When she did, the letters were smaller.
I don’t need much.
“I know. That doesn’t mean you don’t deserve more.”
She swallowed. I saw it in the way her throat worked.
Tone is kind.
The honesty surprised me.
“She is,” I agreed. “She’s also not always here.”
Her grip tightened around the stylus.
I make people uncomfortable.
“You don’t.” I swallowed past the thick lump in my throat.
She tilted her head, listening—not convinced.
“You make people confront things they’d rather ignore,” I corrected. “That’s not the same thing.”
She absorbed that thoughtfully.
Will I have to leave soon?
There was no fear in the question. Just expectation.
“No,” I said. “Not until you’re ready.”
Her shoulders dropped, just a fraction. Enough for me to notice.
She wrote again.
Thank you for the food.
I nodded. “You’re welcome.”
And for waiting.
“I wasn’t waiting. I was staying.”
That earned a stillness I didn’t interrupt. After a moment, she wrote one last line.
You don’t have to keep watch.
I didn’t move.
“I know,” I said. “I want to.”
She lowered the tablet slowly, fingers resting on it like it anchored her to the room.
She shifted—subtle, but intentional. Not curling inward. Not shrinking. Just existing.
I stayed where I was. Close enough that she could hear my breathing. Far enough that she didn’t have to feel me.
Because she wasn’t asking for protection. She was asking not to be an inconvenience. And that told me everything I needed to know about the life she’d lived.
So I stayed. Not as a guard. But as proof she didn’t have to disappear to be allowed to stay.