21. Lorenzo
LORENZO
The last signatures are already dry by the time dinner is served.
The doors of the dining hall are closed, locking in the scent of roasted lamb, espresso, tobacco, and the expensive cologne of men who have spent their lives making others nervous.
Documents are gone from the table now. In their place sit crystal glasses, open bottles of Barolo, and silver trays of food nobody rushes to touch. Nothing is being rushed here.
I sit at the head, listening more than speaking. Everything that mattered has already been agreed upon: crude oil operations in the Mediterranean, container ports along the Adriatic, shipping routes through North Africa, and political favours traded with clean hands and dirty accounts.
Millions moved tonight without a single bank mentioning the word “crime.”
That is what occupied this room. Not meth. Not once.
The labs, the chemists, the routes, the men who move pure product across borders under names that do not exist—that belongs to me alone. The Italian families have their traditions, their councils, their old pride. They can keep all of it. This part is mine, and it needs no vote or percentage.
Then the double doors open.
Victoria walks in.
The shift in the room is small, but I catch it.
A fork pauses halfway to a plate. A man from Palermo forgets the end of his sentence.
I chose that black gown because I thought it would suit her.
Now, I watch the silk move with her body—dark against her skin, quiet enough to be dangerous.
It does not beg for attention; it takes it.
Rocco escorts her in, one careful step behind. She walks with that calm face she uses when she wants everyone to believe she feels nothing.
Victoria was supposed to be a complication I could manage.
A runaway bride. A problem carrying information too valuable to ignore and enemies too dangerous to send away.
I gave her a place in my world because it made sense.
Because she was useful.
Because keeping her close was smarter than letting someone else find her first.
That is what I have told myself from the beginning.
She was never supposed to be a distraction.
Tonight, the lie tastes bitter.
Her eyes move across the table, past the old men and the burning cigars, until she finds me. For half a second, her mouth softens. Not a full smile, but a fracture in her armour.
I keep my hand tight around my glass and do not move. A man beside me speaks. I miss every word.
Victoria takes a seat lower down the table. She folds her hands in her lap, refuses the wine poured for her, and sits quietly while the room studies her and pretends not to.
I notice every man who looks too long. I tell myself it is because I remember faces. I tell myself it is because she is my responsibility. Another lie.
She looks away first.
Later, when I catch her glance again, she does the same.
An hour passes.
Guests move between conversations. Wine is poured. Stories are repeated.
I find myself near Victoria more than once.
A brief question and a quiet comment.
Nothing anyone would notice, or I should notice either.
Yet every time I walk away, I am aware of exactly where she is.
I stand near the limestone fireplace, speaking with two men from Milan about the Genoa docks, when a woman’s voice reaches me.
“Ancora vivo.” Still alive.
I turn. Bianca Moretti stands beside me.
I have not seen her in nearly a year. Dressed in emerald velvet, her dark hair swept back, she carries the kind of grief that long ago turned into taste and discipline.
After her husband’s death, men expected her to sell his territory. Instead, she doubled it.
“You sound disappointed,” I say.
Bianca smiles, placing her fingers lightly on my sleeve. “I had a speech prepared for your funeral.”
“It would have been boring.”
“It would have been magnificent.”
She leans closer to speak over the noise, her Italian quick and polished as she details a customs official in Genoa who is becoming expensive. It is business wrapped in old acquaintance. Nothing more.
But when I glance across the room, I find Victoria standing near the windows. Alone.
Her hands are clasped in front of her—too tightly, a look that shows disbelief. A waiter offers her a glass; she refuses without looking at him. Then she looks toward me.
Not at my face. At Bianca’s hand resting on my arm.
By the time her eyes lift to mine, the warmth from earlier is completely gone. She turns on her heel and exits toward the corridor.
I excuse myself immediately. Bianca follows my gaze, her smile shifting into something entirely too knowing. “Go, Lorenzo.”
I leave her by the fireplace and cross the room, passing empty chairs and half-finished wine. By the time I reach the marble hallway, Victoria is several steps ahead, the black silk of her gown whispering against the stone.
“Victoria.”
She keeps walking.
“Victoria.”
This time, she stops. Slowly, she turns. Her face is calm, but her chin lifts in that small defiance that has become entirely too necessary to me.
“Are you leaving?” I ask.
“Yes.”
“You didn’t say goodbye.”
“I didn’t think I needed permission.”
“I didn’t ask for permission.”
“No,” she says, her voice clipping the edge of the quiet hallway. “You rarely ask for anything. You just take.”
I step closer, narrowing the distance until I can smell the faint scent of vanilla on her skin. “What happened in there?”
“Nothing.”
I let out a low, breathy sound, nearly a smile. Her eyes instantly narrow.
“Do not do that,” she snaps. “Do not look amused.”
“I am not amused, Victoria.”
“Your evening seemed occupied enough,” she says, the words slipping out before she can stop them. She catches herself, but it’s too late.
It is there, careful and wounded, though she would rather bite her own tongue than admit it.
“My guest?” I ask, testing the weight of it. “Bianca.”
“I did not ask her name.”
“No, you only watched her touch me.”
Her eyes flash with a sudden, brilliant anger. She looks away too quickly, her chest rising and falling.
My breath changes before I can prevent it. The realisation lands heavy and warm in my chest: She is jealous. For once, Victoria is not standing behind that cold little wall she builds around herself. For once, she has shown me the cost of seeing another woman near me.
“Bianca’s husband was close to my family,” I say, my voice dropping an octave. “She handles northern logistics now. It is strictly business.”
“That is none of my concern.”
“It bothered you.”
“No.”
“Victoria.”
“It didn’t.”
“You are lying to me.”
Her laugh is small, sharp, and bitter. “Men touch women in that room all night. Everyone pretends it means nothing until it does. I know what I am to you, Lorenzo. You don’t need to explain your business partners to your staff.”
The word staff tastes like ash.
I close the remaining distance between us. She steps back, an instinctual retreat, until her shoulder meets the cold marble wall.
“What’s on your mind? Bianca is a lover of mine? I ask, crowding her space until she has nowhere to look but at me.
Victoria’s throat moves when she swallows. “I don’t care.”
“Look at me and say it again.”
She lifts her eyes. Her breathing is ragged now. Mine is not much better.
“I want to leave,” she says, but the words have no strength behind them.
“Not yet.”
“You don’t get to decide that.”
“No.”
I raise my hand slowly, giving her every opportunity to pull away, to strike me, to stop me. She doesn’t. My fingers brush her chin, tilting her face up. Her skin is burning hot against my knuckles.
“I decide very little when it comes to you,” I murmur.
Her gaze drops to my mouth, then returns to my eyes. That small, desperate movement undoes me more effectively than any confession could.
I lean in. She does not turn away.
The kiss begins with restraint. A breath. A pause. Her lips beneath mine are still at first, hesitant, testing the heat. Then her hand fist into the fabric of my jacket, pulling me down.
That is all it takes.
I wrap my hand around her waist, crushing her against me, and the quiet breaks.
She kisses me with the anger still inside her, with the hurt, with the part of herself she keeps trying to deny.
I feel all of it in the frantic pressure of her fingers at my chest, in the way she pulls me closer and then resists, only to pull me back in deeper.
The corridor disappears. The house, the dinner, the men, Bianca—all of it drops away until there is only the heat of her mouth and the wrecked, low sound she makes when I deepen the kiss, my tongue sliding past her lips.
It is not soft. It is weeks of silence, suspicion, and starvation finally breaking.
My hand moves to her face, my thumb tracing her cheekbone. She leans into it for half a second—and half a second is enough to ruin me.
Then, she plants her hands against my chest and pushes me back. Hard.
I let her.
Victoria stands against the wall, breathing quickly, her lips parted and swollen, her eyes bright with tears she refuses to let fall.
“No.”
I do not move, my own breath ragged, my blood roaring in my ears.
She shakes her head, her hands trembling as she smooths down the wrinkled silk of her gown.
“No. I am not one of those women in there. I am the girl you took because she saw too much. I am the asset you keep on a leash.”
“Victoria, stop.”
“I won’t sit at your table waiting for you to finish your conversations with widows and daughters who know exactly where to put their hands,” she says, her voice shaking but holding a lethal, quiet steel. She looks me dead in the eye, stripping away every piece of leverage I have.
“If I am just a possession to you, Lorenzo, then put me in a cage. But stop pretending I have a choice in how you break me.”
The words hit well. The silence between us grows heavier, suffocating.
For once, I have no answer ready.
Victoria straightens the front of her gown with unsteady hands, as though that can erase what just happened.
“Take me back to my room,” she whispers, turning her face away so I won’t see the tear that finally escapes. “And leave me there.”
She turns before I can reach for her again. This time, I let her go.
I stand alone in the corridor and watch the black silk move away from me, swallowed by the shadows at the end of the hall.
Behind me, the dining room still smells of wine, smoke, and old money. The meeting tonight was simple. Men arrived with demands. I gave answers. They left knowing exactly where they stood.
I control men. I sit across from men who control ports, judges, and shipments crossing half the world, and I know what everyone of them wants before they open their mouths.
But the woman walking away from me leaves me with nothing but questions. And tonight, I do not know how to win.