Chapter 4
CHAPTER FOUR
ALESSIO
You don’t fuck a woman the way I fucked Lucia and expect to recover in the morning.
You don’t hold her face like it’s the last living thing, or bury your hand in her hair until she’s writhing and scratched up and folded around you like a fevered prayer, and then watch her button her coat at the door with shaking fingers and think, Yes, she’ll disappear quietly and I’ll remember only the heat.
No, you hold something even if it’s just the outline of her teeth in your shoulder, which is what I see when I stumble to the bathroom at five, chest still aching and eyes raw with the effort of not chasing her into the elevator.
It’s a good bite mark. She’s left a perfect half-moon right above the clavicle. I trace it, already missing her, already calculating how long she’ll stay away before the pull snaps her back.
I’m not an optimist, not by trade or habit. But there are some things my gut has never been wrong about, and this is one of them: she will return.
We are inevitable.
I make myself a double espresso and stand at the penthouse window, staring east, where the city is pink-silver and so grotesquely beautiful I want to punch through it.
My world is falling apart in a thousand little ways—Bruno skipping classes, Carina is trying my patience, there are Russians moving guns through Brighton, Enzo throwing tantrums in back rooms over menial insults—but none of it registers.
She’s the splinter under my fingernail, and all I can do is pick at it, waiting for the pain to become relief.
The doorbell rings at seven. I don’t answer it; I’m not expecting her yet. The girl is impulsive but not careless, not after the way she ran last night. She has pride. I appreciate that, almost as much as I hate it.
At eight, Enzo comes by. He’s wearing the same suit he wore yesterday—he gets them custom-made from a guy in Little Italy who owes me three favors—and holding two paper bags.
One emits the sharp medicinal scent of fried garlic, and the other is bristling with pill packs.
For the hangover, he says, but I know better.
My cousin is always preparing for war, even when he denies the existence of battle. It’s what makes him valuable.
“Did you hear from her?” he asks, without sitting down, eyes scanning the kitchen for signs of intrusion.
“She left,” I say. “Around five. She was in a hurry.”
He grins. “She must have been good.”
I ignore the provocation and swallow my coffee in one punishing gulp. My head feels hollowed out, as if last night’s hunger burned away something fundamental, leaving a raw echo I can’t fill.
Enzo’s eyes prowl over my shoulder. “You going to call her, or—?”
“She’ll come back.” I sound delusional. I know. I don’t care. “They always do.”
He cocks his head, not sarcastic, just measuring. “What makes her different?”
I show him my shoulder. He laughs, all teeth. "Got you good, huh?"
"She left a mark," I say, and something in my chest twists like a screw.
After Enzo leaves, I call my driver and instruct him to wait outside her apartment. Then I call someone else—the guy I keep for background, surveillance, the boring shit. His name is Mickey, and he’s exactly as dangerous as a paper cut unless you’re the one being bled.
I give Mickey her name and tell him to be quick. I want to know whether she's going to work today, whether she's calling anyone, whether she’s being followed, and whether she’s safe.
I want to protect her, which is the stupidest thing I have ever wanted, but there it is: the urge to fold her inside me and keep her from the weather.
Hours pass. I drink another espresso and then a whiskey. The city never stops lurching, but my penthouse is still, cathedral-quiet. I play a record, but it’s too loud, too hopeful, so I pull it off and let the silence snap shut around me.
At noon, Mickey calls back. "She's not at work."
"Anyone visit?"
"Negative. She ordered DoorDash once." He hesitates. "I think it was a burger."
I freeze. My jaw goes hard. "Delivered by?"
"Some kid on a bike. Didn't even make it past the lobby. Doorman took it up."
"What else?"
"She hasn't left. Blinds drawn. TV's on—I can see the light changing through the curtains."
I exhale slowly. "Keep watching."
Mickey hesitates. "How long do you want me there? She's not exactly—"
“No. Watch her.”
She’s already restless. Good. It’ll drive her back to me faster.
I can’t help but imagine the worst possible scenario—another man visiting her, sitting near her on the couch.
He'd be close enough to smell her perfume, close enough to notice the faint bruising on her wrist where my hand closed.
The very possibility makes my skin burn with animal heat.
Not jealousy—no, something older and meaner.
A need to destroy what threatens what's mine, even if she's not mine yet.
This is what I’ve always resented about my father: the way he could walk away from a wound and pretend it never happened. I am built wrong for that. I linger, I fester.
I refrain from following her today. Instead, I work.
I see Bruno, who is sheepish and withdrawn, but doesn’t resist when I ask him to help with inventory at the warehouse.
I go to Mass with my mother on Thursday, sitting in the last pew with my hands locked in prayer, though God and I stopped being on speaking terms when I buried my little sister.
I sleep in short, fractured stretches, abuzz with anticipation, like a gun cocked and waiting for the trigger.
Three days. That’s how long I make it before my patience cracks.
Mickey's been feeding me the routine: She leaves her apartment at 11 am to meet her mother for brunch at some pastel-colored bistro on 23rd.
Mondays, she takes the 6 train to Bleeker, stops at Saks for exactly twenty-seven minutes, then walks four blocks to her office in a renovated brownstone in Soho.
On Wednesdays, she picks up Thai food on her way home—always the same order from the same place.
Leaves work at 4:59, always with her phone in her hand, usually texting her father, whose check-ins come at an inhumanly precise interval of every 6. 75 hours.
No friends. No habits outside of work and home. Not a single fuckin’ vice. It’s almost eerie.
But on the third day, the pattern breaks. At 4:32 pm, Mickey calls and says, “She’s at a cafe. West 11th and Hudson. Not alone.”
The second he says it, cold floods my spine. “Who is he?”
“Thin, lopsided hair. It's an expensive jacket, but it looks like he stole it from his dad. Early thirties, maybe? They’re talking closely.”
I snap. “Send me a picture.”
Mickey texts one blurry shot. I zoom in, hard.
The guy isn’t touching her, but he could—he’s close enough to reach across and brush her cheek, or tilt her chin the way I did.
Under the table, his leg is angled toward hers.
He laughs, low, and she curls in, head bowed, brown-black hair falling in her eyes.
I don’t recognize him. That bothers me more than it should.
I call Enzo. “Get the car,” I say. “Now.”
The air outside the cafe is sharpened by mid-November cold. I stand in shadow, just around the corner, watching them through rain-streaked glass.
She’s biting her lip, listening hard. He’s talking quickly, nervously, like he’s selling her something urgent.
I want to go in. I want to grip him by the back of the neck and introduce his teeth to the curb. I want to drag her out, arms tight behind her back, and remind her what it means to be chosen.
But I play it slow. I want to see how she moves without me.
She smiles politely at the man, but the smile doesn’t reach her eyes.
She pulls her hand away when he reaches for it.
Soon, she stands and shrugs into her coat.
He says something that makes her freeze for half a second, then she laughs—sweet but forced, the kind she gave to me when I first slid into her booth at Basilio’s. She leaves alone.
He stays behind, staring after her like a lost dog.
I wait until the block clears, then I step into her path. “Lucia,” I say, low and quiet.
Startled, she blinks at me, cheeks already wind-chapped. Her mouth moves before her brain catches up. “Alessio. You—what are you—?”
I cut her off. “Get in the car.”
She gapes at me, offended but not truly. “No. I have to be—wait, are you following me?”
“Always,” I say. I open the back door. “Get in.”
She stands there, clutching her phone like a knife.
I lower my voice, softer than I feel. “It’s important. Please.”
That does it. She slides past me and into the back seat, legs folding primly under her. I climb in after, shutting the door hard enough to rattle the glass.
She looks at me, furious and trembling. “You can’t just—”
“Who was he?” I ask.
She snorts, shaking her head. “A friend.”
I know when someone’s lying. She’s not. She believes it, whatever else is happening. “Does he matter?”
She hesitates, then: “He has a crush on me.” Her voice is so quiet, I only hear it because I’m leaning into her space.
I stare at her. “Do you have feelings for him?”
She laughs again, shocked and bitter. “No. He’s… safe.”
She looks out the window, arms locked across her chest. “Maybe that’s what I want. Maybe I don’t want a man who burns things down to watch it light up.”
I let the words hang between us, heavy as a brick.
The truth is, I have never been safe for anyone. I am not built for that kind of goodness, that kind of patience. I have never once loved gently, and I’m not about to start now.
She tries to open the car door, but I catch her wrist, thumb pressing into the pulse that races there. “Don’t,” I say.
She yanks free, but I see her flinch, and I am instantly sorry, even as the anger rises. “Look at me, Lucia.”
She avoids me, stubborn to the end, face pressed to the blacked-out glass.
But I feel the tension in her, the whole body-rigidity that means something’s about to break; it’s always a question of which piece snaps first, and tonight, I’m betting on her.
I let the silence thicken, let her stew, let the warmth of her thigh against mine build into a heat so choking it obliterates speech.
She tries one more time for composure, sits up straight, and smooths her hair with trembling fingers.
"Are you going to kidnap me or what?" Her voice is low, a dare and a prayer rolled together.
God, how I want her. But I want her to want it, too, and so I wait.
She relents first, as I knew she would. Her eyes flick up, all bitter sapphire and unshed tears, and that's my signal. I cup her chin, gentle now, using only two fingers. She fights the touch for maybe half a heartbeat before I see her exhale, shoulders slumping into the inevitability of us.
"You're too much," she whispers.
I lean in, crushing our mouths together, claiming her in the only language that matters.
She yields with a sound so involuntary it makes me throb, and when my tongue sweeps past her teeth, she bites, just hard enough to remind me she's not gentle either.
A flash of heat, a jolt of pain, and I shove my hands up under her coat, dragging her into my lap.
She gasps, "Alessio—" but I mute it with another kiss, this one slower, as if I could convince her with patience instead of violence.
My hands roam—her waist, the impossible curve of her ass, the trembling in her thighs as she settles over me—so light, so weightless, I want to anchor her with teeth and claw.
But she’s still fighting, even as she arches toward me. Always a fight. I slip my hands beneath her sweater and over her hips; her skin is fever-warm, softer than the silk pillows at my mother’s house. She makes a noise—half outrage, half hunger—and rakes her nails down my neck.
I grip her wrists and pin them behind her back with one hand, freeing the other to pull her sweater up, exposing the edge of dark lace.
She glares at me, cheeks flushed, ready to spit a thousand insults until I drop my head and take her breast in my mouth, bra and all.
The noise she makes is something she’ll never give anyone else, least of all the pathetic fuck from the cafe.
I bite, just enough to mark. "You can run, but you can't hide," I whisper against her hardened nipple, the lace already damp beneath my tongue. "From me, never."
"I don't want—" She snarls, but the words fall apart as I suck harder, then switch to the other breast. I feel her pulse pounding against my lips, feel her hips rocking over me. The car is rolling uptown, and if the driver is aware of what’s happening in the rear, he’s too smart to let on.
Lucia's hands twist behind her back, desperate to break my grip, but I hold steady, kissing her harder, slower, until her resistance dissolves into whimpers that only I can hear.
We stop at a light, red spilling across her face, and I see the moment she gives up the fight.
Her head tips back, veins straining blue beneath her lace-pale neck, and for three perfect seconds, I taste nothing but surrender.
She shudders against me, breath catching and breaking, and I hold her through it, anchoring her to my lap while the city slides past in hissing streaks of rain.
We don’t speak until the car stops again. Her hair is a mess, mascara in a half-moon under her left eye. I want to fix it for her, but I know better, so I open the door and wait for her to decide: follow, or bolt.
She follows. Like I knew she would.