78. Neomi
Rain taps softly against the windows of the penthouse.
Chicago stretches below me in silver and charcoal, sharp lines softened by the weather, headlights moving like molten ribbons through the streets.
It should feel calming, the kind of afternoon that invites a blanket, a book, a glass of wine poured too early and forgiven because the sky is dark enough to justify it.
It’s been two weeks since my car exploded in a shower of fire and metal, and two weeks since Gabriel confessed that he came into our lives under a lie, and somehow it feels like I’ve been living inside the same hour ever since.
Time hasn’t moved. I’ve had more nightmares than I can count.
Every day stretches thin, and Lars has turned into a ghost—moving in and out of our home with the lingering sense of sadness clinging to him.
He hasn’t been cruel. That would almost be easier. Cruelty I know how to fight.
His kisses are frequent, but don’t invoke the heat they used to. He smiles, but not the sly grins that I adore. I know he’s trying, I know he’s healing. But it’s hard for both of us.
He’s loving and kind, but then he leaves again to hunt Anthony Falco through the city like vengeance is the only thing keeping him upright.
Part of me wants to drag him back here and make him stay and face everything that happened, but the other part knows exactly why he can’t sit still.
Falco put a bomb in my car. Falco got too close to me, and in Lars’ world that means he answers with blood.
I know that now in a way I didn’t before.
I know what it means to love men like Lars.
It means loving them and letting them walk into war and pray that they come home safely.
I’m standing at the kitchen island in one of Lars’ T-shirts and a pair of soft black shorts when the bell rings.
I glance at the security monitor first out of habit, then smile when I see Zara in the hallway outside the door, one hand resting on the strap of her bag, the other curled around a coffee cup carrier.
She looks elegant even dressed down, all dark hair and expensive casual clothes.
She carries the glow of pregnancy so beautifully.
I open the door and smile.
“Well, this is either a social call or an intervention,” I say as I step back to let her in. “You’re carrying enough caffeine to suggest it could go either way.”
Zara’s mouth curves as she walks inside. “I came armed with coffee and pastries, which means I’m either a very good friend or I’m worried you haven’t eaten anything decent today.”
“Both can be true.” I sigh.
“Then I came well prepared.”
The smell of fresh coffee blooms between us as she lifts a cup from the carrier and extends it toward me. She reaches into her bag, retrieving a pink box, tied with ribbon, the kind of over-the-top detail that means she stopped somewhere expensive enough to make breakfast look beautiful.
“You didn’t have to bring provisions,” I tell her.
“Yes, I did,” she replies, sliding onto one of the stools. “Because if I left you alone up here much longer, you were going to merge with the skyline and become one of those tragic women in old movies who stare out windows until they lose their minds.”
I snort softly and take the cup, wrapping both hands around it. “I’m not tragic.”
“No,” Zara says, lifting a shoulder. “But you’re pale, and Lars has been stalking around the city like a man possessed, which means someone has to check on the wife before the she loses patience and starts poisoning people.”
She opens the pastry box and pushes it toward me. “Eat.”
“Yes, Don Zara.”
Her eyes narrow. “Don’t tempt me to take control of this situation. I can order men up here to make you eat if I have to.”
I pick up the pastry, even though I’m not sure I’m hungry. “You’re becoming just as protective as Enzo.”
She rolls her eyes, though there’s warmth in it. “Eat your pastry, Neomi.”
I do. The buttery layers and sugar hit my taste buds and I hum. Maybe I was hungry.
Her features soften. “Okay, spill it. How are you feeling? And don’t sugar coat it.”
I look away first, because I hate crying in front of people, hate the loss of control in it, the vulnerability. But Zara’s family and she knows what it’s like to be married to a man like Lars, so this is the safest place to let it all out.
“I’m so angry,” I say, and my voice breaks on the last word. “I’m so angry I can’t even think straight sometimes.”
Zara slides off the stool and comes around the island without hesitation, wrapping her arms around me and holds me.
“At Falco?” she asks quietly.
“At Falco,” I say into her shoulder. “At Gabriel. At myself for still—” I stop, then a tear-filled laugh escapes me because there’s no point lying to her when I can barely breathe with the weight of the truth. “God, Zara, I still love him.”
She leans back enough to look at me, her hands staying on my arms. I shake my head, wiping at my cheeks with the heel of my hand.
“I shouldn’t. Getting over him should be the easy part. He lied to us. He came into our lives for all the wrong reasons and somehow…” My voice frays again. “Somehow everything with him felt real. It still feels real.”
Zara stays standing beside me, one hip against the counter. “Because it was,” she says gently.
“Neomi,” she says, quieter now, “Gabriel could have run. He could have taken what he came for and vanished before any of you ever realized what he was. Instead, he went to Enzo.”
“He got caught.”
“Maybe Dante helped force the timing,” she allows. “But he still walked into Enzo’s office knowing it might end with a bullet. Men like him don’t volunteer for that unless something inside them has already changed.”
I stare at my hands. My fingers are trembling around a napkin. “He chose the worst possible moment.”
“There was never going to be a good one.”
I close my eyes for a second, and when I speak again my voice is smaller, stripped down.
“I had it all. Lars, Gabriel…us. It felt like I stepped into some version of my life I didn’t know I was allowed to want. And now I keep thinking maybe I got greedy. Maybe I built a fantasy out of a situation that was never going to survive the truth.”
I shake my head. “When I started playing poker, one of my mentors told me, ‘Don’t gamble with what you aren’t willing to lose.’ I never knew it would apply to real life too.”
Zara is quiet for a beat, and when she answers there’s steel under the softness. “You were not greedy for loving fully. Don’t reduce your feelings like that.”
I look up. She crosses her arms, thoughtful now.
“The world our men live in asks us to make peace with impossible things. Violence, secrecy, power. The knowledge that love and danger share walls more often than they should. You didn’t fail because you wanted joy inside all this. You found something beautiful in the middle of something brutal.”
My throat tightens all over again.
“I don’t know what my ideal life even looks like anymore,” I admit.
“Before Gabriel, it was simple. Lars and me. A marriage and a future. And then Gabriel walked in, and it wasn’t simple anymore, but it felt bigger, more complete.
I loved what we were becoming.” I swallow hard.
“And now I don’t know if I miss him or if I miss the version of us that made room for all of it. ”
Zara’s mouth curves sadly. “Probably both.”
A laugh escapes me, shaky and tired. “That’s not helpful.”
“No,” she agrees. “But it’s the truth.”
I take another breath and press my fingertips to my eyes.
“Lars won’t talk about him. He talks about Falco, about security, about schedules, about where his men are posted and which routes I’m not allowed to drive.
He asks if I’m sleeping. He kisses me like he still loves me, and I know he does, but then he disappears again before the conversation can turn into anything real. ”
“Because talking about Gabriel hurts,” Zara says. “Falco is easy to hate. A man who plants bombs is simple. A man that he fell in love with isn’t.”
I look out toward the windows, the rain still stitching itself across the glass. “I think Lars believes if he stops moving, he’ll have to feel all of it.”
“You’re probably right.”
I laugh. “You are not as comforting as people claim.”
Zara bumps my shoulder lightly. “I’m not here to give you pretty lies.
I’m here to remind you that you and Lars are still in this together.
Lars would raze half the city before he let anything happen to you.
That man is hunting people down because he loves you so much that he doesn’t know where to put the fear.
And you’re sitting here crying over him and Gabriel both because your heart is bigger than the situation allows.
That doesn’t sound broken to me. It sounds unfinished. ”
I take a deep breath. “What am I supposed to do with that?”
“Talk to your husband.”
Shaking my head, I say, “You make it sound so simple.”
“It isn’t simple,” she says. “But it is necessary. You don’t need to solve Gabriel tonight, or Falco, or whatever fresh hell Enzo is brewing in the war room. You need to tell Lars the truth. That you’re angry. That you’re grieving. And especially that you still love him.”
My eyes sting again, “He knows I love him.”
“Men like ours need to hear things they already know,” she says dryly. “They’re like puppies with treats when it comes to verbal affirmations.”
That makes me smile. She sees it and smiles too.
I reach for my coffee again. “Thank you for the pastries and the intervention.”
“Anytime.”
For a while we stay there together at the island, Zara tells me Enzo has become almost unbearable about making sure she’s eating enough and how much she rests, though her expression glows with affection while she complains. It feels good to laugh at the absurdity threaded through all this fear.
When she’s leaving to head back up to her penthouse, she turns to me.
“He chose you,” she says. “And he loves you. Don’t ever doubt that.”