Serafina
Iwake from my nap with the clarity of someone who fell asleep mid-crisis and woke up still in it.
For exactly three seconds, I forget where I am. White ceiling. Expensive sheets. Afternoon light pressing through heavy curtains.
Then it all comes back — the drive, the badge, Enzo's voice on that recording, and Luca Moretti in the shower down the hall, which I am absolutely not thinking about.
I get up. Wash my face. Find him in the study.
"I want a bargain," I say from the doorway.
He's at the desk, jacket off, reviewing something on a laptop. He looks up. His gaze skims over me once, quick and involuntary, before every trace of emotion vanishes behind a wall.
I tuck that away like a scalpel I might need later.
"Full cooperation," I say. "I give you access to whatever you need from my side — Virelli contacts, Bellevue connections, anything that helps crack this open.
In exchange, you give me transparency. No more managing what I know.
No more making decisions about my life without me in the room.
" I hold his gaze. "And I keep the right to make my own choices. Non-negotiable."
Luca closes the laptop.
He looks at me for a long moment. Still and watchful. The predator-assessing-something-interesting look that used to unsettle me and now just makes my pulse do things I ignore.
"Agreed. Mostly."
"Define mostly."
"There are operational details I can't share in real time. Not because I don't trust you — because information is a liability, and the less you carry, the safer you are." He leans back. "Everything else — the ugly basics, the threat picture, the people who want you dead and why — you get it all."
I consider that. It's not everything I asked for. It's more than I expected.
"Fine. Start talking."
He talks.
For forty minutes, Luca gives me the unvarnished version.
Enemies. Threats. Timelines. People who want me alive for leverage: my father, who believes I can be used to broker a ceasefire that benefits him.
Enzo, who wanted me as a bargaining chip before his own name appeared on the drive.
People who want me dead to keep me silent: Richard Hale, whose political legacy disintegrates the moment the audio goes public.
The Fixer — Hale's faceless operative, who's been coordinating the hit squads.
"And you?" I ask when he finishes. "What do you want?"
A muscle ticks in his jaw. A tell he doesn't know he has. "For this to end without you getting hurt."
"That's not an answer."
"It's the only one I have right now."
I look at him for a moment. Let it go.
"You're bleeding."
He glances down. The shoulder seam of his shirt is dark — a slow bleed from the break-in, small but persistent, the kind that gets ignored during adrenaline and announces itself after. He'd taped it himself, badly. Half the gauze has already peeled away.
"Sit down."
"It's fine."
"Luca." The voice I use on patients who think they're tougher than physics. "Sit. Down."
He sits.
I find the kit under the study desk — Caruso keeps them everywhere, which I appreciate — and pull my chair directly in front of him.
Close. Unavoidably close. His knees bracket mine when I lean in, and he doesn't move them.
I notice.
I peel back the ruined tape. The cut is clean — two inches, shallow but stubborn. It needs closure strips and pressure, not stitches. I clean it efficiently, my fingers moving the way they always do when I'm working. Precise. Deliberate. No wasted motion.
He watches me.
I can feel it. The weight of his attention. Focused and absolute, like I'm the only object in the room worth looking at.
"You don't have to be so careful." Low. Almost quiet enough to be a thought.
"Yes, I do." I smooth the first closure strip into place. "Careless surgeons make careless scars."
"I have plenty of scars."
"Not from me."
The words settle between us with more weight than I intended. I feel him go still — not his usual controlled stillness. Different. Like I just cost him something he wasn't planning to lose.
I keep working. Second strip. Third. My fingers brush the edge of his collarbone, and I feel the muscle beneath contract.
"Serafina."
"Almost done."
"That's not—" He stops.
I look up.
He's very close. Close enough that I can see the precise moment his control gives up the fight. His eyes are dark, certain, and fixed on my mouth. My hands are still on his shoulder. The first-aid kit is open between us. None of that matters at all.
"If you keep touching me like that," he says, very quietly, "I'm going to forget my restraint."
I hold his gaze.
"Then forget it."
He moves like the decision was already made and he was just waiting for permission.
Both hands find my face — cupping my jaw, tilting me up — and he kisses me like every other kiss was just practice. Not urgent. Not frantic. Certain. Like he's been thinking about exactly this and intends to take his time.
I'm already pulling him closer.
We move to the small sofa, and he takes me down onto it. I stop cataloging exits, threat patterns, and everything else my brain does to stay in control because Luca Moretti's hands are moving over me like I'm something worth learning, and I cannot think about a single other thing.
"Tell me what you want."
"Everything." The word comes out before I can edit it. "I want everything."
He pulls back far enough to really look at me, and whatever he finds makes his expression crack open. Heat. Hunger. That terrifying reverence, I don't know what to do with.
"Then you'll have it."
He makes good on the promise.
He's thorough in the way I'm already learning is just how he operates — patient and deliberate, building until I'm pulling at his shirt and he's pulling at mine with too much fabric between us. When it's gone, I forget how to breathe.
Luca Moretti stripped of the tailored suit is a separate problem entirely.
Tattoos cover his chest and arms — dark, intricate ink that climbs the side of his neck in a way that has absolutely no business being on a man who wears Brioni to breakfast. The kind that tells a story in a language I want to spend time learning.
Lean. Sculpted. Scars I'll ask about later, scattered across skin that's warm under my palms.
He looks at me the same way.
"Fuck," he says quietly, almost to himself. Then, softer, like he doesn't mean for me to hear it. "Sei bellissima— you are so beautiful."
The Italian does something to my spine I refuse to examine. Not the word. The reverence in it. Like he's not complimenting me. Like he's surrendering.
Then his mouth finds my collarbone, and the complicated feeling dissolves into something much simpler.
He works his way down — unhurried, attentive, mapping me the way I mapped the brownstone, learning every response, filing away what makes me gasp and what makes me dig my fingers into his shoulders.
His mouth finds my breasts, and he takes his time — tongue circling, then sucking, then the edge of his teeth in a bite so soft it short-circuits my entire nervous system.
I moan before I can stop myself. Loud enough that I'd be embarrassed if his response weren't so immediate — a sharp intake of breath, his hands tightening on me like the sound did something to him he wasn't expecting.
He does it again. Deliberately. Watching my face while he does it, collecting my reactions like they're worth keeping.
Then he keeps moving downward.
His mouth finds me, and he groans against my skin — low and rough and wrecked. "Cazzo," he breathes. "You're so wet." Not a boast. Not performance. Just raw, honest shock from a man losing his composure one inch at a time, and hearing it makes me wetter still.
He works me with his tongue until my thighs are shaking and my hands are fisted in his hair, and I'm past the point of quiet entirely. Then he drags himself back up my body like it physically costs him to stop.
By the time he looks at me, I'm past embarrassment. Past strategy. Past every reason, this is a terrible idea.
"Look at me."
I look at him.
He pushes inside me slowly — a long, controlled slide that steals every thought — and I feel my whole body accept him like it's been waiting. Like all those months of nothing were just preparation for exactly this.
I make a sound I feel more than hear, low and unraveling, nothing like the composed surgeon who walked into his study an hour ago.
"Dio mio— my God." His forehead presses against mine. His control is fraying — I can feel it in the way his hands grip my hips and in the set of his jaw, like he's trying to hold himself together and losing. "You feel—" He stops. Starts again. "Serafina."
"Don't stop." My nails find his back. "Please don't stop."
He doesn't stop.
He moves, and I move, and we find a rhythm that feels less like two people negotiating and more like something inevitable.
He's generous in a way I didn't expect — checking my face, adjusting without being asked, his hand sliding between us until I'm gasping against his shoulder, my hips moving without my permission.
I've completely lost the ability to form a coherent thought.
He doesn't speed up. He keeps that same devastating pace, watching my face come apart, until I'm shaking. Desperate. Past the point of pride.
"That's it." Low and rough against my ear. "Let go."
So I do.
The orgasm hits like a current — electric and total, leaving no composure to salvage. He follows moments later — and the sound he makes is the most unguarded thing I've ever heard from him. Wrecked and real and mine in a way that lands somewhere deep and stays there.
We stay tangled together while our breathing finds its way back.
I have had sex before. I have had good sex before.
I have never — not once, not with anyone — felt like I left my body and came back different. Like something was reorganized in my absence. Like I handed something over that I'm not sure I want returned.
That terrifies me more than anything that's happened since a dead man pressed a drive into my pocket.
Luca presses his mouth to my temple. Doesn't speak. His hand moves slowly up my spine — not possessive, not demanding. Just present.
I close my eyes.
Outside on 92nd Street, the city keeps moving. Somewhere in this building, there are men with weapons and evidence of a war that was never real. My father is out there. Enzo is out there. Richard Hale doesn't know yet that his empire has an expiration date.
None of it goes away.
But for right now, in the last of the afternoon light, I let Luca Moretti hold me together.
And I don't hate myself for it. Not even a little.