Chapter 19
NINETEEN
STEPHEN
I see it the second the lift doors open—the hesitation in her step, the way her eyes flick up and lock onto my face before she can stop herself. Shock lands first. Then concern. Then something far more dangerous.
Pity.
I hate that one most of all.
“Stephen…” Her voice softens, the word catching like she isn’t sure whether she’s allowed to say my name anymore. “What happened to you?”
“Nothing of importance.” I step back to give her more space, my body tight with the effort not to reach for her, not to pull her into me, and remind myself she’s still mine.
The foyer of my apartment is quiet, the muted hum of the city seeping through a window, and it feels like the calm before the storm.
I turn and move into the apartment, not waiting for her to follow. I hear her soft footsteps that stop when she makes it just inside the doorway, her attention drifting to my cut-up hands, a slight frown marring her perfect brow.
“What happened to you?” she asks.
I don’t answer. I shut the foyer door, the sound loud in the silent apartment.
The image is still burned into my brain—her face tilted toward that Romero bastard, his arm about her shoulders, his gleeful smirk that tells me he knows exactly what he’s doing.
I feel it then, that snap inside my chest, the same one that’s been with me my whole life.
The one that says if someone threatens what’s mine, dares to touch what doesn’t belong to them, they don’t get a second warning.
“I’m fine,” I say eventually, stripping my jacket off and tossing it aside.
“You’re not,” she replies, sharper now. “Your jaw is bruised—”
Well, no fight is fair if one punch doesn’t land on me. “I said I’m fine.”
She doesn’t flinch at my tone, but I see the way her shoulders tense. I hate that I did that. I hate even more that part of me wants to pace, wants to burn this feeling out of my system with violence, the way I was taught. It takes effort—real effort—to stay still.
To not let the fury burning within me take hold.
She crosses her arms. “Then talk to me.”
I laugh once, short and bitter. “Talk then?” I cross my arms. “Do you enjoy your little photo shoot with Elio? Quite the friendship considering you’re their lawyer.”
Her jaw tightens, and as if sensing a forthcoming argument, she too crosses her arms. “He sprung it on me without my consent. There was nothing more in it than that.”
“He isn’t being friendly,” I continue, my voice low.
“He’s marking territory. Romeros like to do that.
You should ask Lucien’s wife how well that went for her when she married into that family.
” My laugh is low and lacks amusement. “Elio is showing me he can get close to you whenever he wants and that you let him.” Possibly a low blow, but my temper can’t hold back the observation.
Her eyes flash. “He didn’t get close because I wanted him to.”
That should be enough. It isn’t. The fear gnaws anyway, sharp and relentless, because I know how men like Elio think.
I know how my father would have thought.
And God help me, I know how I’ve thought in the past when something precious is put in front of me like bait, and I can use it to hurt another.
“You should’ve told me you were meeting someone tonight,” I say.
Her head snaps up. “Excuse me?” she scoffs. “I don’t have to tell you what I’m doing every minute of every day. We’re not exclusive, and even then I can do whatever the hell I want.”
There it is—the steel under the silk. The woman who won’t be told what to do, even when the danger is real. I respect it. I want to cage it. Both truths exist, and that terrifies me.
“You don’t get to police me,” she continues. “Not my job. Not my movements. Not my life.”
I scrub a hand down my face, the ache in my jaw grounding me. “That’s not what I’m trying to do, damn it.”
“It feels like it.”
I don’t deny it, because lying won’t help. Perhaps I am trying to cage her, but with my past, my family, and the enemies who continue to circle our family like sharks, what the hell does she expect? “I’m trying to keep you alive.”
Her expression shifts, uncertainty flickering through her anger. “That’s a bit dramatic, don’t you think? While I understand, perhaps better after today, what you’ve been trying to tell me regarding the Romeros, I doubt they’re going to kill me just to get at you. I’m not anything special.”
“You’re special to me,” I admit. Her eyes widen at my words, but I won’t take them back. They’re true, I do care for her, more than anyone else ever, and why shouldn’t she know that? Why shouldn’t she know that I’d do anything to keep her safe?
“Those men don’t play by society's rules, Dallen. They don’t care about boundaries, professionalism, or what’s appropriate. They care about leverage and revenge, and they think they have a score to settle with the Morettis.”
She hesitates, and I see the crack in her certainty. “I dropped them,” she says quietly. “As clients. My boss is taking them on, so I’ll not be working with them anymore, not after what I found out earlier today from some intelligence from my father’s office.”
The words hit harder than I expect. Relief slams into my chest, followed immediately by something colder—annoyance. Because it isn’t enough to trust my words, she needs to hear the truth from someone she trusts absolutely.
Her father…
“Glad to hear it,” I say.
“Thought you might be.” She lifts her chin, pride and fear warring in her eyes.
“My father told me of some intelligence which he believes could place me in danger. That I’m dating you doesn’t help matters, and he’s asked me to end things between us as well.
Not that we’ve really started anything. Fuck buddies isn’t too deep, is it? ”
My stomach tightens, and I ignore her jab at our relationship status and home in on what her father divulged. “What did your father tell you?”
Her breath stutters. “That they’re using me to possibly aggravate the Morettis, which seems to be working in their favor.
That they’re using the guise of needing a lawyer to use me against you, possibly.
I mean, I don’t know what these people are capable of.
I can only imagine the worst, given the family's history, but I don’t want to get involved or mixed up in any of it.
I had a brother who died a couple of years ago, shot in the crossfire of gang violence, warring groups.
” She pauses. “I have a great job that I will not jeopardize.”
“You had a brother?” Shit. That’s new information and not something I can dismiss. That her family have lost loved ones to crime doesn’t make my pursuing of Dallen any easier. If anything, it makes it harder. In a way, I can’t blame her parents for wanting me gone.
She nods. “I’m all they have left.”
I take a calming breath at hearing the everything I’ve been dreading. The bridge between our worlds is collapsing under the weight of truth and history. Under the weight of what being involved with a Moretti brings to someone’s life.
“And me?” I ask, even though I already know. “Are you going to do what Daddy says?”
Her silence is answer enough.
“He told me to stop seeing you,” she says eventually. “I’ve worked so hard for everything I have. I don’t know how to navigate this path.” She pauses, meeting my eyes. “It’s not a secret I want you, but I don’t know if that’s enough.”
The words land like a blade, slicing clean and precise. I don’t react outwardly, but inside, something coils tight, feral and furious. Losing deals, losing territory, losing men—I’ve survived all of it. Losing her? I don’t know how to live with that.
“So, what are you going to do?” I ask. “Be a good or bad girl?”
She looks at me then, really looks at me, like she’s trying to decide whether I’m worth the risk of everything she’s been taught to believe. Debating whether my provocation is enough to make her walk away. She should walk away. Her life would be better for it. Safer.
But she’s not going anywhere, no matter what she decides. I’ll force her to see reason before I allow anyone, any fear, past or present to make her to step away from me.
“I don’t know,” she admits. “I don’t know who you really are.”
The fear claws at me then—not fear of exposure, not fear of consequences, but fear that the truth will finally cost me something I can’t replace.
Lucien stated she needs to know the truth of the family and allow herself to decide.
I grind my teeth, bracing myself to reveal a part of my world that, other than blood, no one knows of.
“What do you want to know?” I ask.
“Everything,” she counters. “I know what you choose to tell me. I know what the internet says, what the Romeros think, and I know what my father’s seen in thirty years on the force, what he’s advising me to do now.
But I want to hear it from you. I want the truth of your life, both past and present. ”
I nod slowly. “That’s a lot to take in. Are you sure you’re ready to hear without judgment? You’re a lawyer after all.”
Her eyes search my face. “I need to know before I can make any decision in my life.”
I hesitate. I’ve faced judges, enemies, men with guns and grudges, but this—this feels like standing on the edge of a cliff and deciding whether to jump.
I hate heights.
“My father was a killer,” I say. “And up to a point in my life, the eldest three boys in the family, myself included, had dealings in the underworld that are not legal.” A nicer way to say that I’ve killed without coming straight out and saying I’ve shot people in the head, buried them where they’ll never be found, or dumped them far out at sea.
Nothing I’m proud of, but also when one wants to survive, to kill or be killed, one does what’s needed. Lucien tried to shield us, and I do believe he thought he’d succeeded, but our father was a crafty old bastard, and there was a lot Lucien was utterly unaware of.
Dallen stills.