10. Federico #2
After, she slept with her head on my chest, breath even.
The room smelled of her and the faint copper of my own skin.
I worried the old way for a moment—about leverage, about what could be taken from me through her—but the worry felt less a directive and more a shadow I could recognize and step around.
She woke me with a sleepy curse.
"Federico," she said, voice thick with sleep. "Carry me."
"You're not that small," I protested, but I lifted her anyway. She wrapped her arms around my neck, legs tucked, the weight of her light enough to be tender.
I carried her down the corridor, up the ancient stairs, my jacket slung over one arm.
The people who worked the palazzo moved aside without comment.
I felt more like a guardian than an owner.
At the suite, I tucked the blankets around her, smoothed hair from her face. My hand lingered at her temple.
"Sleep," I whispered. "I'll be downstairs. If anything moves or you wake, call me."
She blinked. "Tesoro," she said, the word low and private.
"Sempre," I answered, and the syllable felt like a homecoming on my tongue.
Her fingers tightened on the sheet. I left the bedside lamp on a dim wick and crossed to the small desk where a wooden box sat—mine, secret, heavy with old ghosts.
The box had been quiet these past days. I opened it and stared at the dented coin and the photograph inside, the images that had taught me how dangerous love could be.
I had promised to tell her the why of my distance.
I had not promised full confessions tonight.
My phone buzzed in the dark. A single message preview slid across the screen: a number I didn't recognize and a line of text that made my stomach go cold. It wasn't an accusation. It was a timestamped photo of the terrace—of us—taken an hour before, with a single caption.
We need to talk.
I froze, every muscle keyed to a different kind of alert.
Behind me, the room breathed around her sleeping form. I had just given my word to be open. The message was the first real test. My thumb hovered over the screen.
I thought of promises traced on skin, the ring on her finger, the word she'd said to me in the dark.
I shouldn't open it alone. I shouldn't decide anything without her.
I stepped back to the bed and sat on the edge, watching her sleep. The phone buzzed again. My finger trembled over the screen.
I reached for the lamp. My thumb pressed the light switch and then the screen, but I didn't read the message yet.
I dialed her number. It rang once. Twice. She stirred and mumbled, half-awake on the pillow.
"Federico?" she asked.
"There's a message," I said. "From someone outside."
Her eyes opened, raw and immediate. "Read it to me."
I swore softly. "It says: 'We need to talk.' And it's a photo of the terrace."
She swung her legs over the side of the bed, fingers finding my hand. "Don't."
"Don't what?"
"Don't open more than that without me. If someone wants leverage, the leverage is turning private into public. We'll answer together."
I looked at her—the hair fallen across her forehead, the ring catching the dim light. My instincts were screaming for control. For secrecy. For shutting down and solving. Her hand held mine steady.
"Okay," I said. "Together."
She smiled with the kind of vulnerability that makes the heart rewrite its rules. "Always together, then."
My phone buzzed again. The sender's number was blocked. The message preview showed another photograph—this time, a closeup of the ring on her finger.
I swallowed. I had promised to tell her when I was afraid. I had also promised to stop deciding for her.
"Open it with me," she said.
My thumb hovered. The last thing I wanted was to hurt her by dragging her into whatever game this was. The last thing I wanted more was to keep controlling outcomes alone.
I tapped the message. The photo enlarged, and across the bottom, in stark black font, words flashed that had nothing to do with optics and everything to do with a past I had hoped I'd locked away.
We saw the name I had buried years ago.
END
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Serafina Vitale came to broker peace, but the last thing she expected was Lorenzo Romano—the powerful mafia king whose presence is as dangerous as it is irresistible.
As old rivalries, fragile alliances, and buried feelings collide, they'll have to decide whether love is worth risking everything they've built. Turn the page for an exclusive preview.
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Serafina
"I sign this, and the city calms," I said, pen tapping the edge of the memorandum. I wrote my name in the neat loop I'd taught myself years ago—Serafina Vitale, political power broker—then closed the folder with a soft, professional thud.
The palazzo smelled of citrus polish and old leather.
Marble underfoot sent a cool certainty through my soles; certainty was currency tonight.
Behind the heavy drape the gala's laughter blurred into the background.
My line was simple: secure the truce, collect what my brother needed, leave before anything sentimental could happen.
A hand on the doorframe stopped me.
"Lorenzo Romano, the man who runs the Romano palazzo and a scar across his eyebrow that makes him look dangerous even when he's smiling, stood half-dressed by the study door, coat hanging from one shoulder.
" The sentence formed in my head before I could stop it—his name a headline.
He wore a white shirt open at the throat and trousers that fit like they were made for him.
I didn't need to catalog his station; I cataloged the way his shirt hugged broad shoulders, the subtle shadow of muscle beneath fabric.
"You're late," he said.
"I arrived precisely when I intended." I kept my voice flat. Negotiation had taught me how to sound in control even when my pulse disputed me.
He watched me sign the memo. His gray eyes slid over the paper, then back to my hands. His gaze wasn't casual; it measured. I felt it like pressure against skin.
"You come to my house uninvited," he said. "At midnight."
"You asked for a private exchange. I answered."
There was a tilt of something in his mouth—amusement, appetite, a self-possession that should have annoyed me. It did, in the best possible way.
"You are not supposed to be here at all," he added. "This is dangerous."
"Everything I do is dangerous," I said. "You should know that by now."
He softened a fraction. "Dangerous is different from reckless."
"Spoken like a man who can afford to be both."
We circled the truth without touching it. Around us the palazzo hummed with safe conversation and clinking crystal; inside, the room had gone private and small, the distance between us a defined thing.
He stepped forward just enough for me to notice the scent—sharp bergamot, cedar, something warm that sat against the base of his throat. It made my breath hitch.
"I didn't expect you to sign," he said. "I expected politeness, a fig-leaf of consent and more talk."
"I didn't come for what you expected." My fingers flexed on the folder. "I came because my brother doesn't want more blood. He wants a line."
Lorenzo's jaw tightened. He moved, casually, to take the file. His movement was authoritative and smooth. When he reached, our hands brushed; his fingers grazed my wrist with a deliberate lightness that left a small, burning trail.
Electricity is too pretty a word. My pulse kicked up and the room narrowed to the scent of his skin and that contact. I had promised myself—months ago, after watching a parent traded away when I was nineteen—that I would not let desire be a lever. Desire told me otherwise in a hiss under my ribs.
"You're trembling," he observed. He didn't sound pleased, and that knowledge made the heat in my face sharper.
"I'm not," I lied, which earned a corner of his mouth. "I'm cold."
He cocked his head. "You never wear that coat."
I had worn a fitted black coat to cut the silhouette I wanted—commanding, exact. He noticed the absence of a coat but not the way I'd tucked a file in its lining for safekeeping.
"You're enjoying the inspection," I said.
"Someone has to make sure you don't leave with something that belongs to me."
"Is that a threat or a promise?"
"It can be either," he said, voice low.
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