8. Angelo
EIGHT
Angelo
"Don't make a scene."
I say it too quietly to be anything but an order to myself, but the words land anyway. The monitors glow. The townhouse hums. My hands are empty for the first time in days.
Marco looks up from the table, mug clasped between two callused fingers. "You look like a man who wants to disappear."
"I want her safe." I keep my voice flat. Saying it loud makes it a decision.
"You keep saying that." He sets the mug down slowly. "But safety isn't absence. You know that."
"I know." I don't. The photograph on my desk knows. The name on the back knows. The memory of someone I couldn't protect keeps me moving like a fever—locking doors, keeping lists, watching names on feeds until the lines blur. That old instinct tells me: if I'm the danger, remove myself.
Marco stands. He doesn't argue further. He hands me a leather folder with a single sheet. "Travel arrangements," he says. "Two days. Minimal contact."
"You arranged flights?" I ask. I hadn't realized I'd said the word.
"Not flights. Fora show. You can't leave forever—" He almost smiles, then hardens. "But you can step back without telling everyone you failed. It's cleaner."
It's cleaner for him. For me, it's death by a thousand quiet cuts.
I picture Noemi at the door to her apartment, small bag of groceries, the crescent birthmark at her clavicle catching the city light.
I can see the precise way she tucks hair behind her ear when she's nervous.
I can picture the pastry shop she likes—chocolate braid, flaky and warm. Small things that make me ache.
"Leave it," Marco says. "Leave her something. He can't be all work and no humanity."
I nod. The idea steadies me. Before I walk out, I do one thing I can't say aloud.
I dress quickly, jacket on, mask in my pocket because habit makes me cautious even when I'm not required to be.
At the pastry shop I ask for the braid she always orders—two extra chocolate curls on the end.
The woman behind the counter hums like she knows why I'm here; she wraps it in a paper bag with care.
I touch the creased brown paper and imagine her fingers closing around it.
Back at her door I don't knock. I leave the bag on the threshold, fold my hands in my pockets, and watch through the peephole until the door opens and she stoops to pick it up.
When Noemi looks up I am a breath away from apologizing out loud for everything—my notebooks, my feeds, my photograph.
Instead I fold the apology into a single, stupid human act: I press my thumb to the paper bag so my scent marks it, because even that small theft of intimacy feels like an offering.
She turns and studies the pastry, then the bag. Her face is guarded and unreadable the way it is when she's sorting evidence. "Who—" she says, then shakes her head. "You shouldn't?—"
"You're right." The words come sharper than I'd intended. "I shouldn't have done a lot of things."
Her jaw tightens. "You shouldn't have surveilled me without my consent. You shouldn't have kept lists about my habits. You shouldn't?—"
"I know." I step back rather than forward. Distance feels like decency. "You were right at the table. Sofia was right for calling you out on being a liability. If being near me puts you in that line, I won't?—"
"You won't what? Let me stay? Let me keep my job? Be with you?" Her voice hits a level I rarely hear directed at me: furious, wounded, and entirely honest.
"I'll leave," I say. The word tastes like surrender and steel both. "I'll remove myself. It will be less for them to use."
She laughs—a short, incredulous sound. "You think disappearing is protection? Angelo, you?—"
"I'm not trying to hurt you." The confession is sudden and sharp. "I'm trying to keep you from being hurt because of me."
Her eyes flash. "Because of you. Always 'because of you' with you, isn't it? You erase yourself when things get dangerous. You think that protects people. It doesn't. It abandons them."
I want to say that I don't deserve her concern, that I've spent my life trying to fix mistakes with action and control. I want to tell her about the woman in the photograph, about hands that wouldn't let go. Those details sit in my chest like a stone and make everything heavier.
"Noemi," I whisper, and the name is a rope through my ribs. "I can't?—"
"Don't." She cuts me off. Her hand lifts, fingers brushing the paper bag where my thumb left its mark. "Don't make choices for me. Don't decide what I can bear. I am not a hazard to be removed."
My mouth opens, closes. I can think of nothing more cowardly than deciding for her.
Marco's advice, the folder on the table—everything that wanted to be neat and clean recoils inside me.
And something else, sharper, wakes: the idea that my stepping away so the blame could be diverted was less about her safety and more about absolving my own guilt.
"I'm trying to..." I start. The sentence breaks. My chest tightens until my hands tremble.
She steps closer. The air between us is taut.
I see the faint crescent near her collarbone as she tucks her hair back—an intimate detail I've noted enough to make a list in my head.
My palms remember the roughness of her fingers when she'd patched my hand—how tender she looked when she did it.
I remember how she had said she wanted me, not the Ricci version of me.
"Noemi." My voice is a plea now. "If I stay, they'll use you. If I leave, they'll leave you alone."
"If you leave," she says, and her tone is soft but hard-edged, "they'll win."
I don't know when I stopped trying to justify my actions. I only know how much it hurts when she says 'they'll win' like it's a verdict.
"I—" I reach for her hand before my brain can veto the movement. My thumb presses over the pulse at her wrist. Her skin is warm. The scent of coffee and pastry and the faint salt of sweat from running wraps around me. My mouth goes dry.
"You can't keep deciding for me," she says. Her fingers curl, hesitant, then map down my palm. "You're suffocating me and pretending it's safety."
"I can't lose you." The admission is raw. The last time I made someone mine to protect, I failed. The memory of that failure sits between my shoulder blades and pushes me to brutal choices. "I won't lose you."
"Noemi, listen—" I try to reason, to arrange words as if they'd tidy everything, but she shakes her head and steps back.
"Angelo." She says my name like testing whether the syllable still belongs to her. "I won't be polished into someone your family can present. I won't be hidden or edited. If that's what you think you need to keep me?—"
"I don't think—" I can't finish. I see the wear in her, the guardedness that I both love and fear. I realize then, with a cold clarity, that my plan to step away is not protection. It's self-preservation. If I remove myself, I spare myself the guilt of failing her again.
"Don't." She moves toward the stairwell, coat tight around her, and the sight of her retreating is a physical blow.
I step in front of her before she reaches the landing. Instinct takes over. I don't plan the kiss. It happens because my body decides the only honest thing left to say is to hold her and not let the world decide for us.
My hands find the small of her back. Her breath catches.
I press my mouth to hers fiercely, apology and plea braided into the motion.
Her lips are warm, soft, resistant then melting when she answers.
The kiss isn't tender; it's urgent, laden with everything I won't say.
I kiss as if words could stitch wounds. As if pressure could stop fear.
She wraps her arms around my neck, fingers threading rough through my hair. The world narrows to the heat of her mouth, the small tentative sounds she makes against my lips. I taste chocolate and coffee and something fiercer—anger and want.
When we finally pull apart, both of us breathing hard, her forehead rests against mine. "You can't fix this with one kiss," she whispers.
"I know." My chest hurts. The confession slides out: "I thought I'd protect you by leaving.
I see now—" The sentence fails me again.
The photograph flashes in my mind; the girl's smile that cost me everything.
"I thought removing myself would be less for them to use.
But it would also be removing you. That's not protection. It's cowardice."
Her eyes search mine; there's fury, and something else—weariness that looks like trust fraying.
"If you're protecting me," she says slowly, "then protect me by telling me everything.
No notebooks, no feeds without me knowing.
If you want me in your life, make the choice to be present. Not hidden. Not absent."
"I can't promise I won't watch," I say honestly. The confession lands like gravel between us. "I won't stop being careful, but I will stop lying. I will ask—every time."
She laughs, small and incredulous, but it's softer now. "You're asking me to trust you."
"Ask me to do something easier," I say. "Tell me what you want me to stop doing. Tell me the thing that will convince you I'm not just keeping you away because I'm afraid."
She looks at me as if cataloguing me like one of her reports. "Stop deciding for me. Tell me everything, even the ugly things. And when the family says no, say yes anyway. Defend me where it matters—to them and to yourself."
The street lamps throw our shadows across the stairwell. A siren wails in the distance. The pastry bag trembles on the step between us like an unspoken peace offering.
"Marco suggested escape routes," I say, and we both half-smile at the ridiculous formality of it.
"No more escapes," she says. "If you want to be with me, be with me. If it's dangerous, we'll measure it together. But don't erase yourself because you're afraid of failing."
"I won't lie," I promise. "I won't hide what I watch. I'll be honest. I'll take the consequences."
She pins me with a look that's part dare, part invitation. "Say it."
"I want you," I say. Saying it aloud shakes the air. "I want you even if Sofia hates it. I want you even if it complicates everything. I want you—Noemi. Not as a liability. Not as a favor. As yourself."
Her breath hitches. "Say my name like you mean it."
"Noemi." The word is steady now, and the way she softens makes something inside me unclench.
She leans in, kisses me again—slower this time, careful, as if cataloguing the lines of my face and storing them. When we part, her hand lingers at my cheek. "Okay," she says. "But there are conditions."
"Name them."
"No secret monitoring. I get to decide what I share from my work. You tell me when you're worried. You don't make promises you can't keep. And you don't walk away the moment things get messy."
"I won't," I say.
She studies me, measuring the truth in my eyes. "If you can't keep me safe," she says quietly, "then we figure out how to keep me safe together."
The words settle in me like something holy. For a moment I think I might step back into the life that has always defined me—rules, walls, neat solutions—and choose that old calculus.
Instead, images of the woman I couldn't save flash and then fracture under a different light. Maybe safety means sharing fear, not hiding it. Maybe it means letting someone hold me back from the edge instead of pushing them away so the fall can't be blamed on me.
I reach for my phone. My thumb hesitates over the screen, unsteady with a decision that will shape everything.
I could type confession, plan, a vow. I could try to be brave and tell Sofia to her face.
I could do what the family expects and step away, and then I'll have to live with the silence where her voice used to be.
My fingers move.
If I can't keep you safe, I won't keep you at all, I type. Then I stop. The message is raw and foolish but it feels true in the marrow.
Noemi steps back toward the door, the pastry bag in one hand, a small, reckless smile curving her lips. "Don't blackmail me with noble threats," she says. "And don't make me chase you."
"I only wanted to protect you," I say. The sentence comes out small.
She shakes her head. "Protect me from people who would hurt me," she says. "Not from yourself."
The message sends. I watch the three dots that indicate she's typing. The porch light makes a halo around her head. Her fingers hover over her phone. I can barely breathe.
Then the dots stop.
My chest drops like someone cut the floor out from under me.
She hasn't replied. The silence stretches, loud as a verdict. My phone vibrates but not with her answer. A message from Marco instead: Leave town? He typed, blunt and impatient.
I look at the doorway, at the pastry bag between us, at the place she will stand tomorrow if I choose absence. The image of that empty space is more terrifying than any rival's gun.
The three dots blink again on my screen, and my thumb trembles above the phone as the reply hangs unfinished.