2. Chapter 2
Raffael Moretti watched the woman walk away, her shoulders stiff but her chin lifted with a stubborn defiance that snagged his attention.
Her clothes were a size too big, swallowing her delicate frame, but there was no mistaking the heat in her eyes when she’d spoken to him.
That flash of daring had done something to him—stirred a part of him he’d long assumed was numb.
When she vanished from sight, he looked down at the envelope still warm from her hands.
He nearly barked out a laugh. The wad of bills inside wasn’t neat or tidy, just crammed in as if she’d emptied out every dollar from every pocket and wallet she could get her hands on.
There were tens and twenties, sure, but mostly ones and fives. Hard-earned tips.
A waitress? A bartender? A woman scraping together what she could just to buy herself a chance at… what, exactly?
The word she’d used echoed through his head. Marriage.
He stilled, the hair rising on the back of his neck. She hadn’t been joking. The way she’d looked at him—earnest, desperate—made it clear she’d been dead serious.
But why? A beautiful, sharp-eyed woman begging a stranger in a filthy jacket to play husband? What the hell kind of game was this?
Raffe’s gut twisted. His instincts—those same instincts that had kept him alive through too many investigations to count—were screaming. Something was off. Something was wrong.
And yet, beneath the warning, there was that other tug. Interest. Attraction. Curiosity. A need to know who she was, what had brought her to him, and what she was running from.
He stood, scanning the park, but it was empty. Somehow, in the space of seconds, she’d vanished.
Raffe frowned. He didn’t like not seeing how people disappeared. It made him feel like a rookie again, green and stupid. Had he just imagined the whole damn thing?
He glanced back down at the envelope, the crumpled edges rough against his worn out, fingerless glove. No—she’d been real. Very real. Which meant trouble.
And trouble had just walked away before he’d even gotten a name.
Then his gaze dropped to the piece of paper.
Torn edge, scrawled handwriting, courthouse address.
Not a random place—he knew it well. He’d been watching it, circling it, cataloging who went in and out in his homeless-man disguise.
Not official work, not yet, but his instincts had told him that courthouse mattered. Just like this woman mattered.
The thought of her desperation pulled at something deep within him, a reminder of others he couldn’t stop thinking about. People who needed help, who slipped through the cracks while the system looked the other way.
Raffe exhaled hard, his breath steaming in the crisp spring air. His eyes drifted away from the paper toward the now-empty football field. The laughter, the thudding of sneakers on grass—gone. Freddy would be home by now. Or rather, locked inside the place he was forced to call home.
The kid had endured more tragedy in thirteen years than most men did in fifty. Raffe fingered the envelope, the flimsy paper crumpling in his grip. He could give it to Freddy. Damn, he wanted to. But five hundred dollars? Even a thousand? It was a drop in the bucket compared to what the boy needed.
If the world were fair, Freddy wouldn’t need charity. If the system worked, his surgery would already be scheduled, his future secure. Instead, the foster care health insurance was a patchworked mess—bureaucracy that treated kids like numbers, not human beings. Abusive, even in its neglect.
The surgeon Raffe had finally bullied into seeing Freddy had been blunt.
Time was running out. The bones in Freddy’s legs had healed wrong, knitting the kid back into a prison of pain and immobility.
If the nerves fused the way they were heading, Freddy wouldn’t be in his wheel chair for just a year—he’d be in it forever.
And Freddy didn’t want forever in a chair. Hell, the kid didn’t even dream of playing football anymore. At this point, his dream was merely to walk on his own. To stand on his own two feet, to feel grass under his shoes instead of staring up at life from two feet lower than everyone else.
Raffe’s chest tightened, remembering Freddy’s face pressed against the chain-link fence, eyes fixed on the other boys roughhousing on the field. That longing wasn’t about sports. It was about freedom.
But what Freddy had instead was a foster mother who snarled, “I put in the damned wheelchair ramp, what else do you want from me?” And a social worker who genuinely cared, but was drowning under the weight of a hundred kids, trying to fight a war with no weapons.
Freddy needed what every kid needed: decent health care, a parent who gave a damn, and a system that didn’t grind them down until they couldn’t keep going.
Freddy’s mom had loved him, but she’d died in the same wreck that had mangled his legs.
Now the state was all he had—and the state had failed him.
Raffe clenched the envelope until it nearly tore, the edges digging into his palm. Then he stuffed it deep into one of his many jacket pockets and started walking, frustration burning through him.
Because it wasn’t just Freddy. It was everyone. Everywhere he looked, people were slipping through the cracks—children like Freddy, women like the stranger with the melting chocolate eyes, whole neighborhoods strangled by men like Bianchi and now Vito Calvino.
They’d put Enrico Bianchi behind bars. It had taken years, and so much blood, sweat, and far too many bodies in the ground. And what had it bought? A vacuum that was quickly filled by Vito Calvino, slicker and even more cruel than Bianchi. The world wasn’t better. It had just rearranged the pieces.
Raffe’s jaw tightened. He couldn’t fix everything. Rationally, he knew that. But that didn’t stop him from trying. He wasn’t built to look away. And that was the curse, wasn’t it?
Because trying to save the world meant watching it bleed through your fingers, over and over again.
With a growl, he walked several blocks to his truck.
The limp in his stride and the hunched shoulders were deliberate, part of the act, but it had seeped into his muscles after months of pretending.
Impatience and a determination to uncover what the hell was going on with the pretty brunette urged him to abandon his disguise.
He had to force himself to slow down, to not blow his cover. One never knew who was watching.
He needed a shower, a steak dinner, and maybe an entire weekend of doing absolutely nothing.
He reached up, scratching his jawline, cursing the heavy beard that completed his disguise.
Hell, he needed a shave and a haircut—something he hadn’t had since the Bureau first placed him into this undercover nightmare.
Because he wasn’t homeless. Not even close.
He was an FBI agent, working deep cover for the Organized Crime Task Force.
His role? To blend into the cracks of society where the Mafia slithered, to move unseen through alleys, parks, and dump sites while the bosses made deals in backstreet alleys, sticky strip clubs and diners with too much money flowing through as “inventory” purchases.
And damn if it wasn’t eating him alive.
He needed to walk into his boss’s office and tell her flat-out that the task force wasn’t doing enough to stop these cockroaches.
Every time they tossed one crime boss into prison, another crawled out of the shadows to take his place.
Matteo Caruso was gone now. Raffe had tied Caruso’s murder to Enrico Bianchi, and Bianchi had gone down for it.
But now Vito Calvino was now in charge—smarter, crueler, and infinitely more ambitious.
Rubbing his forehead, Raffe entertained the fantasy of just walking away.
He could toss his gear into the back of his truck and drive west until the ocean stopped him.
California. The Pacific Coast Highway. Dive bars, sea lions, cold beer, and maybe a bikini-clad woman who didn’t come with secrets or lies.
So, why the hell was he picturing her again—the too-thin woman in the too-big jeans? Lovely in a haunted way, her eyes as dark as midnight. Timid on the surface, sure, but when she’d met his eyes… there’d been steel there. Secrets too.
And secrets were his business.
He slid into his truck, stripping off the filthy jacket and cramming it into a duffel in the backseat.
From there he pulled out his red ball cap and pulled it on—the visual marker of his “other” life.
The one where he wasn’t invisible, wasn’t ignored.
The one where he was Special Agent Raffael Moretti, hunter of mobsters, demolisher of illusions.
Unfortunately, he hated secrets almost as much as he hated the people who used them to destroy lives. And that woman? She clearly had more than most.
His phone rang as soon as he started the engine.
“Anything?” his boss asked, her tone sharp and efficient. Diane never wasted words, which he appreciated.
“Nothing today,” Raffe answered, shifting the truck into gear.
“How’s your friend?”
Raffe tensed, his grip tightening on the wheel.
For a split second he wondered if Diane—or worse, someone else on the task force—had seen his “fiancée.” The very thought made his hackles rise.
Why the hell did it matter? She was a stranger, a complication he should forget.
But the idea of her being spotted, questioned, dissected by Bureau eyes?
That set something raw and protective churning in his gut.
“Nothing important,” he muttered, too quickly.
“He looked sad today,” Diane sighed, her voice softening. That’s when he realized that his boss was talking about Freddy, not the mysterious stranger who wanted to marry him tomorrow morning.
For some reason, that eased the tension in his shoulders.