Chapter 8 JENNA
Earlier that morning…
The door clicks shut. The lock slides home.
Silence presses in, thick and suffocating.
I sit on the edge of the bed, the glass of water still trembling in my hand.
The pills leave a bitter and chalky taste in my mouth, and my gums are burning as I hold them there.
I lean forward and spit them into the palm of my hand, one by one.
My hands are shaking so badly that I almost drop them.
Daddy won't help me.
The thought lands clean and final.
Amauri will die.
Not because he did anything wrong. Not because I failed to love him hard enough. But because he's inconvenient. Because he's leverage. Because the wrong men decided he was expendable.
I press my fists into my eyes until sparks explode behind my lids.
Think.
I have to think.
My father has power. Influence. Men. Connections that reach into every dark corner of this city. Still, he won't save my son. Which means there is only one option left.
I've known it since the moment Daddy refused to save my son. But I'm afraid to breathe his name. Afraid that if I do, something will come for me. Afraid that saying it out loud will make it real, will wake something I buried a decade ago and swore never to touch again.
Massimo.
The name coils in my chest, tight and dangerous.
Of course, I know who he is now.
Everyone does.
You don't live in Las Vegas and not know his name. You don't work politics, don't spin narratives, don't bury scandals without running into his shadow sooner or later.
Back then, I knew too. I knew he was bad trouble.
Capital B. Capital T.
The kind of man other girls whispered about. The kind parents warned their daughters away from. Tattoos and violence, clinging to him like heat. A man who didn't pretend to be safe.
I should have run. But honestly, I was never given a choice.
Flash.
A locker room that smells like sweat and blood. My hands are shaking so hard I can't even scream. A body lies on the floor.
And him. He's there. Massimo. Checking for a pulse that's long gone.
Not panicked. Not cruel. Just… there.
Steady.
"It's okay," he says quietly, hands nowhere near me. "You're safe now."
No one else has ever said that to me, before or since, and meant it. How I wish somebody would do so now.
Another flash.
His jacket around my shoulders in the desert night. His eyes on the horizon like he's guarding the world itself. The way he never asks for anything. Never touches unless I reach first.
He was the only one who helped me. Not because he had to. Because he chose to. And he never asked for anything in return except my silence.
That was the easy part.
Even after he disappeared, I kept it.
The tattoo—an exact duplicate of his—still lives beneath my ribs. I see it every morning when I look in the mirror. These days, I have to lift my breast slightly to see it, because ten years… because a baby… because time is not gentle. My chest tightens until breathing hurts.
He's a bad man. I know that.
But he's the only one who never looked at me like a symbol. Or a bargaining chip. Or a liability. He looked at me like I was real. And now my son is gone. Our son.
I stare at the door, at the walls of my childhood bedroom, at the careful safety my father has turned into a cage. If I stay here, Amauri dies.
If I go to him… I don't finish the thought. Because I know the risk. Have calculated it before. A man like Massimo would want his son, no matter the consequences to the mother. He would take him from me. I have no doubt.
I slide off the bed, knees weak, heart hammering, and press my forehead to the cool wood of the door.
"I'm sorry," I whisper. To Amauri. To myself. To the girl I used to be.
Then, finally, I say his name. "Massimo."
The man who vanished. One day, he was waiting for me behind the bleachers. The next, he wasn't. Not the day after. Not the one after that. The disposable phone he'd given me stayed silent until it went dead. No longer in service. Weeks passed.
I was a governor's daughter. Pregnant. Alone. Carrying a secret that could get my child killed. So I chose survival. I married a man who betrayed me. I had my son. I lived a lie.
Then one day, I saw it on the news: Vittorio Manetti and his three sons killed in apparent home invasion. Massimo Manetti swears vengeance.
He was alive. Suddenly, his face was everywhere.
He wasn't dead.
He had simply… forgotten me. Ripped my heart out. Left me.
I swore I'd never reach for him again. And I didn't.
Until today.
Today, he doesn't get to disappear.
If there is one man who can bring my son home, it's Massimo Manetti.
My gaze moves through my childhood room.
Daddy thinks he's clever. He isn't. This room was never a prison to me.
It was a challenge. I learned its weaknesses years ago, back when I was a teenager sneaking out in borrowed dresses and filled with bad intentions, slipping past guards who underestimated a girl who smiled too easily.
The door is locked.
The window isn't.
The false security of the third floor.
I don't shower. Don't change. Don't look at myself in the mirror. Blood, dust, and cactus needles still cling to my skin and hair, but I don't care. All I see when I close my eyes is Amauri's face in that helicopter. Pale. Terrified. Looking for me.
I move on muscle memory alone. The dresser scrapes softly as I push it aside, just enough.
The window opens with the same quiet complaint it always has.
I swing one leg out, then the other, ignoring the protest in my ribs, the sting in my palms. Warm night air hits my skin as I lower myself onto the narrow ledge, fingers searching and finding familiar cracks in the stone. I used to do this barefoot. I still am.
Down the trellis. Over the ivy. Onto the gravel path that Daddy never bothered to light because no one was supposed to be back here.
I don't stop.
The outer wall looms ahead, high but not impossible. I scale it the same way I always did, knee, elbow, breath, patience. I drop down on the other side with a soft grunt, landing hard and steady. My body might be older, but hours in the gym finally pay off. I'm out.
Without looking back, I walk, realizing and regretting too late that I should have tossed a pair of shoes down before I started to climb, but I've long learned that regrets are ghosts that don't rattle chains, they just sit quietly beside you.
I force myself not to run, because running draws attention.
Running looks guilty. Vegas' back alleys are bad enough.
I don't need to draw more attention to myself than my bedraggled form already does.
It helps, though, people think I'm just another homeless person, looking for a handout.
I cut through side streets, past tourists too drunk to notice me, past valet lines and neon reflections in puddles of spilled drinks.
The Strip rises ahead of me like a mirage—lights, noise, excess—a city that eats people alive and calls it entertainment.
I disappear into it.
His casino dominates the block, all glass and steel and calculated arrogance.
I slip into the shadows across the street, ignoring the way my heart is hammering and my breath is too shallow.
Because even after all these years, even after the reason why, my stupid, stupid heart still flutters at the thought of him.
He was more than a teenage crush. I tried to tell myself over the years that it was normal to pine for the father of my child.
That it was normal to love him still. Only…
what I feel for him is so much more than love.
I find a dark corner where no valet will see and chase me off. I wait. Bruised. Dirty. In pain. A woman who should know better. A woman out of options.
I stay here, in the dark corner, and wait for him to appear.
He has to, at some point. Everybody leaves to go to work or the gym, or a date, or whatever else men do.
I hate the waiting. Despite the pain in my feet, I move back and forth on them.
If anybody sees me, I'll look like one of the drugged-out, crazy women I always give a wide berth.
There is no way in hell anybody would let me into the casino looking like this. So I wait.
Time stretches the way it only does when fear and hope share the same space in your chest. Minutes thicken.
My palms won't stay dry. I press them against the cool stone of the building just to feel something solid.
The casino never really sleeps, but it does change its rhythm.
Gamblers drift in and out beneath the towering glass facade, dressed in linen and silk and tailored confidence.
Laughter spills from open doors, bright and careless.
I pull my thin sweater tighter around me. I'm hyperaware of every passing glance. Of security at the doors. Of the way the bouncers scan faces without seeming to.
The clink of chips carries on the air like music every time the entrance doors open. Each time they part, my pulse spikes. Not yet. Not him. Not for me.
A woman in a designer dress glides past with a man whose face I recognize—some actor. Someone whose smile is worth millions.
I haven't slept. I can feel it in the way my jaw aches from clenching. In the way my spine won't relax. I stand too straight, like I'm bracing for impact. If he doesn't let me in… If he won't see me… I swallow hard and wait.
The Strip hums, alive and hungry. Above me, the misting system hisses to life, and a fine spray settles over my skin.
At first, it's a relief. The desert heat has been building slowly, sneaking up while I wasn't paying attention.
But then the dampness sets in. My hair begins to frizz; curls loosen and cling to my neck.
Fabric sticks to my ribs, tracing bruises I haven't had the luxury of acknowledging.
My blouse darkens slightly, the thin material pressing closer with every breath.
I shift my weight, pressing deeper into the shadows, feeling exposed anyway.
Everything about this place is designed to seduce: the way the lights reflect off the polished stone, the scent of expensive perfume, cold air, and money. The casino looms behind me, elegant and ruthless, a monument to control and excess.
I feel small.
And then a car pulls up. Black. Immaculate. My stomach drops so fast it feels like falling.
No.
Please—
My father's car.
He found me. I almost scoff at my own stupidity. One plus one and all that. He didn't become a senator because he underestimates people. Not even his own daughter. The car stops. The back door opens. Sean steps out.
The sight of him makes my skin crawl. He scans the area with lazy confidence, already knowing what he'll find.
His gaze lands on me like a spotlight. I try to melt into the wall, to become part of the shadow, but it's pointless.
He smiles at me, walks up to a valet, and says something, pointing at me like I'm misplaced luggage. Then he comes straight toward me.
My pulse roars in my ears. There's nowhere to run. The crowd is too thin here, the security too tight, the exits too far.
"Don't," I say, my voice shaking despite myself. "Don't touch me."
He grabs my arm anyway. His grip is iron. Possessive. Familiar in the worst way. I twist, and panic floods me. My head turns in a desperate plea to find someone, anyone… and then my eyes fall on him.
Everything stops.
He's stepping out of the building, surrounded by men who move with purpose, with deference. The morning light catches him just right, outlining broad shoulders, sharp lines, the controlled violence in the way he holds himself.
He hasn't changed the way I feared. He's older, yes. Harder. Time hasn't softened him; it's refined him. The dangerous aura around him is unmistakable, heavier now, earned. The pictures of him didn't prepare me. Not even close. He's breathtaking.
Maybe because my body remembers him before my mind can catch up. Maybe because the world tilts slightly toward him, like it always did. Maybe because I've been holding my breath for ten years without realizing it.
Sean tightens his grip, muttering something sharp, impatient. Before I can stop myself, before I can think, I scream.
"MASSIMO!" The name rips out of me, raw and desperate and full of everything I never said.
This is for Amauri, I tell myself. For my son. But it's a lie. Because even without Amauri—even without fear—if I had ever been this close to him again, I would have screamed his name all the same.
Time stops. Not slows. It simply stops. All of it. The noise of the Strip fades into something distant and unreal. The clatter of chips, the murmur of gamblers, the hiss of the misters, all of it dissolves until there is only him.
His eyes find mine. For one impossible fraction of a second, I see him. The old Massimo. Not the Don. Not the monster the papers write about. The man who used to look at me like the world had narrowed down to one fragile, impossible thing.
Me.
His gaze softens. Just a crack. Just enough.
I love you.
The words aren't spoken. They don't need to be. Never had. They whisper through my mind the way they always did, the way they used to sound against my skin in the dark.
My chest caves in with the memory of it.
Hope flares, bright, stupid, lethal.
Then his face shuts down.
It's like watching steel slide into place. His jaw tightens. His eyes go flat. The softness disappears so completely that it's as if it never existed at all.
He's going to turn.
I know it.
He's going to turn away from me. Walk back into his fortress of glass and power and leave me exactly where I am, dirty, bleeding, held by a man who isn't afraid to hurt me. Something inside me screams before my mouth does.
Sean tightens his grip, muttering something sharp and impatient, his fingers digging deeper into my arm like a warning.
I scream again. "MASSIMO!"
As the sound echoes between us, I feel it, the moment my heart understands something my mind refuses to accept. If he turns away now,
I don't just lose my son. I lose the last lie that's kept me alive.
The morning holds its breath, waiting to see what he'll do.