Chapter 35 MASSIMO
Fuck. She told me to take a shower. The realization hits as I brace my hands on the sink and lean my forehead against the mirror; the steam is starting to fog the glass, almost as if it's trying to hide me from myself.
Why did she follow?
No—wrong question.
Why did I think she wouldn't?
Nobody has seen me like that in years. Nobody.
I made sure of it. For years, every woman I fucked, I fucked from behind—my control, my rules.
In the dark. No questions. No looks, greedy or, even worse, pitying.
I didn't allow intimacy because intimacy invites curiosity, and curiosity leads to scars, and scars lead to explanations I refuse to give.
It was fine. It worked.
I didn't need more.
But Jenna—
Shit.
It's been inevitable since the second she walked back into my life, hasn't it? Bound to happen the moment she stopped looking at me like a monster and started looking at me like a man she once loved. Until she saw them.
The look on her face when I snapped at her.
Not fear.
Hurt.
That same fucking hurt I put there ten years ago without knowing it.
"Fuck," I breathe, already moving.
I adjust the towel around my waist and stride out of the bathroom without thinking; the water is still running. "Jenna."
She's sitting on my bed. Still. Straight-backed. Like she's been waiting for me. Like she knew I'd come after her. That sight hits harder than any bullet ever has.
"You shouldn't have seen that," my voice is rough, uselessly defensive.
She looks up at me slowly. No tears now. Just that steady, devastating calm.
"I didn't follow you to hurt you," she explains quietly. "I followed because I needed to talk to you. And I thought… I thought you understood."
"Understood what?" I ask, genuinely thrown. "You told me to take a shower."
She makes a small sound, somewhere between a scoff and a laugh. "The cue," she says. "I needed to talk to you alone. Go take a shower."
I rake a hand through my still-dry hair, irritation mixing with something dangerously close to amusement. "I'm sorry," I apologize flatly. "I don't think I speak parent just yet."
That gets me a smile. Not polite. Not cautious. Real.
"You will," she promises simply.
Two words. That's all. They hit me harder than the car that ran me over.
Something in my chest jumps, sharp, uninvited.
Hope is a dangerous thing in my world. I learned that young.
I learned it with blood. But standing there, half-dressed, stripped down in ways I never allow, I feel it anyway.
It's not fear or anger. It's something staking a claim.
I don't answer her right away. I just look at her, really look at her, and suddenly I get it: This woman isn't asking permission. She's stating a future.
I take a step closer, then another, stopping just short of her. My hands curl into fists at my sides, and my knuckles are white from the strain. I feel stripped bare in a way no nakedness ever accomplished.
"I don't want you to see me like that," I admit finally, the truth rips itself out of me before I can stop it. "Broken. Marked. Like something that survived instead of something that lived."
She stands. Slow. Careful. Like she's approaching a wounded animal that might bite.
"You think the sight of your scars will scare me?
" she asks softly. "You think I don't understand what survival costs?
" That lands. Hard. "I spent ten years thinking you left me," she continues.
"Thinking I wasn't enough to make you stay.
And now I find out you were paying to stay alive, piece by piece. "
My throat tightens.
"I told you to get out," I remind her hoarsely.
"I know."
"And you didn't."
She shakes her head once. "No. I didn't."
I close my eyes for a second, clenching my jaw, the weight of it all crashes down at once, the car, the lies, the years, the way she still stands here instead of running. When I open them again, she's close enough that I can feel her warmth.
"I'm not ashamed of what they did to me," I reveal slowly. "I'm angry that you saw it before I was ready."
She nods. "Fair."
I swallow. "But don't ever mistake my scars for weakness."
Her gaze lifts, fierce now. Unafraid. "Like there is a chance in hell for that with you."
Something inside me gives. Not breaks. Gives.
I reach out—not to pull her close, not to claim—but to rest my hand against her cheek, just once, grounding myself in the fact that she's real. That she's here. That she didn't look away.
"I don't let anyone see me," I disclose quietly.
"I know."
"I'm not good at this," I add. "At being… seen."
She leans into my touch, just a fraction. "Then we'll be bad at it together."
Dark. Dangerous. Uncertain.
Underneath the soft touches, the words, the glances, something vast and dangerous simmers, an undercurrent of desire powerful enough to redraw the world if we ever stop holding it back. It's like the very air around us is filled with electricity. Heavy, loaded.
"Mummy? Massimo? I'm hungry." Amauri calls through the closed door from the living room. Reality snaps back into place like a rubber band.
We order food from the kitchen. Plates covered with silver domes arrive, and steam escapes when they're opened.
Plates are passed around. The TV comes on, and Amauri insists on Toy Story.
He wedges himself firmly between us on the couch, as if this is the most natural arrangement in the world, which somehow… it is.
I watch the screen, but I'm only half there.
I'm acutely aware of Jenna beside me, the warmth of her thigh, the brush of her arm when she reaches for her drink.
Amauri's head eventually tips against my side, heavy, trusting.
Jenna's hand smooths over his hair absentmindedly, the gesture automatic and intimate.
I've commanded rooms full of armed men. This feels harder.
When Amauri finally falls asleep, I don't move right away.
I let the moment exist. Let myself memorize the weight of him, the quiet, the fragile peace I don't trust yet but desperately want to.
After a little while, I lift him carefully and carry him down the hall.
Jenna follows without a word. I lay him in the guest bed, pull the covers up, and tuck him in the way he clearly expects.
He sighs softly in his sleep. This—this—is how it was always supposed to be.
And soon he'll have the best bedroom any little boy could want.
I turn, and Jenna is standing in the doorway, watching us like she's afraid the moment might vanish if she blinks. She takes one step inside. I close the distance in two.
"Oh no," I murmur, low and certain. "We're not done."
Her breath catches. She backs up on instinct, not fear, something else.
Something that recognizes where this is going and doesn't entirely want to stop it.
I keep moving forward, she keeps moving back, that way I guide her gently, inexorably, out of the room.
Not rough. Not rushed. Just inevitable. Into my bedroom.
"Massimo," she protests softly as we go, and my name frays at the edges. I shake my head once, never breaking eye contact. Not tonight. Tonight isn't about explanations or apologies or the past. Tonight is about gravity finally being allowed to work.
She lets me close the door behind her and guide her to the edge of the bed.
Her eyes catch the city glow bleeding through the blinds, the pools of shadow on the navy sheets, the black suit jacket forgotten from earlier when I tossed it to the floor, carelessly, making space for her.
She sits, legs close together, hands braced behind her on the mattress, her face lifted like she's about to take a punch and has decided to suffer it beautifully.
That's the bravest part of her, always choosing pain over cowardice, always daring me to do my worst.
I kneel in front of her, bring my face level with her knees, and part them with slow, deliberate pressure.
She lets me, doesn't flinch. I palm her calves, fingertips skating the tendon and soft skin, push her skirt up inch by inch until the backs of my hands are flush with the heat of her thighs.
She watches every move, wild-eyed and silent, mouth parted.
"Don't look away," I tell her, and she doesn't. Not once. Not even when I pull her in closer, and the tips of my fingers find bare skin beneath the lace, so wet it makes me want to destroy her.
She tries to say something, but I silence it with two fingers on her lips. Then I thumb away a smudge of dessert left from dinner. She licks the pad of my thumb, and I almost lose it right there.
I take her blouse apart, button by button, slow enough to be cruel.
The fabric parts like water around her, exposing collarbone and shoulder, the tattoo beneath her breast—black and red ink, Forever in Pain.
Forever in Death. When we got them, we had no idea what pain was.
I run my tongue under the arch of it, trace the line with the flat, wet from my mouth, and she shudders.
"You kept it," I observe, reverently, but she refuses to give up the upper hand even now.
"You kept yours," she observes, and its accusation and confession at once, a dare to take everything she's been guarding for the last decade.