Chapter 17 - Van
The documents are still scattered across my bed where I threw them after Carmela stormed out, my medical credentials and bank statements looking pathetic in the lamplight.
Three hours of staring at the ceiling, replaying her words about extending my debt indefinitely, about choosing whether I get cleared or kept permanently.
The sound of my front door opening makes me bolt upright. Security system didn't trigger—she still has the code I gave her weeks ago.
Carmela appears in my doorway, silhouetted against the hallway light.
Her hair is disheveled, makeup smudged like she's been crying.
She's still wearing the same clothes from earlier, but something in her posture has changed.
The fury that carried her out of here has burned down to something else entirely.
"You're awake," she says, voice hoarse.
"Hard to sleep when someone threatens to own you forever and then disappears." I sit up against the headboard, watching her carefully. "Come to tell me what you've decided about my debt?"
She steps into the room, closing the door behind her. "I've been driving around for hours, thinking."
"Dangerous thing for a Rosetti to do alone at night."
"I had security following me. Three cars." She moves closer, and I can see the exhaustion in her eyes. "I kept thinking about what you said. About knowing exactly what protecting me means. About choosing this."
My jaw clenches, stress response automatic. "And?"
"You were right. I am having a crisis." She sits on the edge of the bed, careful not to disturb the scattered papers. "But not about you following orders."
Something shifts in her expression, vulnerability replacing the cold authority she wore when she walked out earlier.
"I've been thinking about what it means that even my escape led me to someone bound to my family.
That even you, Van, even what we have—it all connects back to them.
" Her voice cracks. "I thought if I got far enough from my family, I could finally be normal.
Just a regular girl making regular choices. But I can't escape what I am."
The word 'normal' hangs between us like an accusation. Something cold settles in my chest as I realize what she's thinking. That discovering my debt to Dom has contaminated everything between us, made it just another link in a chain she can't break.
"Being average. Being free." She laughs, but there's no humor in it. "I'll always be a Rosetti, and everyone around me will always have some connection to that name. Some debt or obligation or history that makes everything… infected."
She stands abruptly, moving to the window, arms wrapped around herself like armor. I can see her reflection in the glass—lost, searching for answers that don't exist.
"I spent two hours in a 24-hour diner, trying to figure out who I am," she continues. "The waitress kept refilling my coffee and giving me these looks like I was having a breakdown over a bad breakup. Which I guess I was, if you count breaking up with my entire identity."
I've handled bullet wounds under fire, but watching this woman have an existential crisis makes my hands unsteady. The phantom ache starts in my wrists, old rope burn scars prickling.
"This epiphany you're having," I say carefully, "what exactly are you concluding?"
"That I can never be ordinary. Never have something real." Her voice cracks on the word 'real.' "These past weeks, I thought maybe I'd found something different with you. Someone who chose me for me, not because of orders or because of some debt to be paid."
The accusation stings. I move to stand behind her, not touching but close enough to feel her warmth.
"You think that's what this was? Orders?"
"Wasn't it?" She turns to face me, eyes bright with unshed tears. "You're tied to my family forever, Van. Your entire life exists because they pulled you out of that hellhole. How am I supposed to know if you want me, or if you're just… following through on an obligation?"
Her words slice deeper than any scalpel. The idea that she sees herself as a debt to be paid, that she can't recognize the way I've been coming apart for her since the moment she walked into my sterile life.
"So what am I then?" I ask, my voice deadly quiet. "Just another cage? Another form of family control disguised as choice?"
She flinches, but doesn't back down. "I don't know who I am when I'm not being protected or controlled or…
owned by someone else's obligations. I thought I could figure it out, but everywhere I turn, there's another connection back to my family.
Am I just… convenient? The acceptable way to work off what you owe Dom? "
Something in my chest cracks open. Three years of keeping everyone at a distance, of controlled facades, of never letting anyone see the man beneath the surgeon's mask—it all breaks apart.
"You want to know what's real?" My voice comes out raw, stripped of every defense I've built.
"You dump cream in your coffee like you're trying to drown the taste.
Still make that face like it's poison going down.
You hum when you're nervous, always the same melody, and it's the first sound that's ever made my hands stop shaking after surgery. "
I step closer, watching her eyes widen as my control disintegrates completely.
"I hate the fucking orchids in my apartment because they're too sterile, too perfect. You said they looked lonely. You said everything here looked lonely until you started leaving your things around—your books on my coffee table, your hair ties on my nightstand."
My hands clench at my sides, fighting the urge to touch her, to prove through contact what words can't seem to convey.
"I know the sound you make right before sleep takes you—half sigh, half surrender.
I stay awake just to hear it because it's the only thing that keeps the fucking nightmares quiet.
I know you try to hide it when those rescue animal commercials make you tear up.
Like crying over some dog makes you weak instead of proving you've got the biggest heart of anyone in this goddamn family. "
Her breath catches, but I'm not finished. I can't stop now that the dam has broken.
"I know you, Carmela. Not the Rosetti princess, not the assignment anyone gave me.
I know the woman who waters my plants like she's keeping them company, who makes my apartment feel less like a sterile waiting room and more like somewhere I actually want to come home to.
I want to keep you. Permanently. Not because I'm following orders, but because for the first time in three years, I'm not just surviving—I'm living. "
She stares at me, tears finally spilling over. My medical precision is shot to hell, replaced by messy human emotion I haven't felt since before the ambush.
"You think I care about you because of your last name?" I move closer, voice dropping to something rough and desperate. "Sunshine, I stopped thinking about what I owed your family the night I first tasted your sweet pussy. Now the only thing I owe is making sure you know exactly who you belong to."
"Van—"
"You want to know if this is real?" I gesture to the papers scattered across my bed. "I was going to call Dom tonight. Tell him the debt means nothing. Walk away from all of it—the life they built for me, the protection that keeps my real identity buried, everything."
Her eyes go wide, following my gesture to the documents. Insurance papers, medical credentials, bank statements. The proof of everything Dom built for me after they pulled me out of that hellhole.
"The Rosettis don't just provide protection—they ARE my protection.
My medical license exists because they made calls.
My credentials, my references, my ability to save lives—all of it disappears if I walk away.
" My voice turns fierce, uncompromising.
"I was ready to risk my medical license, risk everything they've given me, just to prove this isn't about debt anymore. "
Her eyes go wide, understanding the magnitude of what I was prepared to sacrifice. Without the Rosetti family backing me, my medical career could disappear overnight. The identity they created for me, the credentials, the references—all of it could vanish if they decided to pull their support.
"Van, no. You can't—your entire life is built on what they've given you."
"My entire life right now is you." The words come out fierce, uncompromising. "Everything else is just survival. The medicine, the apartment, the careful distance—that's not living. That's just… existing until I die. But you?"
I step closer, my voice dropping to something raw and desperate.
"You make me want things I thought were dead inside me. A future instead of just the next surgery. A reason to come home instead of just a place to sleep. You make me remember what it felt like to want something beyond just making it through another day."
She reaches out with trembling fingers, touching the papers like they might burn her.
I watch understanding dawn in her eyes—the magnitude of what I was prepared to offer before she stormed out earlier.
Walking away from Rosetti protection isn't just about money or convenience.
It's about risking everything I've rebuilt after my world collapsed.
"This is the first time," she whispers, "the first time someone has offered to make this choice. To choose me over duty. Over obligation."
"It's not a choice," I tell her, my voice rough with emotion. "It stopped being a choice weeks ago. Maybe it never was one."
She looks up at me, and I see something shift in her expression. Recognition. Not of Carmela Rosetti, the protected sister and daughter, but of the woman I've been falling for without permission. The woman who makes me want to be more than just a man paying off debts.
"You'd sacrifice everything to prove this is real?"
"I'd sacrifice everything because losing you would destroy me." I reach for her hands, relief flooding through me when she doesn't pull away. "The Rosetti family gave me a life. But you? You gave me a reason to live it."
She steps closer, and I can see her processing what this means. That for the first time in her sheltered existence, someone is willing to give up security, protection, and obligation for love alone. That what we have can transcend family debts and inherited duties.
"We'd both be walking away from everything safe," she says quietly.
"Maybe. Or maybe we'd finally be walking toward something real."
She leans into me then, her forehead resting against my chest, and I know something has shifted. The fury that carried her out of here hours ago has transformed into something else entirely.
"I don't want you to sacrifice everything," she murmurs against my skin. "I want us to build something that doesn't require either of us to lose who we are."
"No more running," I say, wrapping my arms around her like I can shield her from every doubt and fear.
"No more running," she agrees. "And no more threats about extending debts indefinitely just because I'm scared of what this means."
My phone buzzes on the nightstand at 12:42 AM, the sound cutting through our moment like a blade. The display shows Dom's name, and my blood turns to ice. He never calls this late unless there's blood in the water.
Carmela pulls back, following my gaze to the phone. The spell between us fractures as reality crashes back in. We're not just two people making choices in a vacuum. We're standing in the middle of a mafia family bringing all the complications that entails.
"Answer it," she whispers, but her voice shakes. "Whatever it is, we face it together."
The phone keeps buzzing, Dom's name flashing like a threat. I look down at her—at the woman I was prepared to sacrifice everything for—and realize our first real test is about to begin.
Before I can even decide if I want to know what Dom needs at midnight, before I can prepare for whatever crisis is about to shatter this fragile moment of reconciliation, I reach for the phone.
Because whatever comes next, she's right. We face it together.