Chapter 13
EMILY
My heart hammered in my chest as I sat in the lobby rehearsing what I was going to say. On paper it seemed simple. A month ago I would have laughed in anyone's face for suggesting I'd date someone tied to the criminal underworld. And yet here I was.
The strangest thing was that fear was not the feeling driving me. I was scared of what his life meant—the violence, the secrecy—but not of him. That distinction mattered more than I wanted it to.
Then suddenly he was there, standing in front of me, a little breathless, his hand gripping the head of his cane tightly enough to turn his knuckles white, and every good argument, every prepared thought, every draft of the speech I rehearsed in my head vanished completely.
Because looking at him, all I could think about was the way he had looked at me and told me, with painful sincerity, that he loved me.
“You’re here.” His voice came out hoarse, and he seemed to hear it too because he winced slightly. “I mean, obviously you’re here. I?—”
“Can we talk?”
He nodded at once and turned toward the elevator.
As we made our way upstairs, I tried to recover my composure, what I meant to say, but all I could focus on was the clean scent of his cologne and the fine strain of worry etched across his face.
In the end, before I could think better of it, I gave him the one piece of the truth that mattered most.
“For what it’s worth,” I said quietly, “the only reason I’m standing in this elevator right now is because I love you too.”
He went completely still.
“Emily,” he breathed, like my name had just become a prayer.
“But love is not enough,” I added quickly.
His face changed slightly. Enough for me to catch the weariness in it, the kind that suggested he already knew that better than I did.
“No,” he said quietly. “It rarely is.”
The elevator doors opened, and neither of us moved. Then he stepped aside to let me out first, and we walked back into his apartment with the strange, brittle calm between us, both of us aware that whatever happened next mattered more than the confession, more than the fear.
I turned to face him once we were inside.
“I need to say this properly,” I said.
He nodded. “Then say it.”
I drew in a breath and held it, steadying myself.
“I love you.” The truth of it hurt and steadied me at the same time. “I don’t know when that happened exactly, and right now it feels inconvenient, but it’s true and I can’t pretend this is smaller or easier than it is.”
He didn’t interrupt.
“Your world scares me,” I went on. “Violence. Crime. Power. The fact that you talk about some things with the kind of indifference most people reserve for the weather. The fact that there are parts of your life where people get hurt, or worse, and that’s not theoretical for you. It’s real.”
His jaw tightened once.
I kept going.
“And I’m not na?ve enough to think a nice dinner and flowers cancel that out. I’m not going to stand here and let myself be dazzled into pretending it doesn’t matter because you’re beautiful and kind to me and buy me capybara cups. It matters.”
A breath passed between us.
Then he said, “Good.”
I blinked. “Good?”
“Yes.” His voice stayed even. “Because if you could dismiss it that easily, I would think less of you.”
That should not have made me love him more. I folded my arms across my middle, more to hold myself together than anything else. “I also need rules.”
That got his full attention.
“What kind of rules?”
“The kind that stop me from disappearing into your life and waking up six months from now not recognizing myself.” I swallowed. “I won’t be lied to. Not by omission, not by technicality, not with whatever polished version of the truth men like you are good at telling.”
Something moved in his face at that. Not offense but a recognition that made me keep on going.
“If I ask you a question, you answer me honestly. If there’s something you genuinely can’t tell me, then you say that. You don’t feed me a version you think I can handle.”
He nodded once. “All right.”
“I need choice,” I said. “Real choice. Not the kind that sounds generous while every road around it has already been blocked off for me. I decide what I’m comfortable knowing.
I decide whether I meet your family, when I travel with you, how far any of this goes. If at any point I say stop, you stop.”
His answer came without hesitation.
“Yes.”
I stared at him. “Just yes?”
“Yes,” he said again, more firmly. “Emily, I was raised in a world where many men mistake possession for devotion. I do not.” His voice lowered.
“You do not belong to me because I love you. If anything, that love demands the opposite. That I give you as much room to choose me as I ask you to give me.”
I looked away first, because all at once I felt too much. Relief. Want. Fear. The slow, painful thaw of hope.
“And one more thing,” I said, quieter now. “You don’t get to decide for me that I’m too fragile for the truth. I know you think you’re protecting me when you hold things back, but I’ve had enough of men making decisions on my behalf and calling it care.”
“I know,” he said softly. “Or I’m learning.”
Silence stretched before I asked the question that had been sitting under everything else.
“How do you live with it?”
He didn’t pretend not to understand me.
“The violence?”
“Yes.”
For the first time since I arrived, he looked away.
Then he crossed slowly to the kitchen island, resting both hands on the marble before he answered.
“We are not rogues,” he said at last. “Not in the way people imagine. We are not chaos without structure or men with guns doing whatever pleases us in the dark. There are rules. Codes. Conduct. There is honor, however unfashionable that word sounds now.”
He looked back at me.
“That does not make everything clean,” he continued.
“It does not make every action defensible. I know that. I am not asking you to call it noble.” He paused.
“But there is a difference between monsters and men who live by a system, even a brutal one. There is a difference between cruelty for pleasure and violence used as a tool.”
I held his gaze. “That sounds very convenient.”
“It is,” he said. “And also true.”
The answer was so direct it stopped my train of thoughts.
Then he went on, more quietly.
“My family is not what it is because we prey on our own. Women in our world are not decoration. Not if the men are worth anything at all. My mother is the center of my father’s life.
My aunt Violet is the center of Hoka’s. They are not consulted out of courtesy.
They are listened to because without them, everything else rots.
” His voice changed on the last part. Not softer.
Deeper. “When my father taught me about power, he did not teach me that being feared was the goal. He taught me that whatever darkness lives in a man’s hands should stop at the threshold of the people he loves. ”
The line hit me hard enough that I couldn’t speak.
I believed him.
Not in the fairytale way but enough to understand that the difference between Adam and Pietro had never been danger versus safety.
Adam wanted control over others because it made him feel big.
Pietro wanted control over himself because he understood what happened when men had power and no discipline.
That didn’t make his life harmless.
It made it more complicated.
I stepped a little closer.
“You say all the right things,” I said.
A humorless smile touched his mouth. “That wasn’t meant to reassure you.”
“I know.” I stopped in front of him. “That’s why it did. At least a little.”
His eyes searched mine, as if he still didn’t quite trust this moment not to vanish.
“So,” he said carefully, “what happens now?”
I let the question sit between us, because I wanted him to feel the weight of it too.
“Now,” I said, “we go slowly.”
He nodded once.
“You answer my questions,” I continued. “Even when they’re uncomfortable.”
“Yes.”
“And you do not make promises. Not about how safe I’ll be, not about what I can handle, and definitely not about how any of this ends.”
Something like shame flickered in his face.
“All right.”
I took another breath.
“And if this keeps going, really going, then at some point, I meet the actual truth of your life. Not the polished version. Not the charmingly expensive restaurant version. The real one.”
That made him go still.
I saw then that this part frightened him too.
Not because he thought I was weak.
Because he knew exactly what I’d be stepping into.
“And if I hate it?” I asked.
His voice came out low and steady. “Then I let you walk away.”
I searched his face for any sign that he didn’t mean it.
I didn’t find one.
That made it easier to close the last of the distance between us.
I lifted my hand and touched his jaw, lightly at first.
His eyes shut for half a second.
“I’m not promising you forever tonight,” I said. “I’m promising you honesty, and a real chance. That’s what I have.”
When he opened his eyes again, something in his face had gone almost unbearably open.
“For now,” he said, “that’s more than enough.”
His voice had grown rough around the edges, and the look in his eyes made something low and molten unfurl inside me.
I had come here prepared for fear, for heartbreak, for some final impossible choice between the man I loved and the world he came from.
I had not come here prepared for the fierce relief of standing my ground and finding that he still wanted me there.
For the unbearable tenderness of him agreeing to my terms without trying to bargain them smaller.
For the way honesty had only made me want him more.
I lifted my hand to his jaw, intending only to touch him, but the moment my fingers brushed the roughness there, his eyes shut briefly and a breath left him that sounded almost painful.
That did something dangerous to me.
I kissed him first.
Not the tentative, searching kisses from before. Not the careful ones.
This one was deliberate.