Chapter 17
EMILY
Iloved Pietro’s family.
Or at least most of them. I loved his mother and little sister, and I respected his father in the slightly terrified way I imagined half the city did.
Sandro Benetti carried power the way other men wore expensive coats: effortlessly, as if it had been tailored for him so long ago he no longer noticed the weight of it.
His dark eyes always seemed to see too much when they landed on me, enough to make me want to apologize for things I hadn’t even done.
But he was also, very obviously, a loving man.
Not in a loud or easy way. He wasn’t warm with me exactly, but he didn’t need to be for me to see it.
Victoria alone was proof enough. She was a tiny, adorable menace with the confidence of someone who had never once doubted she was loved, and only a truly good father would have let a little girl grow into that much fearless personality without trying to tame it.
Lily was different. Softer on the surface, maybe, but strong in all the places that counted.
She had a nurturing kind of presence that made you want to lean closer without ever letting you mistake her for fragile.
And the way Sandro kept finding his way back to her, as if drawn by instinct, was so intimate it made something ache inside me.
Because once I saw it, I couldn’t stop wanting it.
Which was probably why by the time we left for Seattle, some dangerous part of me had already started thinking of Chicago as a place I could come back to. The plane was quieter this time, or maybe my mind had simply found other things to obsess over.
Sophie. The surgery. Home. Adam. The way apprehension appeared every time I let myself picture the town again.
Pietro must have noticed, because his hand found mine not long after takeoff and stayed there, warm and steady over my fingers.
“What?” he asked.
I looked at him. “Nothing.”
His expression didn’t change.
“Emily.”
I let out a breath and leaned back in my seat. “I just feel a little guilty.”
One dark brow lifted. “About what?”
“About dragging you into this without really introducing you properly first. You came with me for something huge and awful and stressful, and now you’ll be stuck in a hotel room like a dirty little secret.” I looked down at our hands. “It doesn’t feel fair.”
Pietro’s thumb moved once over my knuckles. “You are going home for your sister. There is nothing unfair about that.”
“Still.”
He turned slightly toward me, his expression settling into that calm, immovable certainty of his that never felt dismissive when it was aimed at me.
“Emily, you are there for something far more important than introductions,” he said.
“Your sister needs you. That is all that matters right now. We have time for the rest. Once she’s better, we can come back properly, and I’ll meet everyone under circumstances that do not involve hospitals and emotional collapse. ”
I smiled. “Very optimistic of you to assume my family won’t cause emotional collapse anyway.”
“I’m from Chicago,” he said dryly. “I’m difficult to impress.”
My smile softened. “I just… I feel safer with you there.”
That struck him. I could see it in the way his face changed, just slightly, as if the words had gone deeper than I meant them to.
Before he could answer, Olivero looked up from across the cabin.
“And me too, right?”
I laughed, startled out of the heaviness for the first time in twenty minutes. “Yes, Olivero. You too.”
Pietro looked at him with visible displeasure.
“Why don’t you go see what the pilot is doing?” he said.
Olivero blinked. “I’m fairly certain I’m not meant to supervise aviation.”
“Then start learning.”
“You’re hostile because she likes me.”
“No,” Pietro said. “I am hostile because you keep speaking.”
Olivero leaned back in his seat with a grin that suggested he had no intention of stopping. “This is why people prefer me.”
I shook my head, still smiling, and let my shoulder rest lightly against Pietro’s.
He didn’t look at me, but his fingers tightened around mine for the briefest second, and that tiny movement said more than anything else could have.
Whatever waited in Seattle, I had to face it.
I must have been more exhausted than I realized, or maybe it was simply Pietro’s warmth and the clean, spicy scent of him that made me feel safe. Either way, at some point I closed my eyes, and when I opened them again, his lips were brushing my forehead and the plane had landed.
By the time we reached the bottom of the stairs, a car was waiting on the tarmac, along with an Asian man so imposing he made me miss a step.
If Alessandro Benetti had an aura, this man had something denser, darker, and even less forgiving.
“Oh, for the love of God,” Pietro muttered, frowning as he tightened his grip on my hand to steady me on the steps.
“I thought you were sending a driver.”
“Rude nephew,” the man said smoothly. “Jiro and I are here on business. I thought I might as well come and meet you…and the beautiful Emily.”
My face burned at once.
He removed his sunglasses, revealing a pair of stunning, unsettling tawny eyes that managed to feel both warm and dangerous at the same time.
“Emily,” he said, inclining his head with effortless elegance, “you’ll have to excuse Pietro’s lack of manners. My name is Hoka Nishimura, and I’m this rude one’s uncle.”
His smile only made him more alarming.
Hoka.
My eyes widened before I could stop them, and I took a small step back on instinct as recognition slammed into place. This was not just an uncle. This was the Hoka Nishimura. Head of the yakuza. Not just in some local, abstract sense either. Everywhere that mattered.
“Ah,” he said with a soft sigh, clearly reading everything that crossed my face. “I see you’ve heard of me.”
Pietro shrugged. “I may have mentioned you in passing.”
“Uh-huh.”
“You really didn’t need to be here,” Pietro said, and I didn’t miss the undercurrent in his tone. “I’m sure you have better places to be.”
I looked back toward Olivero, who had already set my suitcase down by his feet. “It’s okay,” I said quickly. “You can go with your uncle. I’ll just take a taxi home. It’s only twenty?—”
“Nonsense,” Hoka said smoothly. “I’m here to take you where you need to go. And perhaps, when you have a moment to breathe again, you might join my wife and me for dinner.”
Pietro arched a brow now. “Oh. Aunt Violet is here too. Pregnant and all.” His mouth flattened. “I see. What a coincidence.”
Hoka looked at him with perfect stillness. “Life is funny like that sometimes.”
Then he opened the back door and inclined his head toward me. “Please, Emily. Let me drive you.”
As if there were a world in which I was going to say no to that man.
I got into the car. Pietro slid in beside me a second later, Olivero in the front, and for the first few minutes the silence was so complete it felt curated. As if everyone in the vehicle had agreed, without saying aloud, that this was not the moment for too much truth.
Hoka, to my surprise, was the one who broke it.
“Pietro tells me your sister is having surgery,” he said, his eyes on the road.
I looked up. “Yes. Tomorrow.”
He nodded once. “I hope it goes smoothly.”
The words were simple, but there was enough sincerity in them that my shoulders loosened a fraction.
“Thank you.”
“Seattle is very beautiful when life is not inconvenient,” he went on. “I’m sorry your return is under difficult circumstances.”
I blinked. That was…unexpectedly kind.
“So am I,” I admitted.
Beside me, Pietro said nothing, but his hand found mine and stayed there. Quiet. Grounding.
Hoka’s eyes flicked once to the rearview mirror, caught the gesture, and said nothing about that either.
By the time the car turned onto my street, my nerves were back in full force. Home sat just ahead, familiar and full of ghosts I had spent years pretending no longer had access to me.
Hoka pulled to a smooth stop in front of the house. Olivero was already out of the car by the time I fully came back to myself, reaching for my suitcase like he had done it a thousand times before.
“Thank you,” I said, turning toward Hoka. “Really.”
He inclined his head. “Take care of your sister, Emily.”
I nodded and reached for the door.
Then Pietro caught my hand.
I turned back at once.
His face had gone still in that way it did when he was containing too much at once.
“I’m not far,” he said quietly. “One phone call and I’m here.”
My throat tightened. “Pietro?—”
“I mean it.” His thumb brushed once over my knuckles. “If you need space, take it. If you need me, call. If it becomes too much, take a taxi to the Fairmont and I’ll be there waiting for you.”
“For as long as you need me close.”
I looked at him for one second too long, memorizing the seriousness in his face, the utter lack of performance in it. Then I squeezed his hand once.
“Okay,” I whispered.
His fingers tightened around mine before he let go.
I stepped out of the car with my suitcase and my heart somewhere up around my throat, and even before I reached the front path I could feel his gaze still on me, steady and unrelenting, like distance itself was something he had agreed to only under protest.
The house looked exactly the same. That was the first betrayal. Same white paint. Same porch swing my mother never actually sat on. Same flower boxes beneath the windows, the petunias long since surrendering to the season.
I rang the bell.
When the door opened, the warmth that spilled out from inside hit me first, then the smell of food, then my mother’s face crumpling with emotion before she threw her arms around me.
“Emily.”
My dad was right behind her, one hand coming to the back of my shoulder as he pulled me into the house too, like if they didn’t get me over the threshold fast enough I might still disappear.
“There she is,” he said, his voice already rough. “There’s my girl.”
And for a second, I let myself sink into it. The familiarity. The relief. The ache of being loved and needed and known here, however imperfectly.
Then I looked up.