Chapter 18
LORENZO
She called me Mr. Santoro this morning. Once. Quick. In the middle of a data brief about the Benedetti payments. Then she corrected herself. Said Lorenzo and kept going.
The sarcasm has changed. The jokes still land.
But they land like closed doors now. Same words.
Different edge. She pours her own coffee.
Leaves mine untouched. Three days since I left her room.
Three days since I pulled the sheet over her shoulders and walked into the hallway and sat on the floor in the dark.
I keep leaving.
“Marchetti’s books.” Her voice is flat. Professional. “I’ve mapped every digital trace of his gambling operation. Bank deposits. Wire transfers. The intermediary payments I flagged weeks ago. All of it leads to the same wall.”
“The paper.”
“The paper.” She doesn’t look up. “His debt settlements are recorded in physical ledgers. Not scanned. Not backed up. Handwritten in a book he keeps at the card game off Magazine Street.”
“You need the ledgers.”
“I need someone to get me the ledgers. I can’t hack a notebook.
“ She pulls up a map on her screen. The Magazine Street location marked in red. ”If Marchetti’s recording who owes the Benedettis and how debts get cleared, that’s the missing piece.
The money I can track. The names on the other side of those payments, I can’t. “
“Nico.”
“That’s what I was going to say.” She stops typing. Looks at me. The expression is controlled. The eyes are not. “But if Marchetti reports back to the Benedettis that someone pulled his books, they’ll know we’re looking at the gambling side. They’ll burn everything.”
“Nico knows how to pull records without leaving a trace.”
“From a server. This is a bookie’s desk in a back room. Physical access. Human risk.”
I hold her gaze. “I’ll talk to Nico.”
She holds the look a beat too long. Then goes back to the screen.
Midday I open the window behind her desk.
The one that sticks. She runs cold in this office and used to steal my jacket off the back of the chair without asking.
Today she doesn’t reach for it. Doesn’t look up when I set her coffee beside the keyboard.
Pours her own and leaves mine where it sits.
The laptop screen angles away from me when she reads anything that isn’t work. New angle. Three degrees, maybe four.
“You’re staring at that report again.”
“I’m reading it.”
“You’ve been on page six for twenty minutes.”
“Thorough.”
“Avoidant.”
She goes back to typing. I go back to page six.
She’s right. The trigger is the jacket. She’s cold.
The air conditioning in this office runs too aggressive and Nonna Rosa controls that thermostat the way she controls everything else in this house.
Isabella’s been pulling her sleeves past her wrists for an hour.
I stand. Cross to her. Take my jacket off the chair and drape it over her shoulders.
She goes rigid.
“Don’t.” I stop. Still holding the jacket. “Don’t do that.”
“You’re cold.”
“I’m fine.” She shrugs the jacket off. It falls to the floor between us. “I can get my own jacket.”
I pick it up. Set it on the chair.
“Isabella.”
“Don’t.” She’s turned in her chair. Facing me.
Eyes bright, jaw set. Holding too many things behind her teeth and every word that comes out is wrong because the right ones are trapped behind everything.
“You could at least pretend.” Her voice is steady but that steadiness costs her.
“You could at least pretend you don’t have one foot out the door every time you touch me. ”
Quiet. The hum of the laptop. The air conditioning Nonna Rosa won’t turn down.
“I’m not an idiot, Lorenzo. I know what this is.
I know the pattern. You come close, you pull away, you leave.
That’s the operating procedure. Fine. I can handle that.
” Her hands are in her lap. Curled into fists.
“But the coffee. The jacket. The cloth and the water and the way you say my name. You can’t do that and also leave.
You can’t tend to me like I matter and then walk out like I’m just another body in a bed you’re done with. ”
Her voice stops. Her face changes. A flash of something. Surprise at her own mouth, maybe. The words still in the air between us. She doesn’t take them back.
Fuck.
Dante talks. Marco argues. Giada explains. I have my hands.
I close the distance. She doesn’t move. Sitting in the chair, looking up at me. Eyes wet. Not crying.
I stand in front of her. My knees against the edge of her chair. She has to tilt her head back to see my face. I lean down. Forehead against hers. Eyes closed. My hands at my sides. Just the press of bone against bone. My breath and hers mixing in the inch between our mouths.
She stops breathing. Then shallow. Quick. Warm on my lips.
“I don’t know how to stay.” The words drag out rough. Like pulling rope through gravel. “How to do any of it. The tending. The coffee. My hands have their own orders when you’re in the room. I’ve never—”
I stop. Dio. Her forehead presses harder against mine. Holding me in place.
“I keep leaving because staying means you’re real.” The words come out broken. “If you’re real, I lose you. Everything I’ve let myself need has been taken.”
“I’m not going anywhere.”
“Everyone goes.”
“I’m not everyone.”
I open my eyes. Hers are right there. Brown. Too close to focus. Wet at the edges.
“But I keep coming back.” My voice barely there. “To the office. To the kitchen at midnight. To your door. I keep showing up where you are and I’m not deciding to. My body goes and the rest of me follows and that should tell you something.”
She doesn’t help me. Doesn’t explain my own words back to me. Just holds me there. Forehead to forehead.
Then I kiss her. Not the collision from the desk. Not hunger. Tender. My mouth finding hers in the smallest possible contact. She kisses me back. Soft. Her hand comes up to the back of my neck. Not pulling. Resting. Fingers against the base of my skull where the hair is short.
“I don’t need you to be good at this.” Her voice against my mouth. “I need you to stop running.”
“I’m trying.”
“Try harder.”
A sound leaves me. Not a laugh. The nearest thing to a laugh I’ve produced since I stopped counting and she pulled it out of me with two words while I was kissing her.
Her hand moves from my neck. Down my chest. Over my heart. I cover her hand with mine.
Nonna Rosa’s radio from the kitchen. Cajun fiddle. She’s in a good mood.
My hand over hers over my heart. Still here.