Chapter 6
She walks away like I didn’t just gut her. With her head held high, her back ramrod straight, and burning cheeks. She’s trying not to cry. I hate that I notice. I hate it more that I care.
That I can't help but admire her. Her poise, her grace, her beauty. Everything about her. I exhale through my nose and walk down the path, away from the courtyard, away from the place where she stood like some fucking angel of ruin.
Sophia Orsi.
My boss’s daughter.
She is a mafia princess, way out of my league.
So far out of my league that it would mean my death getting near her.
Even if she hadn’t just turned eighteen, even if she were a grown woman, I would never stand a chance.
Not in a million years. I’m nobody—just a soldier with blood on his hands and no name worth saying.
Someday, she'll marry one of the other family's sons.
Rumors are it's going to be Roberto Giordano My fists ball at the thought of another man ever touching her. My nostrils flare at the thought of that man calling her his. But there is nothing I can do. All I have is impotent fury and a twitch in my fingers like they’re missing the weight of hers in them.
Stupid. Stupid to let her get to me. Stupid to have kissed her. Stupid to have liked it.
The kiss sits in my chest like a hot coal I can’t drop.
For a second, there was nothing but the press of her and the sound of the world narrowing to that one, impossible point.
It felt like breathing for the first time after being underwater for too long.
It felt like everything I don’t allow myself to feel.
And that's exactly why it must never happen again.
I’ve spent my life in the dark because the dark is useful.
It keeps you anonymous, keeps you sharp, keeps you alive.
Right now, I’m building something—slow, steady, in the seams—something that can’t be taken away by a loud name or a petty war.
Men, money, quiet favors, pieces of turf, and reputations bought in whispers.
What I’m making will be the kind of thing that lets a nobody walk into a room and have men clear the way.
It will be the kind of thing that makes the daughter of a capo glance up and see a man she can trust, or one she’ll be forced to trust. Someday, that might mean a wife with a name like Orsi.
Someday, that might mean walking in not as a shadow but as the man everyone will have to answer to.
But that future is fragile. Attention kills quietly; it snags you and peels back the dark. If anyone ties me to Sophia, they’ll come for me. Not for her. For me. It would ruin everything I’ve built. I refuse to risk that. Not for her. Not for anybody.
So I tuck the memory of her mouth away with the magazine in my pocket, a small, dangerous keepsake, and I make a rule in me the way I make rules on a job: it’s a mistake. It stays a mistake. No looks. No favors. No openings. I breathe it in like steel and let the cold set into my bones.
Desire can wait. My plan cannot.
Like a comet, Sophia Orsi has always been in my orbit—bright, distant, impossible to ignore. I don’t look for her, but I always know when she’s near. Like some part of me shifts and realigns without permission.
It’s not desire, not like that. It’s... a disturbance.
Interference. Like static in a clean frequency.
She rattles something in me that’s been locked down too long to name.
It’s not about her face or her body or any of the things that other men might see.
It’s the way she looks at the world, like it hasn’t broken her yet. Like there’s still light in it.
And maybe I hate her for that, too. Or maybe I’m just terrified of what it means for me. Because the second I start feeling anything in this life, I lose. I’ve come too far and bled too much to fall for a spark I was never meant to hold. Not a nobody like me.
The morning after the alley had proved to be as hard as I’d expected. Angelo had called me into Carlos's office, like a dog summoned for a trick. He’d sat there, all smug, and leaned back with his boot on the desk like it was his throne. He hadn’t even offered me a seat. I grimace at the memory.
“You did well last night,” he said, but his voice was flat. “You kept my sister and the other stupid girls safe. You stopped something that could’ve started a war between families.”
“Thanks,” I replied, because that’s what you do. You accept the coin. You don’t ask for warmth.
He tapped ash into a crystal tray and looked at me with that bored, contemptuous glare. “You’re off bodyguard duty. You proved you can handle… other assignments.
“For now,” he added with a sneer wrapped in kindness.
I nodded and pressed out, "Thank you."
He leaned forward, like we were coconspirators.
I almost expected him to wink at me. "Thank God the girls weren’t trafficked.
We only ever traffic what’s useless to the family.
Girls like that? They’re assets. They’re for marriage and babies.
Wasting one is wasting product.” He smiled then, all polite and monstrous.
My hand curled around the magazine in my pocket. I didn't return his smile; it was all I could do not to plant my fist in his face. Just like Carlos, I despise Angelo with every beat of my heart.
Old anger crept up in me. The same anger I had been carrying since I could think. The one that’s lived under my ribs since a man in a suit handed me over to my adoptive mother and told her to raise me to become something useful.
Angelo never had to earn a chair. He sucks the silver spoon and doesn’t even notice the teeth marks.
"Thank you. If this is all?" I managed to say between clenched teeth. I wasn't sure how much longer I could keep my composure around him. With a wave, he dismissed me like he always does.
The worst? I don’t even know who I am.
Carlos Orsi took me in when I was a baby. I don't even have a birth certificate or a name. I was just an unwanted mouth to feed and a debt to collect on. He handed me off to a soldier and his wife, like I was some stray dog—a favor disguised as charity.
Useful. Not loved. Not theirs. Just another tool in the box.
My adoptive father made it clear from the start that I wasn’t blood, that I wasn’t wanted. I was a job—a burden.
My mother… she tried, in her own way. She gave me scraps of warmth between long stretches of cold. A soft voice here. A plate of food there. But she always pulled back when her real children cried. I was never enough to fight for. Never the favorite. Just tolerated, just kept alive.
And even that felt like a gift.
I grew up in that house knowing I was an outsider. Knowing I didn’t belong. And when I was six, Carlos came knocking because it was time to earn my keep.
They didn’t hand me a gun, not then. First, it was errands.
Sitting quietly while men screamed about debts, watching bruises bloom on faces, helping to carry ledgers and cash, and listening when I wasn’t supposed to.
I learned to read people the way other kids learned math, through trial and error, through pain.
By ten, I was bait. They’d station me on stoops outside apartments, make me cry, and send in the real muscle once someone opened the door to help me.
By twelve, I ran collections. Not because I was strong, but because I was invisible.
Forgettable. Nobody suspects a quiet kid with dark eyes and silent steps.
By fifteen, I could break a man’s kneecap without blinking.
By seventeen, I was made. Not because of loyalty.
Not because of legacy, but because I’d done the things no one else would. Quietly. Efficiently. Without a trace.
I earned my place in this world through blood and silence. No birthright. No name. Just scars and usefulness.
So what the hell am I doing, thinking about Sophia like I deserve her attention?
She’s a princess in this world. I’m the weapon her father uses to wipe the blood off his throne. And yet… she looked at me like I was something.
Something worth talking to. Something worth remembering.
And I hate her for that.
Because I’ve spent my whole life pretending I don’t want to be remembered. Pretending I don’t care. Pretending it doesn’t matter that I don’t know who I am or where I came from.
But when she looked at me, it mattered.
It mattered too much.
I stop walking. My boots crunch gravel near the side gate of the courtyard. I stare at the iron bars, breathing hard.
She’s young. Reckless. Soft.
I squeeze my eyes shut for a second and whisper, "Stay away from me, princess."
Even as I say it, I know I don’t mean it. I don’t want her to stay away. I want her close. I want her safe. I want her to be mine.
God, what am I doing?
She’s eighteen—barely more than a girl.
And yet…
I think of the hundred grand in my account, another little thank you besides the promotion. A silent pat on the head. Good dog. Take the money and shut up.
But I don’t want their money.
I want her.
Not to touch. Not to own. I just want… to be enough.
Enough that she wouldn’t have to marry some polished capo’s son someday.
Enough that when she's old enough, it could be me.
To see her smile and know I put it there.
I want her to look at me and see more than a shadow.
More than a foot soldier.
More than a weapon.
I want to be someone.
And I’m not.
Not yet.
But I could be.
The thought slams into me like a steel door kicked open.
You want to be worthy of her? Then become someone who can’t be ignored.
I can’t stay invisible anymore.
I can’t keep crawling through back alleys and pretending power doesn’t matter.
Sophia Orsi rattled something loose in me—shook the rot from the bones.
If I ever want to deserve her…
I have to rise.
Build something that’s mine.
Cut out a kingdom from the shadows and crown myself.
And one day, when the dust settles, I want to walk into a room and watch every man she’s ever known step aside.
Because she’s looking for me.
It means it’s time to stop being a weapon in someone else’s hands.
It’s time to become the man who makes his own rules.