Chapter 21 Isabella
Rossi is looking at me like I’ve lost my mind.
Which, honestly, is impressive. I thought he only had one expression.
Nico usually only needs three seconds to shut down my ideas.
Rossi lasts longer, probably because he’s a professional.
Also, because on some level, he knows I’m healing and restless and one sharp word might send me spiraling.
But I’m also stubborn, and very bored. And very tired of staring at the same four extremely expensive walls while my brain vibrates like a shaken soda can.
“It’s been days,” I argue, pacing the living room in leggings and one of Nico’s hoodies. Despite the stunning wardrobe he arranged for me, I feel most comfortable in his clothes. Which is telling its own story, and one I’m not touching with a barge pole.
“A whole week of doing what I’m told. I’m eating, resting, doing my work from here.
I’m not even hurting anymore.” A point I prove by twisting and turning like I’m about to pull off some impressive jive move.
I even manage to hide the slight wince, though his raised brow and crossed arms suggest not well enough.
“Please? I’m safe with you. And I want to go outside.”
Rossi sighs like a man who has seen too much. “Miss Romano—”
“Don’t call me that.”
“Miss Romano…”
“Too formal.” Not listening. I plug my ears and sing Jingle Bells.
A louder huff now. “Isabella.”
He tries again, his voice dipped in patience and threat. “If I take you out and Mr. Mancini finds out…”
“He won’t kill you,” I say cheerfully.
Rossi gives me a flat stare.
“Okay, he might, but only a little. A minor murder. He’ll probably only maim you a little.” He doesn’t blink. I try again. “I want Christmas decorations.”
That gets him.
His brows furrow. “Decorations?”
“Yes,” I say, warming to it. “Lights. Ornaments. A tree, maybe. Something warm. Something that makes the penthouse feel like… not a bunker. I need a little life in this place.”
Rossi shifts. I can see the exact moment the stoic facade cracks. This man is a fortress, but even fortresses have weak spots, and his appears to be Christmas.
Also, the fact that he’s watched me survive an arson attack, a physical attack, and a total life implosion. A trip to a store probably doesn’t make the top ten dangers.
He sighs again, a defeated sigh this time. “Fine. One store. One hour. No detours.”
I beam. “You’re my hero.”
“I’m a fool,” he mutters.
But he gets his coat. And ten minutes later we’re in the elevator.
The moment we step into the holiday shop, I feel something click back into place inside me.
Warm lights. Soft carols. Rows of ornaments, glittering garlands, little ceramic villages.
It smells like cinnamon and pine and nostalgia, like every Christmas memory I’ve ever loved.
This is my happy place, and it settles something inside me.
I know from the report Nico got from the fire chief that most of my belongings are lost, destroyed by smoke or fire and that guts me, but I’m alive and I can rebuild my trinkets and make new memories, and it starts now.
Rossi follows me like a large, grim shadow, looking so out of place it makes me giggle.
A child laughs somewhere near the display of plush reindeer, and I smile in response.
I can’t wait to have kids so I can do all the Christmas traditions my parents did with me.
Leaving cookies and milk for Santa, reading The Night Before Christmas on Christmas Eve, and drinking hot chocolate in matching pajamas.
I hope that includes a man who loves it as much as I do. I inhale deeply.
I grab a basket, and my ribs twinge, but it’s a good twinge, alive, present.
Rossi grabs it off me and thrusts a cart at me instead. “You’re going to fill it, so let’s not pretend,” he predicts.
“I might,” I say, unable to stop smiling.
The first thing I pick up is a snow globe, simple and sweet. A tiny town square, dusted with glitter-snow. When I shake it, it looks like magic. “I like this one,” I murmur.
“Then take it.”
“You’re very enabling today.”
“I’m accepting my fate,” Rossi replies solemnly.
I grab lights, warm white ones, not the icy corporate kind I know Nico prefers.
Then ribbons, tinsel, ornaments, a wreath, a garland thick enough to smother an entire hallway in Christmas cheer.
I spot a tiny Santa figurine holding a toy pistol, a cigarette hanging out of his mouth, and immediately put it in the cart.
Rossi hesitates. “A gun?”
“He’ll love it.”
“It’s Santa with a gun.”
“Exactly.”
Rossi closes his eyes like he’s praying for strength.
I’m reaching for a box of handmade glass ornaments when a familiar voice cuts through the aisle.
“Rossi.”
We both freeze.
Because Nico is standing at the end of the aisle, wearing a black overcoat, hands in his pockets, jaw clenched like he’s fighting the urge to pick me up and march me directly back to the penthouse.
Rossi straightens immediately, all six-foot-something of him going stiff. “Mr. Mancini,” he says without turning.
“Nico,” I try, very casual. Too casual. “Fancy seeing you here.”
His eyes flick over me, head to toe, checking for injuries, threats, or possibly explosives. Then he looks at the overflowing cart. His jaw ticks. “What,” he says slowly, “is all of this?”
“Christmas,” I say brightly.
He stares at me. Then at Rossi. Then at the cart. Then back at me.
Rossi starts talking fast. “She insisted. You were in a meeting. She made a compelling argument, and I assessed the risk as acceptable…”
Nico lifts a hand, cutting him off. “We’ll discuss it later.”
Rossi looks like a man who just received an early death sentence.
I bite the inside of my cheek. “You’re not mad?”
“I didn’t say that. But I’m here now.” Nico steps closer. Very close. Close enough that I feel the heat of him seep through the air. “You feeling okay?” he murmurs.
“Yes.”
“Your ribs?”
“Fine.”
His eyes soften. Barely. Then he glances pointedly at the Santa-with-a-gun figurine. “Explain.”
“It’s festive mob energy.”
A beat of silence. Then, God help me, he huffs a small laugh through his nose and drops his gaze to the cart like he’s trying to hide it. “It won’t fit on my door,” he says, holding up the wreath I added.
“It will.”
“It won’t.”
“We’ll see.”
He stares at me like I’m trouble. I stare back like I absolutely am.
Then, without being asked, he takes the cart handles from me and starts pushing it toward the register.
I shrug.
Nico pushes the cart like a man escorting nuclear cargo through a war zone, tense shoulders, narrowed eyes, jaw doing that flexing thing like the entire holiday aisle personally offended him.
People move out of his way without realizing they’re doing it, instinctively clearing a path for the tall, tattooed, brooding menace pushing a cart overloaded with discounted Christmas cheer.
I hurry to keep up with his long strides. “You’re walking very aggressively for a man transporting a stuffed reindeer and a bag of glitter.”
His glare swings toward me. “You bought an entire forest's worth of decorations, Belle.”
“It’s two wreaths, some lights, and a few ornaments.”
“A reindeer the size of a small child is not ‘a few ornaments’.”
I grin. “He spoke to me.”
“He’s fake.”
“He has spirit.”
Nico mutters something in Italian that I’m fairly confident isn’t praise.
When we pass the candle aisle, I pause, sniffing a pine-scented one. “Oh! This one smells like winter.”
“No.” He doesn’t even look.
“You didn’t even smell it!”
“I don’t need to. I can already tell I’ll hate it.”
I roll my eyes, lift the candle to his nose anyway. “Smell. It.”
He freezes, nostrils flaring just once, like he’s too dignified to actually inhale. Then the faintest flicker of tolerance crosses his face. “Fine,” he says. “That one’s acceptable.” A pause. “One.”
I drop it into the cart triumphantly.
He keeps pushing, but something changes. His pace slows. He’s no longer storming, he’s… observing. Quietly. Thoughtfully. Watching me stop to look at decorations, watching me lift ornaments with care like each one has a story already attached.
Finally, he asks, voice low, almost cautious, “Why do you like Christmas so much?”
The question hits me softly, unexpectedly.
I shrug, fingers running over a silver star ornament.
“I guess… it used to be the one time my house felt warm, everything was slower and we were just together. My mom baking. My dad stringing lights terribly high on the ladder. Me trying to help them both.” A small breath escapes me.
“It felt like magic. Like we were a perfect family.”
Nico is quiet.
I risk a glance at him.
His face isn’t cold. Not hard. Just… thoughtful. Like he’s seeing a part of me I don’t show often.
“Magic,” he repeats, softer this time, like the word sits strangely on his tongue.
The line to the registers is long, so I start to move, but Nico touches my elbow lightly. “Come here.”
Before I can ask why, he gently steers me toward the in-store café tucked beside the checkout area.
My brows lift. “You want to get hot chocolate?”
“For you, yes.” His tone is maddeningly simple, like it should’ve been obvious. Then he nods toward a small table. “Sit.”
I slide into a chair, watching him approach the counter. He orders two drinks, but when the cashier gestures toward the array of syrups, Nico gives her a look like she just suggested he adopt a kitten on the spot.
A minute later, he returns with two steaming cups and sets one in front of me.
“Try it.”
I lift it, surprised by the scent, rich chocolate, vanilla, a little cinnamon. “You got cinnamon.”
“You like cinnamon.”
“You don’t know that,” I say, smiling.
“I pay attention.” His voice is low enough to warm me from the inside out.
He sits across from me, watching me take the first sip. When I hum, actually hum, he shifts in his seat, jaw tightening like he didn’t expect the sound to hit him the way it clearly did.
The corner of his mouth tugs. Just barely.
“You’re impossible,” he murmurs.
“And you’re secretly nice,” I counter.
“No.” Hard glare. “Do not start that rumor.”
I laugh, soft and warm. “Too late.”
He leans back in his chair, watching me sip my drink like it’s the most fascinating thing he’s seen all day. Something about the moment feels strangely intimate, quiet, slow, normal.
“Finish up,” he says after a moment, but it’s gentle, not commanding. “Then we’ll get your… ridiculous wreath.”
“My amazing wreath.”
“It’s enormous.”
“It’s festive.”
“It’s a fire hazard.”
I lift my cup toward him in a mock toast. “Can’t wait to hang it.”
He exhales like he’s bracing for chaos he fully expects me to deliver.
But he doesn’t stop me.
And I think… maybe he never really planned to.
“We’re missing something,” he says suddenly.
“What?”
“A tree.”
My jaw drops. “You want a Christmas tree? In your minimalist mafia penthouse?”
“Don’t push it,” he warns. “I said a tree. Not a forest.”
I laugh and feel lighter than I can remember in years.
This man is going to break my heart when we end and right now I don’t even care.