Chapter 3 #2
She's looking at me now, really looking.
Her eyes track from my face to my shoulders, down to my hands on the table, then back up.
I can see the exact moment something shifts—not quite trust, but something close to it.
The man who I helped in the ER is now helping me.
Coincidence feels a lot like fate when you're rattled.
And she hates that she's drawn to me.
"Do you live around here?" she asks.
"Tribeca." True. "I was just walking through, heading home."
Lie. I was following you, have been for months, know your schedule better than you do.
"Lucky for me," she says.
"Yeah." I lean back, casual, like my heart isn't pounding, like I haven't been waiting for this exact moment since the night she came into my life. "Lucky."
We talk. I ask her about her day—she tells me about the ER, about a patient she lost, and I've heard some of this before, overheard her telling a coworker last week while I stood a few people back in line at the coffee shop near the hospital, but I listen like it's new information.
I ask questions. I make her laugh, just once, with a dry comment about the kind of people who think the ER is their personal urgent care.
She relaxes, drinks her tea, starts to look at me like I'm a person instead of a stranger who saved her from a mugging I arranged.
Perfect.
"I should get home," she says eventually, glancing at her phone. "It's late, and I have another shift in the morning."
"I'll walk you." It's not a question.
She hesitates—good instincts, my girl—but then nods. "Okay. Thank you."
I pay for the tea before she can protest, and then we're back outside in the cold. The streets are quieter now, fewer people, more shadows. I walk beside her, close enough that our arms almost touch, and I can feel her awareness of me like a physical thing.
She keeps glancing at me when she thinks I'm not looking.
I'm always looking.
"You said Tribeca," she says as we walk. "That's not exactly on the way to Hell's Kitchen."
Smart. She's checking if I'm following her or just being helpful.
"I don't mind the walk," I say. "And you just got mugged. I'm not letting you walk home alone."
She doesn't argue, doesn't tell me she's fine, that she can take care of herself, that she doesn't need a man to protect her. She just walks beside me, and part of her is still scared, still shaken, still looking over her shoulder for the next threat.
She doesn't know the next threat is walking right beside her.
Her building is a bodega with a brick facade, and a walk-up apartment.
Hers is on the fourth floor and is rent-controlled, which is increasingly rare in Manhattan.
She stops at the door and turns to face me, trying to figure out how to end this, how to thank me and say goodbye without being rude, without inviting trouble.
"Thank you again," she says. "For everything. I don't know what would have happened if you hadn't—"
"Don't think about it," I interrupt. "You're safe. That's what matters."
She nods, looks down at the keys in her hand, then looks back up at me.
"Can I see you again?" The words come out before I can second-guess them.
Her eyes widen slightly. "What?"
"Coffee. I thought we could meet before you head into work." I saw the schedule on her fridge calendar during one of my visits so I know when she’s working and when she has time off.
"I—" She stops, starts again. "I don't even know you."
"That's why I'm asking for coffee." I keep my voice gentle, non-threatening. "So we can get to know each other."
She hesitates, trying to talk herself out of this, trying to convince herself this is crazy, that she doesn't go out with strangers, that she needs time to process what just happened.
But she doesn't say any of that.
"Okay," she says, and surprise flashes in her own eyes that she agreed. "Coffee."
"You pick the time, and I'll meet you here."
She nods, trying to convince herself this is normal, this is fine, this is just coffee with someone who helped her—not coffee with a man who's been watching her for months, not coffee with a killer.
"Goodnight, Francesca."
"Goodnight, Luca."
I wait until she's inside, until I hear her footsteps on the stairs, until I see the light turn on in her window. Then I turn and walk away, back toward Tribeca, back toward my empty penthouse and the photographs I'll look through later.
She's already mine.
The walk back takes longer than it should because I don't want to leave this neighborhood, don't want to put distance between us.
But I force myself to move, one block at a time, until Hell's Kitchen gives way to the Village, then Chelsea, then the quiet streets of Tribeca where people like me live—people with money and secrets and too much empty space.
My penthouse is exactly how I left it—sterile, expensive, empty in all the ways that matter.
Floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the city, furniture that costs more than most people's cars, abstract art on the walls that some decorator chose because it matched the color scheme.
Everything in here is beautiful and means absolutely nothing.
No family photos, no personal mementos, no evidence of who actually lives here.
I've never cared before.
Now, walking through the silence, I can't stop thinking about Francesca's tiny studio—the plants on her windowsill that she waters every Sunday morning, the photos of her family on her bookshelf, her parents and her dead brother smiling like he didn't know what was coming.
The way she's turned a shoebox apartment into a home while I've got all this space and nothing.
Every inch of her place is mapped in my head.
I've been inside multiple times while she slept in the hospital break room or pulled overtime shifts.
I picked the lock—pathetically easy—and walked through her life.
I touched her things, memorized the way she folds her clothes, the brand of shampoo in her shower, the crack in her bathroom tile.
I want her here, in my space, making it something other than cold and empty.
I reach for the scotch—Macallan 50—and don't bother with the glass. I drink it straight from the bottle because I'm alone and I can and there's no one here to see L'Ombra drinking like a fucking animal.
Almost ten.
Observation, pattern, obsession—that's how I know everything about her. She's upstairs in that walk-up, probably still catching her breath from the climb. She'll hang her coat on the hook by the door.
Then she'll stand in her kitchen and think about what just happened. Think about me.
I take another pull of scotch and the burn feels good, grounding.
I need it because every instinct I have is screaming at me to go back there.
I could check the camera I installed above her building's entrance—make sure she locked the door behind her.
But that's not enough. I want to pick that pathetic lock again and watch her sleep, see her in her space where she doesn't know I exist.
But I can't do it yet.
She has to miss me first.
My phone buzzes. Paulie:
All good. Wrist set. Thanks for the bonus.
I sent him extra for the broken bone. Fair is fair. I delete the message and resist the urge to throw the phone across the room because what I want isn't in my phone, it's across the city in an apartment I can't visit right now.
I pull out the burner instead.
Hundreds of photos of Francesca Mancini.
Close to a thousand now, my obsession cataloged and saved and always in my pocket.
Photos of her walking to work with coffee in her hand, hair still wet from the shower.
Sitting in the park on her lunch break, face tilted toward weak winter sun.
Standing in line at the bodega, counting change for eggs because she's broke and knows eggs can be used in a variety of ways.
Every mundane moment of her life, stolen and kept.
I scroll through them and heat coils low in my gut, possessive and hungry. She's mine in these photos—mine to watch, mine to study, mine to learn. And now she's mine in real life too, she just hasn't figured it out yet.
I stop on one from a couple weeks ago. She's walking down her street and she's looking over her shoulder, right at the camera, right at me. Her face is uneasy, suspicious.
She felt me watching even then.
I'm hard just looking at the photo, at the wariness written across her face, at the way her instincts were screaming at her that something was wrong. And she was right. Something was very wrong. I was wrong, am wrong, will always be wrong for her.
Doesn't matter. She's mine anyway.
The photos aren't enough now. They've kept me going for months but something changed when I touched her, when I felt her hand in mine, alive and real, when I smelled lavender and antiseptic on her skin and heard my name in her voice.
I need more.
I pull up the map on my phone and look at the route to her apartment. Twenty minutes at this time of night. I could be there in twenty minutes, could pick her lock in under a minute, could stand in her doorway and watch her sleep and she'd never know.
I've let myself into her place before. I need to do it now. I need to make sure she's safe, make sure she's not scared, make sure—
No.
I set down the phone and grip the edge of the counter hard enough that my knuckles go white. I need control. This only works if I maintain control, if I don't spook her, if I play this right.
One wrong move and she runs. And if she runs, I'll have to chase her. And if I have to chase her, this gets messy.
I don't want messy. I want her willing, want her to choose this, choose me.
Even if the choice is rigged from the start.
I grab the scotch again and walk to the windows.
The city spreads below me, millions of lights, millions of people, and she's out there in the northwest corner of her building.
Her bedroom window doesn't face the street—I checked—so she has privacy from everyone except the person who's been inside enough times to know the layout.
Me.
She's in bed by now. It's late and Francesca needs her sleep. She's wearing those ridiculous mermaid pajamas I saw folded on her dresser. She's checked her locks—once, maybe twice because what happened scared her more than she's letting on.
And she's thinking about me.
She has to be, lying there in the dark trying to convince herself that coffee is normal, is safe, is just getting to know someone who helped her. She's replaying the moment our hands touched, wondering why it felt like that, why she said yes when every instinct told her to say no.
She's already falling and she doesn't even know it.
The thought sends a dark thrill through me.
She's lying there thinking about me while I'm standing here thinking about her, and the symmetry of it is almost perfect—almost, but it'll be perfect when she's here, when she's in my bed instead of hers, when I don't have to imagine what she's doing because I can just turn over and see her.
I check the schedule in my head. I have a regular meeting with Don Marco in the morning—same problem as always lately. Bratva pushing into Midtown, someone needs to die, probably multiple someones. I'll handle it. I always do. Then I'll shower, change, and meet my woman for coffee.
I'll charm her, make her laugh, touch her hand again and watch her pupils dilate. I'll make her want more, make her need more, make her mine in every way that matters.
The burner phone is still in my hand and I look at the photos again. I can't help it. She's an addiction and I've been feeding it for months and now I got my first real taste and now I'm fucking starving for more.
I stop on a photo from last month. She's coming out of the coffee shop after her shift, coffee in hand. She looks tired and beautiful, completely unaware that the man across the street is cataloging every detail of her existence.
Mine, I think, and the word settles into my bones like truth.
I'll see her again in hours. I'll touch her again, hear her laugh, get closer.
The real work begins then—making her fall in love with the man I'm pretending to be while I keep the monster hidden just beneath the surface.
She won't see it coming.
And by the time she realizes what I am, it'll be too late. She'll already be so deep she can't walk away.
I drain the scotch and finally force myself to bed. But I don't sleep. I lie there in the dark thinking about her lying in the dark miles away, thinking about the moment I'll see her, the way her face will light up when I walk into view, the way she'll try to hide how happy she is to see me.
She won't hide it well enough. She's not good at hiding.
I've been watching.
And I'll watch her fall a little more in love with a lie. And I'll love every second of it—every smile, every blush, every moment she leans toward me instead of away.
I close my eyes and picture her face—not from the photos, but from earlier, the way she looked at me in that café, wary and attracted and trying so hard to be smart about this.
I can still feel her hand in mine. Alive. Real.
Miles away, I think of her touching that same hand right now, remembering, wondering.
Falling.
And when I see her again, I'll catch her.