Chapter 5 #2
Francesca deserves respect, even if she doesn't realize yet that I've been violating her privacy for months.
"Francesca."
I let her name roll off my tongue, slow and deliberate. Not Frankie. Never Frankie. She's too much, too everything, to be reduced to a nickname.
"Luca." She slides into the booth across from me. "Am I late?"
"You're exactly on time. I was early. I didn't want to keep you waiting."
She glances at her phone, realizes I'm right. I've watched her long enough to know she's always early or on time, a habit from her work where late means someone dies.
I ordered coffee for both of us and have it waiting for her—black for me, oat milk latte with an extra shot for her. I know how she takes it—I've watched her at coffee shops dozens of times, memorized every detail of her routines.
When she takes a sip, I see her realize the coffee I had waiting for her is right.
She doesn't ask how I know. But I can see the question forming behind her eyes, the wheels turning, the pieces slowly clicking into place.
Good.
The conversation flows easily. I ask about her family, her work, her life. She asks about mine, and I tell her carefully edited truths. My parents are dead. I solve problems for people. I'm dangerous, but not to her.
That last part is true, at least.
I'll never hurt her. I'd burn the world down before I let anyone—including myself—cause her pain.
But I will possess her. Own her. Keep her.
There's a difference.
When I slip, when I mention details about her work schedule, her late-night subway rides, things she never told me, I watch her go very still.
"I didn't tell you any of that," she says quietly.
I smile. "No. You didn't."
I don't explain. Don't backtrack. Just let her sit with the knowledge that I know more than I should, that I've been watching, that she's not as invisible as she thinks.
She should run.
She doesn't.
We talk for hours. The afternoon sun fades, shadows lengthen across MacDougal Street, and still she sits across from me, engaged, curious, cautious but not fleeing.
She wants to know what I am. Who I am.
She's brave, my Francesca... or foolish... maybe both.
When we finally leave the café, I walk her home. She lets me, even though she knows the way, even though she's walked these streets a thousand times alone.
But now she's not alone.
She's mine.
I keep close as we walk, closer than last night. When someone jostles past her on the sidewalk, my hand goes to the small of her back—protective, possessive—and I don't move it away.
She doesn't ask me to.
Outside her building, she tilts her face up. Waiting. The air between us crackles with tension, with want, with the inevitability of what's coming.
I just look at her for a long moment, then step back.
She's not ready yet.
And that's how I ended up here.
I move without sound back through her apartment, noting the tea she left on the counter, still full and cold. She made it but never drank it. Distracted. Thinking about me, probably. About the things I said at coffee, the details I shouldn't know.
She should be thinking about me.
I'm all she should be thinking about.
I let myself out the way I came in, securing the lock behind me. The hallway is empty, quiet except for the muffled sounds of the building at night. I take the stairs, muscle memory guiding me down four flights without light.
Outside, the street is quiet. A few cars pass, headlights cutting through the night, but no one pays attention to a man in black walking with purpose. I'm a shadow, blending into the night, invisible.
L'Ombra.
I've been a shadow in her life for months, watching unseen, waiting for the moment to make myself known. That moment is here. Soon she'll know everything. Soon she'll understand that there's no escaping me, no running, no going back to the life she had before I decided she was mine.
I reach my car—black SUV, tinted windows, parked two blocks away where she wouldn't see it—and slide into the driver's seat. The engine purrs to life, and I sit for a moment, thinking about the night.
I pull away from the curb and head toward Tribeca, toward my penthouse, toward the planning I need to do for the hours ahead.
The drive is short, the streets quiet at this hour. I park in my building's garage and take the elevator to the top floor, to the sterile space I call home. It has floor-to-ceiling windows, designer furniture, everything clean and impersonal and empty.
It's nothing like Francesca's apartment.
Hers is lived-in, warm, cluttered with the debris of an actual life. There are books stacked on the coffee table, a blanket draped over the couch, dishes in the sink. Evidence of a person who exists in the space, who makes it theirs.
My penthouse is nothing more than a glorified hotel room. A beautiful, elegant expensive one, but nothing that betrays who I am.
I pour myself two fingers of scotch and stand at the window, looking out at the city. Back at her apartment, she's sleeping. Dreaming. Maybe dreaming of me.
I drink the scotch in one swallow, let the burn ground me, then set the glass down and move to my desk.
I open the folder Don Marco gave me at the meeting, studying Max Orlov's face again, memorizing his routines, planning the approach.
Brighton Beach. The bar closes at two. He parks several blocks away, walks alone, and never varies his route.
He's predictable. Fatal mistake.
I'll take him down in Bratva territory. Clean, efficient, a message the Bratva can't ignore.
But first, I need to arrange dinner with Francesca.
I pull out my phone—my real one this time—and scroll to her number. I've had it for months, pulled from hospital records the day after she treated me. I've never used it, never texted or called, just kept it like a talisman, a connection to her that she doesn't know exists.
Until now.
I type out a message:
Dinner tonight. 8:30. I'll pick you up.
The hour is early, but she responds:
Where are we going?
I answer:
You'll see. Wear the black dress.
I stare at the screen and warmth spreads through my body. Something possessive, satisfied.
She said yes.
She's going to dinner with me. Another date, another step closer to the moment when I tell her everything, when I show her the evidence of my obsession, and she has to decide whether to run or stay.
I already know which one she'll choose.
She saved me once. She'll save me again.
From myself, if necessary.
I set the phone down and close the folder, then walk back to the window. The city spreads out below me, millions of people living their lives, unaware that tonight, Max Orlov will die. Unaware that Francesca Mancini is already claimed, whether she accepts it yet or not.
Soon, she’ll learn what that means.
Soon, she’ll stop running from what she already knows.
I finish the scotch and head to grab a little sleep. In a few hours, I'll kill a man. And then I'll take Francesca to dinner.
Just another day.