A diner in Brooklyn.

A quiet Italian
restaurant
in the West Village.
Restaurants

A
food
truck near the hospital where Nicholas ate a taco in a three-thousand-dollar coat and looked personally betrayed when salsa landed on his sleeve.

“You’re very bad at being normal,” I told him.

“I’m excellent at many things.”

“Normal is not one of them.”

“No,” he admitted. “But I’m trying.”

That was the thing.

He did try.

He asked instead of ordered. He listened when I said no. He never touched me without making sure I wanted him to.

And when he finally kissed me, it was outside my apartment in Queens, under a broken streetlight, after walking me home from the subway because he insisted the city felt wrong after midnight.
Food

His hand brushed mine.

I looked up.

He said, “Can I?”

I said, “Yes.”

The kiss was not gentle because neither of us felt gentle about it. It was months of restraint, fear, gratitude, want, and every unsaid thing breaking open at once. His hands stayed at my waist. Mine gripped his coat like I was afraid he would disappear.

When he pulled back, his forehead rested against mine.

“I should warn you,” he murmured. “I am not an easy man to love.”

I laughed softly, breathless. “Good thing I’m not an easy woman to scare.”

His smile faded.

“Gabriella,” he said, “you should be scared.”

And that was the night Roberto Ferraro returned.

Not in person.

Men like Roberto rarely came themselves when poison would do.

I was leaving the hospital after visiting Evan when a man in a gray coat stepped into my path in the parking garage.

“Miss Hart.”

Every instinct in me went sharp.

“Move.”

He smiled. “I only want to talk.”

“I don’t.”

“Fifty thousand dollars,” he said.

My heart stuttered.

“For a simple thing. Mr. DeLuca’s schedule next week. Who he’s meeting. Where. Nothing that concerns you.”

I kept my hand in my coat pocket and pressed record on my phone.

“Who sent you?”

“A friend.”

“Roberto Ferraro?”

His smile changed just enough.

“There are people who think Nicholas DeLuca has become distracted,” he said. “Emotional. Careless. That creates opportunities.”

“Then you don’t know him.”

“We know you.” His voice lowered. “We know about your brother. We know what money can do for a girl like you.”

A girl like you.

Invisible. Poor. Tired. Buyable.

I looked him in the eye.

“My answer is no.”

“Think carefully.”

“I did.”

“You would choose him over your brother’s future?”

That almost got me.

Almost.

Then I thought of Evan, alive because a dangerous man had done one decent thing without asking for my soul in return.

I thought of Nicholas saying, I notice you.

I thought of my grandmother, who had cleaned hotel rooms for thirty years and still stood like a queen.

“No,” I said. “I’m choosing who I am.”

His face hardened.

A black SUV rolled into the garage behind him.

Marco stepped out.

The man in the gray coat went pale.

I had never been so happy to see a security detail I once resented.

Marco took my phone, listened to the recording, and called Nicholas.

Twenty minutes later, Nicholas walked into my apartment like a storm in a black overcoat.

Not angry at me.

That was somehow worse.

He looked shaken.

“You should have called me the second he approached you.”

“I was recording.”

“You were in danger.”

“I was useful.”

“I don’t need you useful. I need you alive.”

His voice cracked on the last word.

The room went still.

My apartment was tiny. Peeling window frame. Secondhand couch. Evan’s sketches stacked on the table. It made Nicholas look too large, too dark, too impossible.

“He offered me fifty thousand dollars,” I said.

“You’re not surprised?”

“I’m surprised you didn’t pretend to consider it.”

That hurt.

He saw it and cursed softly.

“I didn’t mean—”

“Yes, you did.”

His face tightened. “Most people would have. They would have taken time. Asked questions. Tried to see what they could get.”

“I’m not most people.”

“No,” he said quietly. “You’re not.”

I crossed my arms. “Do you really not understand why I said no?”

His silence answered me.

My anger softened into something sadder.

“Nicholas,” I said. “You paid for my brother’s surgery, and you never once used it against me. Do you know how rare that is? You gave me help without a hook in it. Do you think I would turn around and sell you to a man like Roberto?”

His eyes lowered.

“I’ve been sold out for less.”

The sentence was so quiet I almost missed it.

There he was. The boy under the boss. The heir under the empire. The man who had learned love came with ledgers, loyalty with expiration dates.

I went to him.

“You have surrounded yourself with terrible people.”