A soft knock at my door pulls me from restless half-sleep.
I glance at the clock—well past midnight. I pull on a silk robe and pad barefoot to the door, expecting Enzo with another cryptic message.
Instead, Santo stands in the hallway, looking almost uncertain.
He's in a simple black t-shirt and jeans, hair slightly disheveled, like he's been running his hands through it. Those pale green eyes meet mine with something I can't quite read.
He's holding something behind his back.
"I found this," he says quietly, producing a worn photograph. "In storage. Thought you might want it."
I take it with trembling fingers.
The image is decades old, faded at the edges, colors muted by time. But I recognize it immediately—my grandmother's original pizzeria.
The one she opened in 1962, the one my father grew up in, the one that eventually became the restaurant my parents destroyed. The Rossi name is painted above the door in cheerful red letters.
And there, standing in the doorway with flour on her apron and a smile bright enough to light the whole street, is my grandmother. Young. Beautiful. Alive.
My throat tightens so fast I can barely breathe.
"Where did you… How did you find this?"
"We keep records on everyone we do business with. Your family's history was in the files."
Santo shrugs like it's nothing, but his eyes are soft, watching my reaction carefully.
"I was looking through old documents and found it. You lost a lot, Gianna. Your home, your family, your whole life. Thought maybe you'd want to keep something from before."
I stare at the photograph. At my grandmother's smile. At the life I came from before it all went wrong.
I don't know why this breaks me.
Maybe it's the thoughtfulness—the fact that he went looking, that he cared enough to search through dusty files for something that would matter to me.
Maybe it's that someone finally saw me. Not as property or a prize or a virgin to be claimed. But as a person with a past that mattered.
Tears spill before I can stop them. Hot and fast, streaming down my cheeks, and I can't even be embarrassed because the grief is too big, too sudden, too overwhelming.
Santo steps inside immediately, alarmed, hands hovering like he wants to touch me but isn't sure he's allowed. "I didn't mean to upset you. I thought… I'm sorry, I shouldn't have…"
I kiss him.
He freezes completely. I feel his shock, his hesitation, his whole body going rigid with surprise. For a terrible moment I think I've made a mistake, misread everything, ruined the one gentle thing in this house.
Then his hands come up to cradle my face.
Gentle. So gentle. Like I'm made of glass and he's terrified of breaking me.
"Gianna." My name is a question and a warning all at once. His thumbs brush away my tears, his pale green eyes searching mine with desperate intensity. "What are you doing?"
"I want this," I whisper against his mouth. "I want you. Tonight, right now, I choose you, Santo.”
Something shifts in his expression—wonder, disbelief, hunger held on a tight leash. His hands tremble against my face. I take his hand and pull him toward the bed before he can say anything else.
He undresses me with trembling hands, peeling away the silk robe, then the thin nightgown beneath.
Each inch of skin revealed earns a kiss, a whisper, a reverent touch. My shoulder. The curve of my breast. The dip of my waist. The soft skin of my inner thigh.
"Beautiful," he breathes against my stomach, lips trailing lower. "So fucking beautiful.”
His tongue traces paths across my skin that leave me gasping, writhing, fisting my hands in the sheets. When he finally settles between my thighs, spreading me open with gentle fingers, I'm already soaked.
"Christ, Gianna." He groans against my wet flesh. "You're perfect. Absolutely perfect."
His mouth finds my clit, and I arch off the bed with a cry. But he doesn't devour me the way Matteo did—all urgency and demand. Santo worships.
He brings me to the edge slowly, patiently, then eases me over with a gentleness that makes me want to weep. The orgasm rolls through me like a wave—not violent, but deep. Endless.
"That's it," he murmurs against my sensitive flesh, working me through the aftershocks. "That's my girl. One more. Give me one more before I'm inside you."
His fingers replace his mouth, sliding into my slick heat while his thumb circles my clit. Two fingers, then three, stretching me gently, preparing me for what's coming.
His other hand strokes my hip, my thigh, my stomach—constant points of connection, grounding me while he takes me apart.
The second orgasm builds slower, deeper, and when it crests I'm crying out his name, walls clenching around his fingers, whole body shaking with the force of it.
Only then does Santo rise over me.
He's shed his clothes at some point—I don't remember when. His body is lean and powerful, covered in tattoos that I want to trace with my tongue.
His cock is hard, thick, already leaking at the tip as he positions himself at my entrance.
"Tell me if I hurt you," he breathes, forehead pressed to mine, pale green eyes holding my gaze. "Tell me if it's too much. We can stop whenever you…"
"Don't stop." I wrap my legs around his waist, pulling him closer. "Please, Santo. I need you inside me."
He enters me slowly, inch by devastating inch, giving me time to adjust to the stretch. When he's finally seated fully inside me, we both groan—him from the tight heat gripping his cock, me from the overwhelming fullness.
"Fuck." His voice breaks. "You feel… Gianna, you feel incredible. Like you were made for me."
He starts to move, and it's nothing like I imagined. No roughness, no games, no power plays.
Just Santo rocking into me with devastating tenderness, watching my face like my pleasure is the only thing in the world that matters.
His thrusts are deep but unhurried, angled to hit that spot inside me that makes stars burst behind my eyes.
"That's it," he groans, thumb finding my clit, circling in time with his thrusts. "Come for me again, bella. Come on my cock. Let me feel you fall apart."
The third orgasm shatters me completely—my back arching, his name tearing from my throat, walls clenching rhythmically around his length.
Only then does Santo let himself go, spilling over me with a broken moan that sounds like prayer.
Afterward, we lie tangled together, my head on his chest, his fingers tracing lazy patterns on my back. The photograph sits on the nightstand—a piece of my old life, gifted by someone from my new one.
"I have to tell you something," Santo murmurs into my hair.
I tilt my head up to look at him. His jaw is tight, pale green eyes conflicted with something that looks almost like pain.
"I don't want to share you." The words come out rough, anguished. "Every time I think of you with Matteo, with Luca—it makes me want to break things. Break them."
He exhales slowly, hand tightening on my hip. "But I will. If that's what it takes to keep you. I'll share you with my brothers for the rest of my life if it means you stay."
I don't know what to say. So I just kiss him again, soft and slow, and pretend I don't feel the impossible weight of choosing between three men who are each claiming pieces of my heart.