Sleep is apparently a luxury reserved for people whose lives aren't actively falling apart.
I lie in my narrow bed staring at the ceiling, which is nicer than any I've stared at before but offers zero answers.
Like: how did I end up working for the family that destroyed me? Why do the other staff look at me like I'm radioactive? What would Mama think of all this?
The mansion settles around me with creaks and groans. Somewhere down the hall, pipes clank. Outside my window, wind rustles through trees that probably cost more than my childhood home.
I think about Marco. His kindness today felt genuine, which is confusing because genuine kindness and organized crime don't usually share the same zip code.
But he was kind five years ago too, in his own way. Back when I was with Dante, Marco would show up at my door with flowers and that apologetic smile.
"From the boss," he'd say, like Dante couldn't deliver them himself.
Even how he called Dante, ‘boss’, was a kindness wrapped in a joke. Dante was no boss, just an enforcer who promised me to leave the family.
Marco would run errands if I needed something urgently. Drive me places when Dante was tied up. He was always just there, quiet and helpful, like a criminal fairy godfather minus the wand.
My thoughts drift, unwillingly and traitorously, to Dante himself.
Not the man who left me at the altar. Not the coward who vanished without explanation.
The man before that. The one I fell for so hard I forgot to ask basic questions like "should I be concerned about your career in organized crime?"
I remember our first meeting at a charity gala I was catering. He was twenty-five, dark suit, darker eyes, moving through the crowd like he owned not just the room but the entire concept of rooms.
Someone knocked into me and I spilled wine on his very expensive shirt. I apologized so profusely I probably could've powered a small city with my mortification.
He laughed. Actually laughed.
"It's just a shirt," he said, voice warm and rich. "But you owe me a conversation."
He was gentle in a way that shouldn't have been possible for someone in his world. Promised me everything—safety, love, a life away from the violence. Said he'd leave the business after we married. Start fresh somewhere new. Just us.
I believed him.
Twenty years old and absolutely certain I could save him with the power of my affection and questionable judgment.
Then the memories start to blur, shifting into something else. My exhausted brain stops distinguishing between past and imagination.
Suddenly I'm not lying in this narrow bed—I'm somewhere else, sometime else.
And my Dante is there.
His hands slide along my skin, rough calluses catching on smooth surfaces. His voice murmurs in my ear, low and dark, words I can't quite make out but feel in my bones. That cologne fills my senses—sandalwood and something deeper, something that always made my head spin and my knees weak.
The heat of him surrounds me. His mouth traces my jaw, my throat, lower. I arch into the touch even as some distant part of my brain screams that this is wrong, this is dangerous, this is…
The reality shifts and becomes more.
His hands map every curve, every valley, learning me like a language. His lips follow, tasting skin that burns under his attention. I'm gasping, reaching, needing something I can't name. The world narrows to just sensation—heat and pressure and want so intense it borders on pain.
I wake with a gasp, my body flushed and aroused and absolutely furious with itself.
"No…" I whisper to the dark.
I sit up, pressing my palms against my eyes hard enough to see stars. My heart pounds, skin burns, but between my thighs an ache makes me want to scream or cry or possibly both.
Five years. It's been five years since he destroyed me.
Five years since I walked through rain in a wedding dress. Five years of rebuilding myself from nothing, and my traitorous subconscious decides now is the perfect time to remind me how much I wanted him.
I hate him for what he did. For the girl I was before he broke her.
But I hate myself more for still wanting him after everything. For dreaming about his hands on my skin. For waking up aching for a man who proved love was a lie designed to hurt stupid girls with too much hope.
I can't stay in this room with these thoughts. They're too big, too loud, pressing against my skull like they're trying to escape through sheer force.
I slip out of bed and pad into the hallway barefoot.
The mansion is dark and silent, everyone asleep or pretending to be. The marble floor is cold under my feet, which feels appropriate. Everything about this place is cold.
I wander through empty servant corridors until I find a door leading outside. A small courtyard garden opens up, all manicured hedges and stone benches. I sit on one of them and breathe night air.
The sky is clear enough to see stars, which feels almost offensive.
when footsteps crunch on gravel, I tense but it's just Lucia wrapped in a thick robe, hair loose around her shoulders. She looks older like this, softer.
She sits beside me without asking permission. "Can't sleep?"
"Bad dreams." I pull my knees up, wrapping my arms around them. "This house has that effect, I guess."
"This house gives everyone bad dreams." Her voice is matter-of-fact, like she's commenting on weather. "Some of us just get better at ignoring them."
I glance at her profile. "What's the Don like? Really like, I mean. Not the rumors."
Lucia is quiet for a long moment, staring at the garden like it might have answers. "He's not like the man who came before him. The old Don was a monster who enjoyed pain. Liked making people hurt because it made him feel powerful."
She pauses for a moment before continuing.
"This one is colder, more controlled perhaps but also less cruel in some ways. He doesn't enjoy violence, just does what needs to be done and moves on. Feels nothing at all."
"That sounds worse somehow."
"Maybe. Maybe not." She turns to look at me. "Are you afraid of him?"
"I don't know. I haven't met him yet."
"Everyone is afraid of him." She stands, adjusting her robe. "Get some rest, girl. Tomorrow will be long."
She walks away, footsteps fading into the dark, but I stay a few minutes more. Breathing jasmine air and trying to organize the chaos in my head.
It doesn't work, but at least I tried.
Finally, when I return to my room, the bed looks less intimidating, more like refuge than prison.
I lie down, closing my eyes, and this time, sleep comes quickly. Dark and dreamless. Merciful.
But when I open my eyes again, it’s still dark. And something is completely wrong.
The air feels different, heavier. I try to sit up and can't. My wrists are secured to the headboard—not painfully, but definitely not voluntarily.
Someone is in the room.
My heart launches into my throat when I open my mouth to scream and a hand covers it gently but firmly.
A voice, low and calm, speaks directly into my ear. "Don't."