All I can think about is the possibility of Vincenzo’s family being stupid enough to move without him—or worse, behind his back—while I’m standing here with his mouth still somewhere in my memory.
By the time I kill the water, my mood has only soured.
I towel off hard, drag on dark lounge pants, and leave the shirt somewhere on the floor because the thought of another layer touching my skin right now feels offensive.
The room beyond the bathroom is dim, lit only by the bedside lamp I’d forgotten to turn off and the knife-thin spill of city light beyond the curtains. Steam follows me out in a low drift.
I look up and stop dead.
Vincenzo is in my bed.
For one stupid second, I genuinely think I’m still half in the shower, and my head has finally gone soft from too much blood loss and too little sleep, because the sight is too fucking good to be real. I haven’t seen him in three days.
He’s stretched across the dark sheets in black trousers and an open white shirt like the universe built him specifically to test my ability to remain coherent, one arm behind his head, one ankle crossed over the other, dark hair a little disordered as if he’s been waiting long enough to get comfortable and arrogant about it.
He looks up from whatever thought he’d been entertaining and smiles automatically when he sees me—
Then he sees my face, and the smile fades.
Not fully. Just enough for me to know he’s read the room in one glance and found all the sharp edges before I’ve had time to put them away. That’s one of the things I love most and hate most about him. Nothing important ever gets past him twice.
“Well,” he says carefully, sitting up a little. “That is not the expression of a man thrilled to see me in his bed.”
I should say something reassuring or simple. I’ve wanted him here badly enough, often enough, that logic says the first sight of him should burn off anything else.
But I just stand there, damp from the shower, still carrying too much death in my body, and look at him with whatever the night left in my face.
He reads that too.
Vincenzo gets off the bed without any visible hurry, but there’s tension in the way he moves closer, quiet and alert now, all that lazy confidence shifting into something softer and more serious because he knows me well enough to understand when the mood in me isn’t annoyance or lust or one of our usual bad habits.
“What happened?” he asks.
He stops close enough to touch and doesn’t until I invite it. That tiny restraint nearly undoes me on the spot.
I drag a hand over the back of my neck, still damp. “Shipment got hit.”
His brows knit. “Yours.”
“Obviously.”
“That wasn’t sarcasm,” he says. “You smell like a slaughterhouse.”
I almost laugh, but the sound dies before it gets out. “Close enough.”
He studies my face, my shoulders, the set of me, and whatever he sees there drains the last of the playfulness from his expression. “Talk to me.”
That should not still have the power to hit me where it does. It does anyway. Maybe because so few people in my life have ever said it and meant anything except‘Tell me so I can decide what to use.’
Vincenzo says it, and I hear the actual thing under it:‘Let me in. Let me help. Let me stand close to the wound without making it worse.’
I turn away from him and pace once toward the window because standing still feels too much like giving in to the first gentle hand after a night like this.
“The shipment out near Ryazan got hit. Then, a warehouse point went bad. Two of mine died before I got there, three more after because one had already rolled over and the others thought I’d be generous about it.” My mouth twists. “I wasn’t.”
I keep going because now that I’ve started, the poison wants out. “The route work has your family’s fingerprints all over it. Ports, middlemen, pressure points. Someone’s using Vieri channels or trying very hard to make it look like they are.”
His face changes immediately; not defensive, but focused. That matters. I watch for the lie anyway because blood andbusiness teach ugly habits and because tonight already has enough bodies attached to it that trust feels slightly theoretical.
