His shoulders dropped a fraction. “Bracing.” He nodded once, more to himself than to me. “Yes. So am I.”
He drew in a slow breath and looked at his hands before lifting his eyes back to mine.
“Because I need to explain why I stopped yesterday. Not because I didn’t want you. Quite the opposite.” His voice roughened. “I want you with a force that is dangerously close to insanity, Emily. The problem is that I cannot take what I want and then leave you to deal with the fallout.”
I said nothing.
“I’m not like other men,” he went on. “And the responsibility people carry when they decide to be close to me, to my family, is not light. Bringing you further into my life without giving you all the facts felt dishonest.” He shook his head once. “And that is not how I want to build anything with you.”
My throat tightened.
“If I ask you to stop here and let me go?”
The sadness on his face hurt more than I wanted it to.
He gestured toward the door anyway.
“It’s unlocked. Now or later, you’re free to leave whenever you want.” His gaze held mine. “It took me time to tell you, not because I doubted how you would handle it, but because I needed to know whether I trusted you.”
My heart climbed into my throat.
“And I do.”
The words settled into me with awful weight.
Then he said, “I’m the heir to the Benetti family.”
I swallowed.
“Yes, I’ve seen your business empire.” But even as I said it, I knew that wasn’t it. I knew it from the way his face changed, from the way he looked at me like he was already watching something fracture.
“No,” he said. “That’s part of the façade. The legitimate side. The version built for the public.” He drew in another measured breath. “That’s not the blood of it. It’s not the legacy I was born into, and it isn’t the role I’ve been raised for.”
Something in me pulled back before the words even came.
I wanted him to stop.
“Pietro—”
But he kept going.
“I’m not just Pietro Benetti, future businessman.” His voice stayed level, which made it worse. “I’m also Pietro Benetti, son of the head of the Chicago outfit. And when I finish at Hawthorne, I’ll go home and be named sotto capo.”
For one second, I didn’t understand it.
Then I understood it too well.
This wasn’t money.
It wasn’t family power in some abstract, polished, corporate sense.
It was blood. Violence. Crime dressed in tailoring and old names. It was headlines and courtrooms and the kind of danger that never really left once it learned your face.
“Mafia?” I whispered, more to myself than to him.
“Mafia,” he said.
I stared at him.
