Held it tight enough.
Right.
Then I put it in the locked room with everything else that can't help me in this moment, and I move.
I look at Serafina. Her face is careful — reading mine the way she reads a patient, looking for what's underneath the surface. She finds it. Doesn't name it.
"Go get some rest," I tell her. "Both of you."
My shower runscold for thirty seconds before I give up and turn it hot.
I stand under the water, both hands flat against the tile, trying to think about Enzo, the file, the manufactured war, Hale's name on that ledger, and the bloodstained badge in the evidence bag downstairs.
I think about all of it for approximately forty seconds.
Then I think about Serafina.
The sound she made when she came. That sharp, helpless cry — nothing like the controlled woman she shows the world. Nothing practiced or performed. Just pure, unguarded reaction, she couldn't have stopped if she tried.
I've been with women who were louder. I've never been with a woman whose sound hit me like a physical thing, low in the gut, the kind that leaves a mark. Not one of them crawled under myskin like this. Not one of them made me feel like I was the one coming undone.
I think about her hands in my hair. The way she said "don’t stop" like it cost her something. The way she looked at me when she stood back up — wrecked and furious about being wrecked, already rebuilding the walls even as her chest heaved.
My hand moves down my stomach before I decide to let it.
I think about the mark on her throat. My mark. Which I have no right to feel possessive about and feel possessive about anyway — feral and irrational and completely mine. I think about the soft place beneath her ear. The way she arched into me as her body had already made the decision without consulting her brain. I think about her on that wall, both of us past the point of reason, her voice wrecked and real?—
I wrap a hand around myself and stop pretending this is going anywhere else.
She'd hate that I'm doing this. That thought alone almost finishes me — Serafina, sharp-tongued and furious, finding out that Luca Moretti is in his shower thinking about the way she tastes. The way she pulled my hair. The way she saidI will literally haunt you to the end of your family line if you stop now— like wanting me was a choice she was making with full information and no apologies.
Christ.
I think about having her properly. No interruptions. No Caruso. No world on fire outside the door. I think about taking my time — and I would take my time, I would make a religion of it — learning every inch of her until she forgot every reason this wasa bad idea. Until she said my name, the way she said it, against the wall. Rough and breathless and real.
I come hard with her name locked behind my teeth.
The water runs over me. I stay where I am for a long moment, forearm braced against the tile, breathing returning to something functional.
Then I straighten. Shut off the water.
Enzo authorized the first strike.
The world is still burning. I still have work to do.
And Serafina Virelli is taking an afternoon nap down the hall — her first real sleep since the ER, earned and overdue — and that is either the most dangerous thing in my life right now or the only thing keeping me sane.
Possibly both.
11
SERAFINA
Iwake from my nap with the clarity of someone who fell asleep mid-crisis and woke up still in it.
For exactly three seconds, I forget where I am. White ceiling. Expensive sheets. Afternoon light pressing through heavy curtains.
Then it all comes back — the drive, the badge, Enzo's voice on that recording, and Luca Moretti in the shower down the hall, which I am absolutely not thinking about.
