"Why not?"
A longer pause.
"I get bored," he says at last. Simply. "Not of them. Of the version of myself I become around them. I perform. I give them the Luca Moretti who exists in the lobby of Moretti Global Security. They accept him. I can see they accept him. Then—" He stops. His jaw tightens. "Nothing. Empty."
I glance at him sideways. "And you don't perform with me?"
"You wouldn't let me." The corner of his mouth moves. "You'd call it out inside the first sentence."
"Accurate." I pause. "That's bleak, for the record. What you described."
"It's accurate."
"Those aren't the same thing."
The almost-smile again. "No. They're not."
I turn back to the street. Process that. The image of Luca Moretti — terrifying, controlled, the most dangerous man in any roomhe enters — sitting across a dinner table from a beautiful woman and feeling nothing but the hollow performance of himself.
I should not find that as devastating as I do.
"Brothers," I say. "You grew up with Alessandro and Matteo."
"And a nanny. Rotating, mostly. We went through several."
"Your father. Vittorio."
"Jailed when I was nineteen. Died five years later. That was ten years ago." No flinch. Just a fact. "Enzo stepped in."
"And your mother?"
Silence.
Not the charged kind. The empty kind.
"She died when I was three." His voice doesn't change — same flat, even register — which is exactly how I know this is the truth he doesn't dress up for anyone. "I have one photograph and no memories that are actually mine. The ones I think I have, I'm not sure if they're real or if I made them up to fill the space."
I don't say anything.
There's nothing to say that wouldn't sound like pity, and I don't think he'd survive my pity. I don't think he's ever needed it. Which might be the saddest part.
"So." The word closes a door. "No. No one permanent. No one who got the real version. It hasn't been a priority."
I look at his profile in the dark. The hard jaw. The ruthless mouth. The man who took apart three intruders without raisinghis voice, then stood at a window with me and, in his way, admitted he's been alone for a very long time.
My throat aches. Soft. Ruinous. Entirely his fault.
I look away before he can see it.
"For what it's worth," I say, "I've been celibate for months. So I'm not exactly winning either."
He turns. Stares at me.
"How many months?"
"Don't make it weird."
"Serafina."
