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It stays.

I have cried three times in my life. For my father, when they lowered the coffin. For Chiara, two nights after, when I sat on the curb outside her house because she wouldn't come to the door. I stayed until the sun came up. She never came out. I went home and cried in the bathroom so my mother wouldn't hear. For my grandmother, near the end, when she stopped recognizing me when I walked into the room.

Three times.

Never for a woman I loved.

I have loved women before. Not like this, but I have. Some left. Some I left first. I buried men I grew up with. Stood beside their mothers. Kissed their sisters on both cheeks. Went back to work the next morning because there was always work waiting.

Death doesn't scare me. Neither does the number on my head or the men coming to collect it.

Her leaving does.

I lied in the bedroom. I told her I had a real chance. I have a chance. I don't know how real it is. Enzo wants me alive, and that means whatever he has planned is worse than dying. I know what men like Enzo do to men like me. I have done it to other men.

I don't care about being dead.

I care that I only had three days.

Three days with her after five years of almost. Five years of looking away because she was twenty, and I was the man who knew better. I had time. Years of it.

I didn't take them.

Now I want the things I never let myself want. A month with her. A bad one, even. Her angry at me over something stupid, a plate in the sink, a text I didn't answer. Her at a window we chose together. Her hair in light I haven't seen yet. Rome for ten days.

"Valentino."

"Bella."

"Say it. Whatever it is."

I put my hand on the side of her face, my thumb along her cheekbone, where I touched her the first night.

"I am going to tell you something, and I do not want you to argue with me about it."

"Okay."

"If I don't come back..."

"Valentino."

"You said you wouldn't argue."

She closes her mouth. Her eyes are already wet.

"If I don't come back, you live. You hear me? Not halfway. Not hidden. You get old. You get gray in your hair. Lines on your face. You keep every one of them because they mean you lived. And you do not make yourself small for the rest of your life because someone hurt you. Do you understand?"

"Valentino, stop."

"I'm not done."

My thumb moves over her cheekbone. Slow.

"But while I'm alive, you're mine, bella. I should have said it years ago. I didn't. That was cowardice, not restraint. If I come back, I come straight to you. Wherever you are. You won't have to ask."

Her breath catches.

"And if any man puts his hands on you because he thinks I'm dead, bella, he better be right."