**Luca**

I sat on behind my desk with my dress shirt unbuttoned to the sternum and my jacket thrown somewhere I don't care to retrieve it from. The city glows beyond the wall of glass river like a black ribbon, high-rises steady as knives, red taillights pulsing in veins across the streets. My office is quiet in that particular way expensive rooms are quiet: thick carpet swallowing sound, floor-to-ceiling shelves holding more secrets than books, the air faintly touched by leather and the smoke that lives in my clothes.

None of it settles me.

My pulse is a slow, hard drum in my throat, the kind that belongs on the edge of a fight or a kiss. I hate that I can't tell which it wants. Rage sits under my skin. So does heat.

Her fault.

I grab the crystal decanter, pour two fingers of sixteen-year scotch, and let it burn a slow path down to the place that's clenched and refusing to unclench. Most days I'm ice work, orders, signatures, steel. If I need an outlet, I put my fist through a man whose name I'll forget. I do not get undone by a woman who looks at me like she is both terrified of me and ready to tell me no.

But today the bakery smelled like butter and quiet, and her eyes were sunlight on glass. She taught me a fresh lesson in humiliation by existing in a room and refusing to bend. I bought the whole line behind her. I took her wrist and felt her pulse leap and I swear to God it wasn't the win I thought it would be.

Rosalia.

The name tastes like I shouldn't be saying it. I say it anyway, in my head, until it loses meaning and then finds it again.

I lean back, elbows on leather, and watch my reflection bleed into the skyline. What is it about her? The first night, she ran, good instincts and bad options. She collided with me like the world was done with her. And when those two idiots came for her, I cut them out of it. Clean. Efficient. That should have been the end.

It wasn't.

I pull open the top drawer and take out the folder Carlos dropped this morning. This is the same damn file that sent me storming into the bakery like a stalker with too much money and not enough shame.

A paper clip has bent the top edge of the first page. I smooth it with my thumb. Her photo is there—cheap ID lighting, hair a little too long for the frame, green eyes that don't know how to lie. She looks like the kind of girl a man doesn't touch if he doesn't want to turn into something he can't control.

Bad news for both of us.

ROSALIA BAILEY. Age: 22. Height: 5'7". Eyes: Green. Hair: Brown.

No listed relatives in-state. No active credit lines. No bank account in her name. Rent paid cash. Employer: small bakery cross-town. I scan the lines slowly, and each one builds a picture I wish I didn't recognize: the invisible kind of poor, the kind that doesn't leave a record because there was never a record to begin with.

A single note buried halfway down: Kicked out at 18. Cohabitation with boyfriend: 11 months. No priors.

My jaw ticks. The word boyfriend is ink that spreads where it shouldn't. I tell myself jealousy is a language I don't speak. The heat that rises anyway calls me a liar.

I flip the page. She takes the bus the same route every morning, a variation at night depending on shifts. No car, obviously. Walks the last seven blocks. Sometimes stops at the park by the fountain. No friends to walk with. The pattern of a girl who learned to be small and fast.

I close the file and set the glass on top of it like that could weigh it down. It doesn't. I drag my hand over my face and let out a breath that sounds like a laugh if you don't listen close.

"When did I start caring?" I ask the room. The room gives me the same answer it always gives: silence, but armed.

I'm not built for sympathy. I traded that currency a long time ago for something that spends better in this world fear. The men who work for me know what I am because I made sure the man I used to be died when he had to.

It was the year the snow didn't stop long enough to be shoveled. I still remember the sound of it quiet that made everything else too loud. My father leaned against the kitchen counter with his sleeves pushed up and told me in Italian why you don't give an enemy something to love. My mother wore pearls that caught in the light when she laughed at him for being dramatic, then she kissed the top of my head and told me not to listen to men who like to hear themselves talk.

They died two nights later in a house with the same number of stairs as this one, and I learned the difference between talk and truth. Smoke lives in your lungs for a week after a fire like that. Grief does, too. I found out how long grief lasts when it never left.

You don't mourn and run an empire. You choose. I chose. I built everything on the bones of that choice. I told myself a thousand times that emotions and love  is a blueprint for enemies, and enemies always wait with a hammer.

So no, I don't care. I don't have room for care. That's the lie I tell with the most conviction. It holds most days. It didn't hold in a park where a girl ran and didn't cry, then stared at me like I might be the worst thing that ever happened to her and the best, and hated me for both.

I reach for the file  again just as a knock clips the air.

"Entra," ( enter) I say without looking up.

Rocco comes in wearing black on black like the rest of my inner circle tailored shirt, shoulder holster because he won't pretend the world is kinder than it is, dark hair pushed back with his fingers. Pale skin that tans and stays tanned year-round. He has one of those faces that women trust and men understand means they shouldn't. He's been beside me since we were boys playing at being wolves in a city that only breeds them.

"Boss." He shuts the door with his heel. "The meeting's set. Shipment hits the docks in three days, zero-one hundred. I'll go with Carlos. Angelo will watch the east approach. We'll keep it clean." He stops, head tilting a fraction. "You good?"

"I'm fine." I take another drink that feels like punishment and reward. "Anything from the Scorpios?"

He pulls a folder from under his arm, lays it on the desk. "They've been quieter than a funeral. That usually means they're building a bigger noise. Money moved through two new fronts this week. Small. Testing fences."

"Break their teeth on the fence," I say. "Make sure they feel it."

Rocco nods once. His eyes flick to the file I didn't put away fast enough. The corner of his mouth curves. "Carlos told me about the search." He leans against the back of a chair like he owns it but knows better.
("A girl.")

"Una ragazza," I say, a shrug standing in for a confession.

"You never ask for names," he says, almost gentle. "You forget faces on purpose." A longer beat. "What happened?"

"Nothing." The word comes out clean. Too clean. "I wanted intel and I got it. End of story."

"Mmh." He studies me. Most men know when to stop. Rocco knows when to keep going. "So you stormed a bakery this morning and bought strangers out of your way... because you like pastry now?"

"Cristo, ( Christ) Rocco." I pinch the bridge of my nose. "Drop it."

He doesn't. "You know what I think."

"No, but you'll tell me."

"I think you're interested." His grin is small and not unkind. "And I think interested becomes danger fast for men like us."

"We are danger." I push up from the chair, cross to the window, let the city throw itself at my feet and bounce. "I don't chase women."

He laughs under his breath. "You don't chase anybody. They run to you. That's not the same thing."

I turn, meet his eyes. "I told you to drop it."

He holds up both hands in surrender that isn't. "Call me when you want me to say 'I told you so.'" He straightens, the joke dissolving. "You want me on the dock or the pier?"

"Dock." I roll my shoulders to bleed the tension out. "Angelo on the pier. Tell Carlos to bring the small team. No fireworks unless we need them."

"Fatto."  ( done) He studies me one more second and then nods like a man putting his faith where it belongs. "Chiamami quando finiamo—("call me when we're done,") he says with a half-smile, stealing my line and leaving before I can throw something at him.

The door clicks shut. The room is quiet again. I look down and the file has migrated back under my hand like it lives there. I open it because I hate myself a little.

She was eighteen when her parents kicked her out. The sentence is clinical in a way that makes my teeth grind. I imagine suitcases with cheap zippers. A door slamming. A mother who doesn't meet her eyes. A father who won't look at his hands.

She moved in with a boyfriend for a year. The jealousy is a small, precise knife. It has no business in my chest. I feel it anyway. I flip the page before I decide to find his name, because if I do, I will find his face, and if I find his face, I will take it apart. That's not a problem I need tonight.

She's been alone four years no family, no friends who last. No one to call. No one to call her. I think of the way her shoulders dropped when the bus came. Relief like an apology to herself for surviving one more night. I hate the picture it makes. I hate the way hate feels like care when you're not looking closely enough.

The phone on my desk buzzes once,

"Boss," Carlos says when I pick up.

"Vieni su," I tell him. (Come up.)

He's at the door in under two minutes because he's built like a man who knows time is a weapon and he uses it. His suit is the same familiar black, his tie neat, eyes steady. He sits only when I gesture, because we have hierarchy for a reason and we don't forget it even when we pretend we could.

"Update," I say.

"Jett pulled external security footage from the businesses near the park the night of the incident," he replies. "We blurred your face out of the copies. We flagged two Scorpios hangers-on who stuck around after you left. They were sniffing. Didn't get far." He slides a photo across. Cigarette ash, cheap tattoos, eyes that think they have a future. "We can put a leash on them, see where they run."

"Do it." I tap the corner of the photo. "And the girl?"

He doesn't blink at the shift. "We have her route. We can place a tail, keep distance. She won't see us." He pauses just long enough to make the question polite. "Do you want contact?"

"No." The word is too quick. I temper it. "Not unless there's danger. She doesn't like being watched. Don't give her a reason to test the theory."

He nods.

"Yes, Boss." He hesitates a fraction. "The Scorpios have been too quiet. We have chatter about a test shipment. Small. They'll try to slide it past us to get cocky. If they do—?"

"We break their hands," I say. "And then we make them write us an apology with what's left."

Carlos's mouth shifts like he might smile. He doesn't. He never laughs out loud in my office. He stands. "Chiamerò quando finisco
(I'll call when I'm done.")

I wave him off.

He goes. The door closes again. The city keeps being a city. I pour more scotch and don't drink it. My hands twitch the way they do when I haven't put them on something that hits back in a few days. I cross to the heavy bag in the side room and wrap my knuckles out of habit, not need. The first punch lands like a confession. The second like a lie. By the tenth the sting is sharp enough to eat the other ache. Sweat runs down my spine. It doesn't bring peace. It brings distraction, which is the next best thing.

When the rhythm stops doing anything, I unwind the wraps and stare at my hands. They're clean. Earlier they weren't. I think of her watching me wipe blood from my knuckles in the park, the way her breath hitched and her eyes stayed. Fear is a sensible reaction to a man like me. She wore it like a dress that didn't fit.

I shower fast in the private bath, cold until the anger backs off and hot until the mirror fogs.

I should bury myself in work. I do the opposite and take the slow road back into memory that never stops offering itself: my father's ring, still warm when I pulled it from the ash; the sound my mother didn't get to make; the men who thought killing them would end us, not make us inevitable. I built a life that answers that mistake every day. I owe it to their ghosts to keep it uncomplicated.

I owe it to myself to remember that every good thing in a life like mine becomes a target the second it breathes.

I don't need a target with green eyes and a mouth that makes me want to be cruel and kind in the same breath.

I pick up the phone and call Angelo because I know what I'm about to do is a bad idea disguised as a tradition.

"Get the car," I say. "Thirty minutes. We're going to the club."

"Subito, capo." (Right away, boss.)

I hang up and stare at the glass in my hand like it might answer a question I wasn't brave enough to ask. I don't go to clubs to chase women. I don't chase anything. But if I flood the senses music, perfume, too-sweet laughter maybe I can drown the part of my brain that keeps spelling her name on the inside of my skull.

I open the drawer, look at the file one more time because I have less self-control than I told the world I do. The first page stares back. Works at the bakery of M. Quakers. Lives alone. A little handwritten note from Jett at the bottom: Stops sometimes at the park after late shifts. Pattern inconsistent, but present.

The thought of her alone on a bench with darkness sitting down beside her like an old friend hits me square in the chest. An ugly truth forms around the impact: if something happened to her and I could have prevented it, I would level neighborhoods and not feel a second of regret.

The next truth isn't prettier: wanting to protect is a cousin of wanting to possess. Both get men killed. Both get them sloppy.

I put the folder back and shut the drawer with more force than it needs.

Another knock. I don't say enter. It opens anyway. Rocco, again. He can't help himself.

"You good," he says, flat as glass. Not a question this time.

"I said I'm fine."

"You said it like a man trying to convince someone." The corner of his mouth tips. "You or me?"

"Rocco," I warn.

He lifts a shoulder. "I'll see you at the docks tomorrow." Then, because he is incapable of leaving well enough alone, he adds, "Se vuoi che lo dica (if you want me to say it I told you so.") He taps the desk with two knuckles on the way out like he's knocking on wood for luck he doesn't need.

When the door shuts, I laugh once, harsh. It doesn't fix anything. Neither will whatever the club gives me.

I take the last swallow of scotch, put the glass down like it's not shaking my hand, and grab my jacket from wherever I threw it. The sleeve is twisted. I fix it. The mirror by the door tells me what I already know: I look like sin with an alibi. Men like me have to. It keeps the stupid ones from thinking they have a chance.

The elevator hums. The lobby yawns. Outside, night air rolls over my face and tastes like rain that won't commit. Angelo stands by the open back door of a car that costs more than the average man's house, eyes straight ahead, posture perfect.

"Capo,"  (boss) he says, nodding. He does not ask questions. Angelo learned early that questions are the wrong weapon in my vicinity.

I slide in. The city takes us like a promise and a threat, neon smearing into long lines along the glass. I let the hum of the engine and the movement and the first thumps of bass from two blocks away layer over the other noises in my head until her name is just another drum under all of it.

The club's lights hit like a heartbeat. Inside is everything I told myself I needed music loud enough to crack bone, perfume that doesn't smell like anyone real, women who move like they were born for men to watch. I let it all wash over me. It doesn't touch the place that's already busy with a girl who looked straight at me and said no without using the word.

I find a corner that used to feel like a throne and tonight feels like standing in a room full of mirrors.

A brunette with lips like trouble leans in, says something into my ear I've heard a hundred versions of. I answer in a voice that always works. She smiles the way they always do. I put a hand on her waist out of habit, and every muscle in my arm tells the truth: she isn't the right wrong thing.

Angelo appears at the edge of my vision like a good ghost. He doesn't interrupt unless he should. I shake my head once. He fades back.

I stand there and the club does its job distracts, numbs, pretends to satisfy. It doesn't. It can't. I accept it the way I accept anything that isn't a fight: brief usefulness.

Eventually, I leave. Outside, the air has shifted toward dawn. The city never sleeps; it only blinks. On the ride back, a streetlight passes over the glass and throws the color of her eyes at me for one stupid second. I close mine and see the park again. The bakery again. The moment her pulse jumped under my fingers and I let go because fear on her felt like a crime I couldn't make myself commit.

We got back home went back to the office I turn off the lights, and the office goes dark except for the city on the other side of the glass and the faint, traitorous glow of the phone where Carlos will send the next update that has her name in it.

I leave it face down.

For now.

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