Chapter 7: Off Limits (Story 1)

Dominic doesn’t ask me to go to Venice.

He tells me.

“Wheels up at 6 AM,” Marcus says, dropping a folder on my desk Tuesday morning. “Venice. D’Angelo account. You’re on the pitch team.”

I look up. Dominic’s office door is closed. It’s been closed since the gala. Since Are you in this with me? Since I didn’t answer.

“Why me?” I ask.

Marcus gives me a look. Really? “Because you speak Italian.”

I don’t. I took two semesters in college and can order wine and swear.

“Because you closed Chicago,” Marcus corrects himself. “And because Mr. Cole said so.”

Mr. Cole. We’re back to that.

I pack a bag. I don’t pack expectations.

---

Venice. 9:43 AM local time.

It’s stupid beautiful. The kind of beautiful that feels like a personal attack when your life is a mess. Canals, stone bridges, light bouncing off water like the whole city is made of glass.

The D’Angelo meeting is brutal. Three hours of old men in linen suits talking about “legacy” and “disruption” while I translate badly and Dominic dissects their entire business model in English and waits for them to catch up.

We win. Of course we win. Dominic doesn’t fly to Venice to lose.

D’Angelo signs the contract with a flourish. “To celebrate,” he says, “dinner. Tonight. My restaurant. Just us.”

Us means him, his wife, Dominic, and me.

Dominic says no.

D’Angelo insists.

Dominic says no again, in Italian this time. His accent is perfect. Another thing I didn’t know about him.

We end up at the restaurant anyway.

---

It’s not a restaurant. It’s a canal-side terrace with no menu, no other customers, and a chef who comes out to kiss Dominic on both cheeks like they’ve survived a war together.

“For my wife,” D’Angelo tells me, pouring wine.

“She loved this place. She passed last spring.”

I glance at Dominic. His face doesn’t change. But his hand, around his wine glass, goes white-knuckled for half a second.

D’Angelo talks for two hours. About Venice. About loss. About how you rebuild a city after it floods, and how you rebuild a life after it doesn’t.

Dominic listens. Really listens. He asks questions. He doesn’t check his phone. He doesn’t talk about market share.

I’m watching a man I don’t recognize. Or maybe I’m finally seeing him.

After dessert — lemon, almond, something that tastes like summer — D’Angelo and his wife leave us. “Walk,” he says, clapping Dominic on the shoulder. “Venice is for lovers and liars. See which one you are.”

Then it’s just us.

The canal is quiet. Water laps at stone. A few lights flicker on in windows. Somewhere, someone is playing a violin. Badly. It’s perfect.

We walk. Not talking. Not touching.

“This is where I was supposed to come on my honeymoon,” I say finally. Stupid. Why did I say that?

Dominic looks at me. “With Ethan?”

“God, no.” I laugh, but it’s hollow. “In college. With a guy named Matt. He dumped me the week before. Said I was ‘too intense for Europe.’”

“Matt was an idiot.”

“Yeah.” I kick a pebble. It plinks into the canal. “What about you? You and your wife ever…?”

He’s quiet for so long I think he won’t answer.

“We came here,” he says eventually. “Ten years ago. For our anniversary. She’d already been sick for a year. We didn’t know it would be the last one.”

The violin stops. Like the city is listening.

“She made me promise two things,” he says. “One: don’t let the company become my entire life. Two: don’t die alone just because I’m scared of doing it right.”

He looks at me. “I’ve broken both.”

The rain starts then. Not a storm like last time. A mist. Soft. Venice rain. It catches in his hair, on his eyelashes. It makes him look younger. Or maybe just less invincible.

“You haven’t,” I say.

“I have.”

“You’re here. With me. That’s not alone.”

“It’s not right,” he says. “Not with you. Not like this.”

“Because of Ethan?”

“Because of you. Because I don’t know if you’re here for me, or for him. And I won’t be a man you use to prove a point.”

The truth cracks open in my chest.

“I’m not,” I whisper. “I’m not, I swear. It started that way. It did. I wanted to hurt him. I wanted him to watch you choose me. But then you—” I break off. “You listened. You saw me. And now I don’t know what I want, but I know it’s not that. Not anymore.”

He steps closer. The mist is in his lashes. “Then what do you want, Alina?”

You.

I don’t say it. I can’t.

So I show him.

I stop under a stone archway. The rain is harder now, but the arch covers us. Just us. The city muffled. The world gone.

“You’re not what I expected,” I say.

“Neither are you.”

And then I’m kissing him.

This Kiss isn’t like the first. The first was anger. This is surrender.

It’s slow. Searching. His mouth is warm against mine, and he tastes like wine and rain and something I can’t name but want to drown in.

His hands don’t grab. They frame my face, thumbs brushing my cheekbones like I’m made of glass. Like he’s memorizing me. Like he can’t believe I’m real.

I make a sound — not a gasp, not a moan, something in between — and his arms come around me. Not trapping. Holding. One hand at my back, pressing me into him, the other still at my jaw, tilting me up into him.

I forget Ethan’s name. I forget why this is a bad idea.

Because it doesn’t feel like a bad idea. It feels like coming home to a house I didn’t know I’d been missing.

He breaks the kiss first. Rests his forehead against mine. We’re both breathing hard. The rain is louder now, drumming on the stone above us.

“Alina,” he says. Just that. My name. Like it hurts.

“I know,” I whisper. “I know.”

He kisses me again. Softer this time. Deeper. Like he’s trying to tell me something he can’t say out loud.

I kiss him back with everything I didn’t say in the car. I’m not my dad. I’m not Ethan. I’m not leaving.

His hands slide down, to my waist, to my hips, pulling me flush against him. I feel how much he wants me. It should scare me. It doesn’t. It feels… earned.

“Come back with me,” he says against my mouth.

I nod. I can’t speak.

---

His suite overlooks the Grand Canal. It’s dark except for one lamp, the water outside throwing patterns on the ceiling.

We don’t turn on more lights.

He doesn’t push. He doesn’t have to. I’m the one who reaches for the buttons of his shirt. My fingers are shaking. He covers my hands with his, stills them.

“Are you sure?” he asks. His voice is wrecked. “Because if we do this, there is no going back, I’m not a lesson for Ethan. I’m just… me. And you have to want me.”

I look up at him. At the gray in his hair. The scar on his eyebrow. The way he’s looking at me like I’m the only real thing in Venice.

“I want you,” I say. “Just you. No one else. Not anymore.”

He exhales like he’s been holding his breath for a year.

Then he kisses me again, and it’s different. No anger. No desperation. Just yes.

He undoes my dress. Slowly. Like he’s unwrapping something precious. The emerald silk falls to the floor. I should feel exposed. I don’t. Because the way he looks at me — like I’m a revelation — makes me feel powerful.

He backs me toward the bed. The backs of my knees hit it. He follows me down, never breaking the kiss, his body over mine, caging me in but never trapping.

“Dominic,” I breathe.

He groans at his name in my mouth. “Say it again.”

“Dominic.”

His hands are reverent. They map my skin like he’s learning some new. Shoulders, ribs, waist. When he touches me, it’s like he’s asking permission and giving thanks at the same time.

I reach for him. His shirt, his belt, his skin. He’s hot under my palms, solid, real. He’s 45 and he’s lived and it’s in every line of his body, every scar, every breath. And I want all of it.

He makes love to me like it’s a conversation.

Slow at first. Asking. Is this okay? His mouth on my neck. And this? His hands at my hips.

I answer with my body. With my legs around his waist. With my nails at his back. With the way I say his name when he finally, finally slides into me.

He swallows the sound. Kisses it out of me.

It’s not frantic. It’s not a fight. It’s deep and slow and devastating. The rain on the windows. The canal outside. The way he says my name like it’s the only word he knows.

“Look at me,” he says, voice strained. “Alina. Look at me.”

I do.

His eyes are black, blown wide, locked on mine. There’s no plan here. No game. Just him. Just me. Just us.

We move together. No more revenge. No more Ethan. Just two people who were drowning and found each other in the dark.

When I break apart, it’s with his name on my lips and his forehead pressed to mine. He follows seconds later, shuddering, saying my name like a prayer he didn’t know he still believed in.

After, he doesn’t roll away. He pulls me against his chest, one arm tight around me, like he’s afraid I’ll disappear.

The rain stops. The city is quiet.

“Stay,” he says. Not a command. A request.

“I’m not going anywhere,” I say. And for the first time since, I mean it.

He’s asleep before me. I watch him. The lines on his face are softer. The scar on his eyebrow. The gray at his temples.

I press a kiss to his chest, right over his heart.

I’m in this with you, I think. God help me, I am.

---

Marcus is on the bridge when we leave in the morning.

He sees us. Sees my hand brush Dominic’s as we walk. Sees the way Dominic doesn’t move away.

He doesn’t say anything.

He doesn’t have to.

The plan is dead.

And I killed it.