Chapter Two (Giovanni)

By the time we reach the front doors of Cara Sinclair’s mansion, the street is dead quiet. There are no fans, no press, no drunken stragglers—just the faint hum of streetlights and the ocean breeze rolling somewhere far behind the hills.

Cara punches in the alarm code with a clumsy finger, swaying just slightly. She’s sobering up, and with sobriety comes silence, apparently.

The door clicks open.

“Come on,” she mutters, stepping inside.

I follow her through a foyer made of white marble and money. The chandelier above us looks like shattered stars frozen mid-fall. Her heels dangle from her fingertips, and she drops them at the base of the stairs, as she’ll never need them again.

“This is the kitchen,” she says, waving a hand as if the room bores her. And maybe it does. The fridge is full of sparkling water and takeout. “I don’t cook.”

She says it flatly, and I realize this is the first honest version of her I’ve seen tonight. There's no glitter-stained spectacle, no wild backstage seduction attempts. She's just a girl who worked a stage until her throat probably bled.

“You don’t have a chef?” I ask.

“He quit.”

“Why?”

“He tried to put me on a diet,” she deadpans. “I fired him and gifted him a treadmill.”

I snort before I can stop it. Her mouth twitches like she’s secretly proud of the reaction. We keep walking, or rather, she drifts, and I follow like a shadow trained to notice everything.

My brain catalogues details automatically:

• windows too large

• curtains too sheer

• entry points with old locks

• blind security angles

It's muscle memory. That was beaten into me. My first day working for Don Moretti wasn’t like this. Cara’s team gave me a quick briefing and a binder. The Don gave me a Glock and a warning. I was nineteen. I thought I was invincible because the paperwork I carried said I’d served in the military. Paperwork I knew damn well was doctored.

The Don didn’t care where I’d actually trained, only that I could shoot straight, stay quiet, and bleed for the family without complaint. Every guard under him was forged in the same fire. Including me. Especially me.

“You’re very quiet,” Cara says suddenly, glancing at me as she pushes open a door.

I’m pulled out of memory the second the light flicks on. The music room is spotless, there are pianos, guitars, and shelves of sheet music, but everything is too perfect, too untouched. She hasn’t played in here for months, maybe years.

“You don’t like talking?” she asks.

“I talk when I have something to say.”

She hums, unimpressed. “Sounds exhausting.”

No, it's not exhausting; it's necessary because the first job I ever had under Moretti wasn’t guarding his daughter. No. That came later, but I remember the day clearly. I remember the moment they brought Sofia home from Europe.

The way the Don introduced her to the staff with his hand on her shoulder, as if she were the most precious piece in his empire.

“Untouchable,” he’d said.

“She is to be protected at all costs.”

Back then, she was just a sheltered heiress with eyes too soft for the world she’d been born into. I didn’t know she’d be the person who carved something tender out of me years later. I didn’t think I’d ruin myself for her or that I’d lose her. Not forever, but close enough.

Cara keeps walking, oblivious to the shadows in my thoughts.

“This is the theater room,” she says, yawning. “I fall asleep in here a lot.”

“That safe?” I ask.

“No, but it’s entertaining.”

She turns into a hallway lined with framed magazine covers, torn tour posters, and backstage photos. It's every achievement she’s ever earned plastered on walls that echo when she speaks, but the further we get into the mansion, the lonelier it feels. Finally, she stops at a door and pushes it open.

“My room.”

Her tone shifts, and I see why. Her bedroom is nothing like the rest of the house. Here, she’s real. There are warm lights, records stacked by a vintage turntable, an overflowing bookshelf, and plants on every surface. Blankets and pillows in chaotic piles that somehow look intentional. Photo strips taped to the mirror. It’s a mess.

For a second, I compare it to Sofia’s room in the Moretti estate. Her room had no personality. Orderly belongings. Sunlight through tall curtains. I blink away the memory sharply.

They are clients just from different eras. Different assignments, but my stomach still twists. Cara sits on the edge of her bed, rubbing her eyes with the heel of her palm.

“So?” she asks quietly. “Does my room pass whatever… security checklist you have?”

I walk the perimeter, checking latches, angles, and blind spots, while she watches me with a strange tension in her shoulders like she’s waiting for me to find something wrong.

“It’s good,” I say. “Only one window. One entry door. Easy to secure.”

She nods slowly.

“Okay.” Her voice is small. She stretches her legs out, toes curling into an expensive rug.

“I’ll be in the security room,” I say. “If anything happens, call out or hit the panic button on the nightstand.”

“I won’t need to.”

“That’s what everyone says.”

She huffs a laugh. “And you have experience with… everyone?”

“Enough.”

She studies me for a moment. Her eyes are softer, clearer.

“Hey,” she murmurs.

I pause at the doorway.

“Thanks,” she says, not looking at me. “For… not being creepy.”

It’s the lowest bar imaginable, but coming from someone who lives every day under a microscope, stalked by strangers, and touched by too many hands, it means something.

You’re welcome,” I reply.

I turn toward the hallway, where the mansion fades into deeper shadows. The security room, my new home base, is at the far end, but as the door closes behind me, a thought hits my chest with an unexpected heaviness:

I am good at disappearing into people’s lives. Good at being needed. Good at being forgotten, but tonight, for one strange second, I didn’t feel like a ghost. I felt seen, and I don’t know if that’s going to be a blessing or the beginning of the next thing that destroys me.