5

•ALESSINO POV•

I don’t go far after I leave the room because my legs won’t carry me any farther than the hallway, and I press my back to the wall outside her door and listen to the silence I just left behind, and all I can hear is my own breathing coming too fast like I’ve been running for five years and only just stopped.

I buried her on a Tuesday. It rained so hard the priest’s words got washed out and I didn’t care because I wasn’t listening anyway, I was staring at that casket thinking it was too small to hold everything she was to me, and I threw the first handful of dirt down myself because no one else was going to do it, and I’ve had that dirt under my nails ever since.

And she was alive.

The thought hits me again and I have to brace my forearm against the wall and drop my head because the rage comes up my throat so fast I think I might be sick, but underneath the rage is something that feels worse, something that feels like relief, and I hate myself for it.

She looked at me with blood on her mouth and smiled. Not a scared smile. Not a sorry smile. A defiant one. Like she knew exactly what she was doing to me. Like she knew I’d remember every promise she ever whispered against my skin at 3 a.m. when she thought I was asleep.

“Never lie to me, Odessa. Never leave me. I’d die before I betray you.” She said it with my mother’s ring on her finger, the one I slipped on her when I told her she was mine and I didn’t care what my father or the Commission said about it. She said it and she meant it, or at least I thought she did, and now I don’t know what was real and what was just a game she was playing.

Mine. That word pounds in my head with every beat of my pulse. She was mine. She swore it. She let me carve my name into her life and then she carved it out and left me holding the knife.

I want to go back in there and put my hands around her throat and ask her who she’s been with. Who touched her while I was putting flowers on an empty grave. Who she told my secrets to. Who helped her disappear and made me a fool in front of every man who calls me boss. Because loyalty is blood in my family, and betrayal doesn’t get forgiven, it gets buried.

But I can’t. Because when I grabbed her chin and saw her eyes, they were still hers. Scared, yes, but still that same green I used to wake up to, and my body remembered her before my brain could catch up and tell it to stop. I remembered how she used to fit against my chest, how she’d cry after nightmares and say my name like it was the only thing keeping her in one piece.

Was that a lie too? Was everything we’ve ever had with each other lies?

God. I don’t know which answer would destroy me more.

My men are down the hall pretending they didn’t hear the door slam, pretending they didn’t see their boss come undone over a ghost, and I need to pull it together because weakness gets you killed in my world. But all I can think is that she’s in there, behind that door, breathing. After five years of me learning how to live without air, she’s breathing.

I should have her killed. That’s what my father would do. That’s what the code says. Traitors don’t get second chances, they get closed caskets.

But then I remember the way she looked at the floor instead of me, like she couldn’t bear it, and I know she’s still afraid of me. And some sick, twisted part of me is glad for that, because if she’s afraid it means she remembers what I am, what I can do, and maybe it means she remembers that I was the one who kept her safe before she decided she didn’t want to be kept.

I push off the wall and force my hands to stop shaking because I have a choice to make before I go back in that room. I can be the boss. Or I can be the man who loved her.

I can’t be both.

But God help me, when I close my eyes I don’t see the casket anymore. I see her. Alive. And part of me, the part I’d cut out of my own chest if I could, is glad she’s back even if it means I have to break her to find out why.

She’s mine. She was always mine. And nobody, not even death, gets to take what’s mine.

---

I didn’t see her again for three hours because I couldn't trust myself in the same room with her, so I left her locked in my west wing with two of my most trusted men outside the door, and I went to my office to drown in whiskey and the sound of my own pulse.

But I keep seeing her.

Not her face. Not the blood. I see the way her shirt clung to her when they dragged her in out of the rain, soaked through and plastered to her skin so I could see every breath she took, every shiver that ran through her, and God help me I noticed the way the wet fabric outlined her, the curve of her breasts pressed hard against the thin white cotton like she wasn’t wearing anything underneath, and even with my hands itching to wrap around her throat I still had to look away because my body is a traitor and it remembered her before my mind could shut it down.

I hate that I noticed. I hate that after five years of thinking she was dead, the first thing my body does is betray me with heat instead of a bullet. That’s not grief. That’s not rage. That’s something sicker, something that makes me want to ruin her and then ruin myself for wanting to.

I slam the glass down on my desk when Vittorio walks in without knocking, and the sound makes him flinch like he wasn’t expecting me to be in here, which is strange because where else would I be after finding my dead wife alive in my basement.

Why the fuck am I calling her ‘wife’?

He looks off. Pale under his tan, like he’s been sick, and his mouth is turned down at the corners like he just swallowed something rotten and can’t get the taste out.

“You look like you ate your own vomit,” I tell him because it’s true, and because I need someone to bleed for how I feel right now.

He recovers fast, too fast, and gives me that easy smile he uses on the Commission when he’s lying. “Rough night, boss?” he asks, pouring himself a drink without asking, which he never does unless he’s trying to act like we’re equals. We’re not.

I don’t answer him. I’m thinking about the report Marco gave me twenty minutes ago, the one that’s been sitting in my gut like a stone. They found her in a safe house upstate. Not one of ours. Not Rossi territory either.

The men guarding her weren’t ours, weren’t Rossi’s, weren’t anyone we know, and they didn’t wear colors or carry family marks. Professional. Quiet. Ghosts. They died before they could talk, all four of them, and not one of them broke even when Enzo got creative.

Someone was protecting her. Someone with money and reach and no allegiance to me. Someone who knew she was alive while I was laying flowers on an empty grave.

The thought makes my jaw lock so tight I think my teeth might crack.

“Talk,” I say to Vittorio, because he’s my consigliere and if there’s a shadow operation in my city, he should know about it.

He takes a slow sip and doesn’t meet my eyes right away. Something felt off. Vittorio always looks me in the eye, even when he’s lying. Especially when he’s lying. “We’re still tracing the property. Shell company. Dead end so far.” He hesitates, then adds, “But we got a hit on her elsewhere. Paparazzi photo from Milan, two weeks ago. Her with Massimo Bianchi at some charity gala. The caption called her his fiancée.”

The name hits like a bullet I wasn't wearing a vest for.

“Who pulled her out of that grave, Vittorio?” I ask him, and my voice is quiet because the next person who lies to me dies on this floor. “Who’s been keeping my wife for five years while I mourn her? You find me a name and I swear to God I’ll kill the man myself.”

Vittorio sets his glass down carefully, too carefully, and when he looks at me there’s something in his eyes that isn’t fear. “I’m afraid such won’t happen, boss,” he says, smooth as oil. “Cause she’s engaged to him.”

The room goes silent. Even the clock stops, or maybe that’s just my heart.

“What do you mean?” The words come out quiet because if I say them any louder I’ll break something.

Vittorio adjusts his cufflinks. Gold. New. Not his style. “She’s engaged to Massimo Bianchi. Wedding’s in three months. You’re gonna send a gift?”