by Ella James
“Italy? Why?”
He gives a dry laugh, and with his green eyes flashing, he says, “Why the fuck not? You tell everyone I’m working there for six months. As if anyone will ask.”
His dark blond hair is sticking up, his work shirt is unbuttoned to his pecs, and he’s been sitting on the opposite side of the couch since we drifted into the living room. He’s got one leg tucked up toward his chest, and both his arms around it. His handsome face is as somber as a granite statue. Now I understand why.
“Are you sure there’s nothing you can do?”
He lifts a brow. “I’m sure there’s nothing I will do.”
“Why not stay and work for one of the competitors? Play double agent, screw him over? Or is that a stupid question?”
He smiles thinly, too kind to say it’s a very stupid question.
“Everyone will know,” he offers quietly, staring blankly out in front of him.
It’s true, I’m sure. Word travels fast in this city, and in niche sectors, it must be even worse.
“I am so, so sorry, Jacey.” I scoot closer to him. “Would it help if we got pregnant?”
“We?” He rubs a hand over his face and blows a breath out. “Jesus Christ, what did I do?”
“What do you mean?”
He stands up, shaking his head, looking tortured. “I fucked up your life, too, being so damn selfish.”
He stalks out of the room. A minute later, I hear his footsteps on the floor above my head. I wait a while before I follow, giving him some time to calm down.
By the time I hug Jace at the airport the next morning, both of us are just a little better.
“Every evening for you, you’ll call. Promise?” I ask.
He nods, chin against my shoulder as he curls himself around me. “Yeah, I promise.” He stands to his full height, pressing his lips flat. “Thank you,” he says hoarsely, hugging me hard.
“Oh, you know there’s nothing to say thank you for. I didn’t do anything special. Having a husband abroad in Italy is the most exciting thing I’ve got going on right now—and you know that’s true.” I squeeze him hard. “Send me every single picture. You know you’ll always have a room in my house and a spot on my bed.”
“We should get divorced,” he rasps.
I ruffle his hair. “Shut up, Jacey. Just shut up, and take your way-too-handsome ass and sit it in that first class seat and have a little too much wine. But not a lot too much. When you get there, use that melatonin I gave you to get on the right time zone, and then get lost in all those gorgeous places. I’ll be there in two weeks for our five-day weekend.”
He nods, looking at my face for a long moment before turning away.
“I love you,” I call as he strides toward the check-in desk.
His grin makes the last few weeks seem okay. “I love you more.”
I dash over to him for one more hug, which makes us both cry. Then I make my way through the maze of escalators, stairs, and corridors before arriving at the black car Jace insisted we take—even though he’s cut off from his family’s money. He’d do anything for me.
I look out the window, watching Manhattan slide by in the blinks of my perpetually watering eyes. When I get home, I go straight to my bed, curl under the indigo silk sheets and fleecy blankets and fluffy duvet, and I tumble into sleep.
I dream of him—the only thing I ever see when I close my eyes—but when I wake near dinner time, I pretend I didn’t. Even to myself, I pretend. What does it matter? I might as well be actually married, for all that I could ever be with Luca. If you’re married, you can divorce.
What can I do? If I were to publicly be with him, I’d ruin my legacy—assuming that I end up having one of those. Everyone would see me as corrupt, a liar. My victory—winning as a young female—would be a smear on women’s efforts in Manhattan politics. What’s worse than a D.A. who fucks a mob don?
Nothing. That’s the answer.
I am not dishonest. I play by the rules. It’s bad luck that got me here, to this place where I am now. It’s not my fault. I kind of…really am a victim. Of chance, or fate. Whatever.
I can choose to block him out of my mind and move forward. That’s the only logical course. I can just…move on. Force myself. One day, after some time, it will become easier. I’m not religious, but I pray for that.
Help me forget. Make me not love him. Please.
Spring comes fully into bloom, and then unfurls to early summer. I fly to Italy to frolic with Jace twice. When I get back the second time, I do the hardest thing I’ve done in months: call the P.I. I hired and tell him that it’s time to take the camera down.
I haven’t watched in nearly six weeks. The sight of his car, coming and going like nothing is wrong, started to feel like a mockery of my feelings.
“I’ll do it,” Brian says. “I see you haven’t viewed the footage in…a bit.”
I nod, looking down at the rug under my couch. “I don’t need it. I forgot to have you turn it off.”
“Gotcha. I’ll send the reel over via a secure link, just so you—”
“No. It’s fine. I don’t even need it.”
“Are you sure? You paid for it.”
“I don’t need it.”
When the link arrives despite what I told him, I delete it and clear out my email’s trash. Ten days later, I break down and message Brian.
He replies—“No problem”—and sends me the link again. I spend the next four days watching Luca’s car move up and down his long driveway. Sometimes I can see his profile. Twice, I see his face.
It has to be enough. It is.
Luca
MAY
During the last two years Lamberto was around, I would go to his place when he asked Roberto to send me, and the old guy would tell me stories. Also, make me cook. He lived in a two-bedroom apartment in this building a few blocks from Coffey Park. It didn’t have a name, so people would just call it Richards Street.
Eleven stories, twelve small units per floor. Once, I asked him why he lived there and he chuckled in that wheezy way of his, and he said, “Home is home.” To this day, I don’t really get what made him stick around Red Hook. But he was old-school.
I park my S-Class by the curb outside the Richard Street Apartments a few days before Alesso’s next rendezvous with Aren and Co., and glance up at the building. Pale pink brick; used to be brown before I realized I should have it pressure washed every year and a half or so. Expose any leaky windows, you replace those and it cuts down on pests. Plus, it keeps the tenants happy. Happy tenants, less turnover: everybody’s life is better.
These units are cheap as shit, and there’s a skill share for a lot of them, so it runs a little like a co-op. Handy gal, the plumber, electrician, exterminator, janitors, housekeepers—they’re all in-house. I’ve got two plumbers since one moved in on the fifth floor a few months back, and that’s been a godsend. Shit happens. Often.
I don’t mind the Section 8. I’ve got accountants, managers just for my rental stuff, and they deal with it. I think people bitch about it too much. Takes a little longer, but you’re helping people, so who really gives a shit?
I pull my ball cap on, zip up my coat, and get out of the car, headed toward the side door. The front office is encased in glass, so Serilda smiles and waves as I walk by. When I first started the pink ops, she would come out in the hallway every time I showed up, offering to help and treating me like a VIP guest. But it’s been almost four years. By now, everybody knows the drill.
Who I’m really here to see is Ingrid, on floor seven. Seven is the floor that opened up the most when I needed space—along with ten—so that’s where I put them. It’s nine units total. They’re not always used at once, but that’s fine by me. Place like this pays pretty good stuff to a landlord. Anyway, it’s not like I need it.
When I got into this stuff—just a little at a time—I thought I’d need to up my distribution to help with the overhead. But I didn’t. Not much, anyway.
> After someone’s gone from start to finish, some of them will ask if they can stick around and train the others. There’s not always room here for them, but Ingrid and Daireann, Kalin and Silver, they all came through first. They know what they’re doing, so it works out.
I step onto one of the elevators, shutting my eyes as it takes me to the seventh floor. When it stops, I stare at the door, but it doesn’t open immediately, sending a frisson of alarm down my spine. About sixty seconds later, it finally limps open. That deserves a text to Kris. I fire one off then walk toward Ingrid’s room-slash-office. She’s down on the left a little ways. I pass some other rooms with closed doors, and, at the end of the hall, outside Dr. Z’s office, I see a boy in a chair leaning over a book. He’s wearing a hoodie.
One of the doors opens. It’s not Ingrid’s, but she steps out. She’s wearing the organization’s shirt, her long blonde braid draped over her shoulder. When she sees me, she gives a shy smile. “Luca.”
I smile back, stepping toward her. Which is when my phone rings. I arch my brows and hold a finger up, turning the other way before I answer.
“Luca?” It’s Soren, and right off, I know something is wrong.
“What’s up, brother?”
“There’s a problem.”
I take a step back toward the elevator, cup my hand around the phone’s mouthpiece. “You gonna tell me now or later?”
“I’m outside.”
Fuck.
I tell Ingrid I’ll be back and take the stairs down, trying to move quickly without looking like I’m in a hurry. When you’re the don, you can’t look like you’re in a hurry. That’s a real rule.
When I approach my car, I find my brother in the passenger seat, looking down at his phone. Seconds feel like minutes as I pull the door open and sink into my leather seat.
“Soren. What’s up, man?”
“Your ex-girlfriend has specifics on where we’re getting the H. As well as information on the pink ops, which—if the files on her computer are an indication—was obtained from the same FBI agent Aren has been fucking. There was a meeting yesterday, and a committee under her umbrella discussed consulting with the FBI about the ops, and planning to move later on the H.”
I blink slowly, comprehending. “Fucking Aren. He’s turncoating, squealing to that FBI fuck buddy of his.” I shake my head. “What the hell.”
“Anyone who deals in weapons like that shit he does has got real problems. Always said it,” Soren offers.
I suck air in through my nose and let it out more slowly. Then I nod.
“Yeah. I guess you’re right about that.” I nod again, feeling numb.
“What she has, about the H, is aimed right at you and Alesso. Like Aren sold out both of you specifically.”
“I’m sure he did.” That fucking traitor. “What the fuck.”
25
Luca
JULY
She must have held back the first part of summer. Maybe she ran somewhere else outside her home gym—but I’m pretty sure she didn’t. I’ve got a camera in the hall just outside her door, and I don’t see her leaving in her running gear on weekends. Or haven’t until today.
They say no good deed goes unpunished, and of course, that’s true. Keeping her safe is a priority—even more so since I found out Aren is a fucking rat—so I’m not halting my efforts until her term as district attorney is over. But the punishment is severe.
I try not to be, but I can’t help being…obsessive. I enjoy watching her leave for work—the little pensive looks on her face as she stands before the elevator, or the dreamy smiles on days she’s jamming to whatever’s in her earbuds. She’s knockout gorgeous, even in starched pantsuits and thick, tweedy dresses. Actually, I think she’s even hotter dressed for work than she would be in plainclothes.
That someone like Elise is in the D.A.’s office, applying her kind heart to what must be all manner of fucked-up shit, makes me happy in a way that’s deep and real.
That I can watch her as she comes and goes—an idea I got from her tree cam, that I can see her laughing with friends, frowning as she hauls her groceries, fumbling with her door key…it’s what I live for. Even as I know she had the tree cam pulled out of my yard a while back. Even as I heard her once, about a week ago, tell someone on the phone she looked forward to getting dinner again. Even as I know for sure she’ll move on.
She and Jace will get divorced at some point; Max said Jace had lost control of his family’s company and fled to Italy. Fucking sad, and I’m ashamed how much I love that he’s not at her place any longer.
I’m pathetic, and that point is driven home as I sit on a bench across the street from where she stops to stretch before she heads into the park. It’s a temperate morning—seventy-nine and breezy—with smells of breakfast in the air, although it’s dark and nothing’s open quite yet.
To get here on time, I had to leave my house before I even knew if she’d go for an outdoor run. Logic was against it, since she hasn’t in a long time, but sometimes on a Saturday or Sunday, I’ll drive through the tunnel or take the train, and I’ll run and watch my phone—which has an app with a link to the Elise cam—to see if she’s going to join me. It’s fucking stupid, and I kind of hate myself for keeping on with the effort.
More pathetic: when I see her walking toward her little stretching bench, I feel my heart kick like it’s starting back up.
Fuck. I take a long, slow breath and let it out. And then she’s stretching. I can’t see well, but in the lamplight, it looks like she’s wearing pale running shorts and a darker sleeveless shirt.
She’s always been cautious, looking around non-stop, but this time I think her gaze lingers on my side of the street, like she can sense my gaze hugging her. Which makes me grin.
When she takes off at a jog, I give her about a minute. Then I start across the crosswalk, tailing her into the park, keeping the same distance I always have. I stay close enough so I can see her on some straight shots and could hear her scream if something went wrong, but not so close she’ll see me if she glances back.
It’s not ideal for me, because I can’t see her as well as I’d like. But it’s the safest thing for her. My brother peeked at a computer used by Aren’s FBI fuck buddy, and he found out Aren is looking to turn on anyone the Bureau has an interest in, attempting to mitigate charges they’ll bring against him and his crew for importing weapons and selling them stateside. If Aren thinks he can serve me up to the FBI, it makes sense that he’d shift his focus to the D.A.’s office. And because he thinks I’m on Elise’s good side—and he knows he’s on her bad side—he sees that as a weak spot for him.
I still work with Aren—it’s necessary for the pink ops—and he says something fucked up about “the cunt” almost every time we speak. Makes me want to fuck him up, but I’m not stopping the ops just because the guy’s a lunatic. I don’t even think that it would help. He’s fixated on Elise. The only thing I can do is just watch her…like this.
I’m so damn tempted to get closer to her. The run seems to last forever. I can’t sort out if I’m faster—I have been running a bunch lately—or if la mia rosa has gotten slower, but I get a little jolt when I realize that what I’m smelling is her perfume. Christ.
And suddenly, I’ve closed the distance between us. Fuck, she’s less than thirty feet ahead of me. I pause and evaluate, deciding she is moving slowly.
At that moment, she slows to a walk and brings a hand up to her forehead. Just as I’m lengthening my stride to close the space between us, she starts jogging again, albeit more slowly.
Fuck, her form is sloppy. Did she stop running for these months, and she’s just getting back into the groove? Maybe she has a blister on her foot.
I shake my head, gritting my teeth at the ridiculously strong temptation I feel to go scoop her up. It’s been so long since I touched her. Since she wrapped her arms around me.
Even though things went sideways that night at Soren’s buddy’s party, Jace had t
he grace—and kindness toward Elise—to give the two of us some time together before we left the bedroom we’d been in. I held her for a while and told her again how I just wanted her to do whatever made her life good. She cried; I remember rubbing her back, inhaling her perfume.
“Per sempre,” I’d whispered near her ear.
Today, I think about that—how it feels to hold her; it’s like nothing else—as she picks up more speed. That’s good. I tell myself she must have had a cramp a little earlier, that’s all. We go around The Lake then start south toward Sheep Meadow. The sun is coming up, casting soft gold light on the world. I’m lost in my head, lit up just by how damn good it feels to watch her move.
I’m smiling as she gets to this wooden booth that sells lemonade during the day. Place is shuttered for the night, but Elise stops beside it. I assume she’s reading the sign nailed to its side. I watch her around the back side of it, where there’s a little grove with a few trees. She’s breathing hard enough so I can hear her.
After a brief hesitation, I walk around the other way, watching from behind a tree’s trunk as she leans against the building’s back wall. She drops her face into her hands, and my heart pounds a little harder.
What’s the matter, rosa dolce?
She looks out at the trees that shade the lemonade stand. Then her gaze slides to me. She blinks slowly, her eyes popping wide and her lips rounding. Her hands flutter up by her face, like she might want to cover it, but she doesn’t. She just stares at me, unblinking, looking stricken, shoulders pumping as she pants.
I feel like I’m in a snow globe someone’s tilting as I step closer to her. “Hey there, rosa. You okay?”
I don’t trust myself to get close…but she shakes her head, her lips pressing flat. That’s permission.
I close the small distance between us, my sneaks crunching on the dry leaves. When I’m close enough to smell her perfume again, she bows her head and holds her hands out, fingers splayed as if she’s reaching for me. After a moment frowning at her flushed face, I lace my fingers through hers.
