The bar was a fortress of shadows and smoke, tucked into the underbelly of the city where men like them could drink without watching their backs too closely. Low amber lights hung from the vaulted ceiling, casting long pools of gold across scarred wooden tables and the faces of people who knew better than to ask questions. The air was thick with the bite of expensive whiskey, cigar smoke, and the faint metallic tang of secrets. Bass from the hidden speakers throbbed like a second heartbeat, low and insistent.
Lorenzo led the way to their usual corner booth—black leather worn soft from years of use, positioned with a clear view of every entrance and exit. Old habits. Matteo slid in on one side, Rafael on the other, leaving Lorenzo the end seat, back to the wall, eyes on the room.
A bottle of Macallan 25 appeared without being ordered, along with three heavy crystal tumblers. The waiter knew better than to linger.
For a while, they let the noise of the bar do the talking. Matteo and Rafael traded stories from their younger days—stealing cases of wine from a rival family’s warehouse, the night they’d outrun half the city’s police in a borrowed Ferrari, the time Lorenzo had stared down a capo twice his age and walked away with the man’s territory and his pride. Laughter came easy, rough and genuine, cutting through the tension coiled in Lorenzo’s shoulders.
But it never lasted.
His gaze kept drifting to the amber liquid in his glass, watching the way it caught the light like her eyes had in the dying sun outside her shop. One week. Seven days since he’d stood in the shadows and watched another man put his hands on her. Seven nights of waking hard and furious, her name a curse on his lips, the image of that stranger’s fingers at the small of her back branded behind his eyelids.
He hadn’t gone back.
He hadn’t called Matteo out for the oversight—yet.
He’d simply let the jealousy fester, dark and familiar, the way he let a wound scab over before ripping it open again.
Matteo, never one to let silence linger, leaned forward, elbows on the table, grin sharp as a blade.
“So. You still carrying that torch for the flower girl, or have you finally admitted defeat?”
Lorenzo’s fingers tightened around his glass. “Drop it.”
Rafael chuckled low. “He hasn’t dropped it. Look at him. He’s been staring into that whiskey like it owes him answers.”
Matteo’s eyes gleamed. “Come on, cousin. It’s been a week since you went to her shop and came back looking like someone shot your dog. You saw something. Spill.”
Lorenzo’s jaw worked. He took a slow sip, letting the burn ground him. “She has someone.”
The words came out flat. Final.
Matteo blinked. Rafael stilled.
Then Matteo let out a low whistle. “Merda. You sure?”
“I saw him.” Lorenzo’s voice was quiet, lethal soft. “Tall. Dark hair. Expensive coat. Walked into her shop like he owned it. She greeted him with a kiss. His hand on her back. Her hand on his chest. They looked… comfortable.”
He didn’t say the rest.
Didn’t say how the sight had slammed into him like a hollow-point round—clean entry, devastating exit. How he’d felt his control, the one thing he’d always relied on, fracture in real time. How he’d driven away with the taste of blood in his mouth from biting the inside of his cheek to keep from roaring.
Rafael leaned back, studying him. “And you just… left?”
“What was I supposed to do?” Lorenzo’s eyes cut to him, dark and dangerous. “Walk in and demand she explain herself? Claim her in front of him like some feral animal? She’s not mine.”
Matteo’s grin returned, slower this time, edged with something almost respectful. “But you want her to be.”
Silence.
Lorenzo didn’t deny it.
He couldn’t.
Because the truth was a living thing now, clawing at his ribs every time he breathed.
He wanted her spread out beneath him, hair fanned across his pillows, thighs wrapped around his hips, his name broken on her lips as he sank into her slow and deep. He wanted her marks on his skin—nails, teeth, proof that she’d chosen him. He wanted to ruin her for anyone else, the way she’d already ruined him.
And the thought of another man having that—of another man knowing how she sounded when she came, how her body arched when she was close—made violence sing in his blood.
Rafael broke the quiet. “You don’t know the whole story. Could’ve been a friend. A cousin. Hell, a client.”
Lorenzo’s laugh was bitter. “He called her tesoro. His hand was low on her back. She leaned into him.” He shook his head. “It wasn’t friendly.”
Matteo swirled his drink, thoughtful now. “You know… I dug pretty deep. Nothing came up about a boyfriend. No late nights. No second toothbrush. No man’s clothes in her laundry line on the balcony.”
Lorenzo’s eyes narrowed. “Then you missed something.”
“Or,” Matteo said, voice dropping, “you saw what you were afraid of seeing. And ran before you got the truth.”
Rafael nodded. “Men like us—we’re good at reading threats. Not so good at reading hope.”
Lorenzo stared at them both, the muscle in his jaw ticking.
He hated that they were right.
Hated that part of him—the part that had learned early never to trust softness—had seized on that moment and used it as permission to retreat.
Because wanting Lily Valenti was the most dangerous thing he’d ever done.
More dangerous than guns or deals or the enemies who wanted him dead.
Because she could destroy him without ever pulling a trigger.
Matteo leaned in, voice low and serious for once. “Listen. You’re Lorenzo fucking Moretti. You don’t lose. You take. If you want her—and we all know you do—then go take her. Find out who he is. Find out what she feels. And if he’s in the way…” He shrugged, a glint in his eye. “We handle problems.”
Rafael’s smile was slower, darker. “But first, you talk to her. You look her in the eye and ask. Because if you don’t, you’ll spend the rest of your life wondering if you threw away the one thing that could’ve been yours.”
Lorenzo drained his glass in one swallow, the whiskey burning all the way down.
He set it on the table with deliberate care.
“I’m not ready,” he said finally, voice rough.
Matteo raised a brow. “Bullshit. You’ve been ready since the night you met her. You’re just scared.”
Lorenzo didn’t answer.
But his hand flexed on the table, fingers curling as if around the ghost of her waist.
The pull was still there.
Stronger now.
A slow, inexorable burn.
And deep down, in the place where he kept the things he never admitted, he knew they were right.
He wasn’t done with Lily Valenti.
He was just getting started.
He stood abruptly, coat swirling as he buttoned it.
“Where are you going?” Rafael asked.
his voice cutting through the low thrum of the bar like a warning shot.
Lorenzo paused at the edge of the booth, coat half-buttoned, the dim light carving sharp shadows across his face. He didn’t turn fully, just glanced back over his shoulder—eyes black as gunmetal, unreadable to anyone who didn’t know him.
“To get answers,” he said again, quieter this time, the words edged with something feral.
Matteo leaned back, stretching one arm along the top of the booth, grin slow and vicious. “Answers. Right. Because that’s what this is about. Not the fact that you’ve been imagining some polished prick with his hands on your girl for seven straight days. Not the fact that every time you close your eyes you see her leaning into him, laughing at whatever boring shit he whispered in her ear.”
Lorenzo’s shoulders went rigid.
Rafael shot Matteo a look—half warning, half resignation—but Matteo wasn’t done. He never was.
“Come on, Lorenzo. We’re all friends here.” His voice dripped sarcasm thick enough to choke on. “Tell us again how noble you are. How you’re staying away because her life is so stable. So safe. Flower shop by day, pastries and cheek kisses by dusk. Real white-picket-fence material. And you—poor, self-sacrificing bastard—can’t possibly drag her into your dark, dangerous world.”
He let out a low, mocking laugh.
“Bullshit.”
Lorenzo turned fully now, slow, deliberate, the kind of movement that made lesser men step back. But Matteo just grinned wider, unbothered.
“You’re not protecting her,” Matteo continued, voice dropping to a taunt. “You’re protecting yourself. Because if you go to her and she tells you that guy’s just a friend, then you have to admit you want her badly enough to risk everything. And if he’s more than a friend… well. Then you have to admit you lost her before you even fought for her.”
The air around the booth went thick, charged. A few heads at nearby tables turned, sensed the shift, then quickly looked away.
Lorenzo’s voice was lethally soft. “You think you know me better than I know myself?”
“I know you’re lying,” Matteo shot back, leaning forward now, eyes gleaming. “You’re not worried about tainting her perfect little life. You’re fucking terrified she’s already happy without you. That she found someone who doesn’t disappear in the middle of the night. Someone who doesn’t have blood on his hands and ghosts in his closet. Someone who can give her normal.”
He paused, letting every word sink in like a blade.
“And the worst part? You hate that you want to burn it all down anyway. Take her from him. Ruin her for anyone else. Make her yours even if it destroys her.”
Lorenzo moved so fast the table rattled—whiskey sloshing, glasses clinking. He leaned over it, one hand planted beside Matteo’s head, the other fisted in his cousin’s shirt collar, pulling him close enough to feel the heat of his rage.
“Say it again,” Lorenzo growled, voice barely above a whisper, but it carried the weight of a threat that had ended men. “Say I don’t care about her life. Say I’d drag her into this world without a second thought.”
Matteo didn’t flinch. His grin only sharpened.
“I’m saying you already want to,” he murmured. “And you hate yourself for it. But you want it more than you want to be noble.”
Rafael finally moved, placing a calm hand on Lorenzo’s forearm. “Enough.”
Lorenzo held Matteo’s gaze for another long second—jealousy and fury and raw, aching want all warring behind his eyes. Then he released him with a shove that sent Matteo back into the leather.
He straightened, smoothed his coat, voice ice-cold.
“I’m not dragging her into anything,” he said. “She’s better off.”
Matteo adjusted his collar, still smirking. “Keep telling yourself that, cousin. But we both know the truth. You’re not walking away to save her. You’re walking away because you’re scared you’ll lose control and take everything.”
Lorenzo didn’t answer.
He just turned and strode through the bar, parting the crowd without effort—tall, dark, radiating a violence barely leashed.
But inside, Matteo’s words echoed like gunshots.
Because he was right.
Lorenzo didn’t want to protect her from his world.
He wanted to drag her into it.
Claim her in it.
Keep her in it.
And the jealousy—the vicious, consuming jealousy that another man might have touched her, tasted her, made her moan—had already decided for him.
He wasn’t going for answers.
He was going to find out who the man was.
And if he had any claim on Lily Valenti…
Lorenzo would end it.
One way or another.
