“That was nothing,” Dom shrugs, but I can see his posture relax. “You would’ve done the same.”
“I would have,” Giovanni agrees. “And I have.”
Ricky slaps Giovanni on the back with surprising familiarity. “Alright, alright. No more girls at Casa Bavga. We’ll find somewhere else to entertain.”
“Somewhere without cameras,” Dom adds with a grin.
“I don’t want to know,” Giovanni says, but there’s something almost like affection in his voice.
“You never do.” Ricky laughs. “That’s why we love you, you uptight bastard.”
They share a look that speaks of decades of history—childhood scraped knees, and teenage fistfights, and adult secrets. I’m an intruder witnessing something private, and I feel suddenly uncomfortable. These men are killers in designer suits, but they’re also... friends?
It doesn’t compute.
I continue my descent, each step carefully measured to announce my presence without seeming like I was eavesdropping. All three men turn at the sound, but my eyes lock on Giovanni.
He’s wearing a charcoal gray suit that makes his black-clad friends look like amateur hour. The fabric drapes across his shoulders with the reverence of something custom-made and obscenely expensive. His hair is styled with a precision that would make a neurosurgeon jealous.
He looks good.
No, he looksdangerous. There’s a difference. I need to remember that.
Dom and Ricky exchange a look, mumble something about seeing him in Pittsburgh, and exit through the front door. Giovanni watches them go, then turns back to me, his eyes widening for a fraction of a second.
I can’t help the small smile that tugs at my lips. Score one for homeless shelter girl.
“Did you... take a shower?” he asks, genuine disbelief coloring his voice.
I nod, my smile growing. “I did.”
His brow furrows in calculation. “How the hell did you manage that? You had twenty minutes.”
I reach the bottom step, now eye-level with him. “I ravel, remember? Survival mode is kind of my thing.”
Giovanni stares at me for a long second, his lush green eyes scanning my face like he’s looking for the trick, the hidden wire, the explanation for how I’ve managed to transform from frumpy cardigan girl to white-clad corporate Barbie in under twenty minutes.
Then, without warning, he offers me his arm.
The gesture is so unexpected, so oddly formal and gentlemanly, that I feel heat rush to my face. Is this embarrassment? Desire? The unholy fusion of both? I don’t have time to analyze it because his arm is still extended, and he’s waiting.
I place my hand in the crook of his elbow, feeling the expensive fabric of his suit against my palm. The contact sends an electric current up my spine that I desperately try to ignore.
We walk out of the house together in perfect step, like we’ve been doing this for years. Like I belong on the arm of a man who probably has people killed between breakfast meetings.
Outside, Giovanni leads me to the passenger side of the Lamborghini. He opens the door, and it rises dramatically upward. The two notebooks from earlier are waiting for us like a plot twist. Giovanni quickly picks them up and offers them to me. “Put them in your purse.”.
I do as I’m told, then slip inside the car with considerably more grace than my earlier barefoot scramble, forcing myself not to look up at him.
He closes the door with a soft click and walks around the front of the car. Now is when I watch… the confident stride, the straight shoulders, the way he commands space without effort.
Something stirs inside me, a hunger that has nothing to do with food and everything to do with the man about to slide into the driver’s seat beside me. It’s a feeling I thought my ex had killed forever, this rush of longing that makes my skin feel too tight and my breath come too fast.
I shouldn’t want this. I shouldn’t want him. He’s everything I should be running from.
But as the driver’s door opens and Giovanni folds his tall frame into the seat beside me, I can’t deny the quickening of my pulse or the heat pooling low in my stomach.
I steal a sideways glance at his profile as he settles behind the wheel, the sharp line of his jaw, the contemplative set of his mouth, the way his long fingers curl around the steering wheel with such casual command. Each detail I notice only pulls me deeper into this impossible gravity.