I stepped a little closer, close enough to lower my voice. “No. Tell me.”
Her breath caught just enough to satisfy something in me.
“Video call,” she said quietly. “If you want.”
If I want.
I looked at her for a long second.
“Emily,” I said, “I am not going to pretend a few messages will be enough.”
The color in her cheeks deepened.
“So that’s a yes?”
“That’s me trying very hard not to sound too eager.”
“It’s not working.”
“I know.” I reached up and brushed one curl back from her face before I could stop myself. “Tomorrow night?”
She nodded. “Tomorrow night.”
I let my hand fall, though every instinct in me argued against ending the touch.
“Go inside,” I said, and even to my own ears the words sounded rougher than usual.
Her eyes searched mine, as if she heard it too.
“Goodnight, Pietro.”
“Goodnight, Emily.”
She turned then and slipped inside, and I waited until the door closed behind her before moving. Even so, I stood there another few seconds longer than made any sense, staring at the glass like a man with something essential on the other side of it.
Tomorrow I would leave Boston.
Tomorrow I would go back to Chicago, back to my father, back to the life that had always made sense before she stepped into it.
And somewhere between the promise of a video call and the memory of her mouth on mine, I knew with perfect clarity that distance was not going to lessen a single thing.
CHAPTER 7
PIETRO
“What do you think, Pietrolino?”
I did not startle. At least, not visibly.
I lifted my head from my phone and the photo currently filling the screen, the history table in the library, empty except for the corner of a blue notebook I knew belonged to Emily, and looked up at Matteo Genovese instead.
He stood by the bar with a glass in one hand, infuriatingly at ease, a man who had been feared for so long he took it for granted. Capo di tutti capi, head of the Genovese, and one of the few men alive who still insisted on using the childhood nickname I had outgrown at least a decade ago.
I kept my expression under control.
Then, against my better judgment, I looked past him and met the eyes of my uncle.
Hoka Nishimura saw far too much.