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“Come with me,” he demands, his voice shattered. “Now, Stevie.”

We finish together. His control is finally, completely gone. He spills deep inside me, pulse after pulse, a guttural sound tearing from his chest as his hips grind like he never wants to leave.

I clench around him again, the release carrying five years of grief and want and fear collapsing into one blinding moment.

When our orgasms fade, we stay locked together, our bodies trembling and sweat-slicked. He wraps his heavy, warm arms around me, stroking my hair back from my damp forehead. Then he guides me down flush on top of him and places a kiss on my temple, then my cheek, then the corner of my mouth.

The comedown is where everything floods back. We’re tangled on the sofa in his study, the city lights glowing behind the glass. And nothing’s been solved. In fact, everything is more complicated now. His heartbeat slows, but mine picks up again, unease settling in my bones.

Somewhere under the panic, a smaller, practical thought surfaces: no condom this time. I’ve been on the pill since Matthew, every single day, alarm on my phone. I tell myself that’s enough.

He traces a slow circle on my bare shoulder, memorizing me again. I don’t pull away. For the first time since that night, I don’t want to run, and that’s more frightening than running ever was.

Panic hits me in a flash. My body tenses.

“Something wrong?” he asks.

I slide off him and onto my feet, staring blankly ahead. Without saying a word, I move over to my bra and panties and clothes, slowly stepping into them.

“Stevie, say something.”

I purse my lips and compose myself and then speak. “This isn’t a good idea. This has to stay professional. Not like this.”

When I’m dressed, I turn toward the door, the door he said would always be open, and rush toward it.

True to his word, he says nothing as I throw it open and run out into the hall, hoping he didn’t catch a glimpse of the tears stinging my eyes.

CHAPTER 14

ENZO

From my study window, I watch the boy meet his own personal playground for the first time.

I had it installed before dawn. I made the call at four in the morning, after Stevie fled the study and left me standing in the wreck of my own desk with her taste still in my mouth and her lie still in my ears.

By sunrise there were men in the garden assembling cedar and rope and a slide. There’s a swing and a small wooden fort and a climbing wall scaled down to the size of a four-year-old.

Now Matthew is out there in the cold bright morning with Marta, shrieking as she pushes him on the swing. I stand at the reinforced glass and watch him the way I’d watch a man across a table. The tilt of his head. The way he checks the gate before he lets himself laugh.

I know that check. I was doing it at his age.

“Phoenix,” Carmine says behind me. I told him at five this morning, while the contractors were hauling lumber through the side gate, and he has had two hours to think about it the way he thinks about everything, slowly and all the way to the bottom. “A man in Phoenix.”

“That’s her story.”

“You want me to find out if there’s a man in Phoenix?”

“There’s no man in Phoenix.”

“Then you want me to pull the birth certificate.”

I turn from the window. “No.”

He waits. Carmine is the only man alive who can wait at me.

“If I pull it, then I know,” I say. “And if I know, I’ll act on it. I’ll take him to a lawyer and put my name on him and do exactly what my father would have done, and she’ll be gone by Sunday with him under her arm.” I look back out at the garden. “She lied to my face because she’s terrified of what I’ll do with the truth. I won’t prove her right by stealing it.”

“And if Luca gets curious before she gets honest?”