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“Nice work with Kelley. Dad would’ve been proud.”

I closed my eyes, letting his praise settle, heavy and bittersweet. “Thanks,” I managed, the word catching in my throat. For a moment, I wished I could tell Giovanni everything, but the city’s pulse was still in my veins, too loud to ignore.

I hung up, staring at the phone in my hand.

The lie had come easily. Too easily. And that should have worried me more than it did. Because the truth was, I hadn’t thought about Luciano until Giovanni asked when I was coming home. The truth was, I had planned to stay in New York before I even left Kelley’s house. The truth was, I had been thinking about one thing and one thing only since I walked out of that office.

Madigan.

Her name had been running through my head on a loop for the past hour. Madigan Kelley. The way she had looked at me with those winter-sky eyes. The way her hands had trembled when she picked up that book. The way she had whispered thank you, as if the words were something precious, something rare.

I stood and walked to the window, pressing my palm against the cool glass.

This was insane. I knew it was insane. I had built a career on being smart, on being careful, on never letting emotion compromise my judgment. I had seen what happened to men who got sloppy, who let their guard down, who started thinking with something other than their heads. I had buried some of those men myself. And here I was, lying to my brother, extending a trip I had no reason to extend, all because I couldn’t stop thinking about a woman I had spoken to for maybe two minutes.

A woman whose father had explicitly threatened to kill her if I came near her. A woman who was so far off-limits she might as well have been on another planet.

If anyone found out—if Giovanni found out, if Kelley found out, if anyone in either family got even a whisper of why I was really staying in New York—it would be a disaster. It would make me look weak. Compromised. It would give Kelley leverage he could use to renegotiate the deal, to demand more, to squeeze us. It would put my family at risk.

It would put her at risk.

I thought about Kelley’s face when he looked at his daughter. The casual cruelty. The pleasure he had taken in her fear. The way he had threatened her life as if it was nothing, as if she were a possession he could destroy if she didn’t behave.

If he found out I was interested in her. If he even suspected, he would use her against me. Or worse, he would hurt her just to prove a point.

I should have left. I should have got on a plane, gone back to Nevada, forgot I ever saw Madigan Kelley’s frightened eyes or heard her whispered thank you.

I should have done a lot of things.

But I didn’t move from the window.

The sun was setting now, painting the sky in shades of orange and red. Somewhere out there in this city, Madigan was probably in that house in Riverdale, probably still shaking from her father’s rage, probably wondering why a stranger had been kind to her when kindness seemed to be something she rarely received.

I wanted to see her again. I wanted to talk to her, to hear her voice when she wasn’t terrified, to see what she looked like when she smiled. I wanted to know what she was reading, what she was thinking, what she dreamed about when she wasn’t trapped in that house with a father who treated her like garbage.

I wanted things I had no business wanting.

And the worst part... the part that should have sent me running for the airport was that I didn’t care. The logic was there. The awareness of the danger was there. The knowledge that I was making a mistake, that I was compromising myself and everyone around me, that I was being exactly the kind of reckless, emotional fool I’d always despised.

All of it was there.

But it didn’t matter.

Because when I closed my eyes, all I saw was her. All I felt was that pull, that gravity dragging me toward something I couldn’t name and couldn’t fight.

I was staying in New York.

I was going to find a way to see her again.

And I was going to hope like hell that I didn’t get us both killed in the process.

I turned away from the window and grabbed my jacket. The hotel room felt too small, too quiet, too full of thoughts I didn’t want to examine too closely. I needed to move. I needed air. I needed to walk until my head cleared or until I accepted that it never would.

The streets of Manhattan were crowded with evening commuters, tourists, and people living their normal lives. I walked without direction, letting the city swallow me, letting the noise and movement distract me from the voice in my head that kept saying this is a mistake, this is a mistake, this is a mistake, this is a mistake.

But even as I walked, even as I tried to focus on anything else, the deal, the family, the work waiting for me back in Chicago, my mind circled back to the same place.

To her.