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She was the very air in my lungs, the reason my heart beat in my chest, the pulse that thrummed through my veins with every waking moment. When she was with me, nothing else existed. Not the family business with its endless demands and dangerous politics, not my family with their expectations and their judgments, not the blood that stained my hands or the sins that weighed on my soul. Just her. Just us. Just the way she looked at me, like I was something more than what I’d always been—more than a monster, more than a killer, more than the cold, ruthless man everyone else saw when they looked at me.

And when she wasn’t with me, I was lost.

Completely, utterly, devastatingly lost.

I couldn’t think straight. Couldn’t focus on the simplest tasks. Couldn’t do anything except count the hours, then the minutes, then the seconds until I could see her again, touch her again, feel her skin beneath my fingertips, hear her voice saying my name in that soft, breathless way that made me feel like I was the only man in the world. Like I mattered. Like I was worth something beyond the empire my family had built on broken bones and shattered lives.

It was pathetic, really. Absolutely pathetic. I was the man who made grown men tremble, the ruthless bastard who helped my brother carve out territory with violence and fear, reduced to a lovesick fool who checked his phone every five minutes hoping for a text, who made excuses just for the chance to see her, who drove past her college at two in the afternoon like some obsessed teenager, who lay awake at night staring at the ceiling and thinking about the curve of her smile, the sound of her laugh, the way her eyes lit up when she talked about things she loved.

But I didn’t care.

I didn’t care about anything except her.

As the days turned into weeks, the weeks blurred together in a haze of stolen moments and whispered promises. We fell into a rhythm that was as beautiful as it was unsustainable, a delicate dance that we both knew couldn’t last forever but refused to acknowledge. She would come to the hotel when she could, slipping away with carefully constructed lies about friends and errands, and appointments that didn’t exist. Each excuse was more elaborate than the last, a web of deception that grew more tangled with every passing day. I would rearrange my entire schedule around her, canceling meetings at a moment’s notice, delegating responsibilities to people who were starting to ask questions, doing whatever it took to be there when she needed me. Giovanni was getting restless, wondering why I had become so distracted, so unavailable.

We tried desperately to keep up appearances, though the strain was beginning to show in both our faces. She played the dutiful daughter with an actress’s precision, attending her college classes and charity events with her mother with due diligence, smiling for the cameras and pretending everything was fine even as her world was crumbling inside. I played my part with equal determination, flying home to meet with Giovanni, discussing shipments and territories and profit margins as if they actually mattered, only to immediately fly back to New York as if any of it meant anything compared to what I felt when I was with her. But my heart wasn’t in it anymore, and I could see in their eyes that they knew something had changed.

But it was all a façade. A losing game we both knew couldn’t last.

When we were together, we existed in our own world. A world where nothing else mattered, where our families were just a distant shadow, where we could pretend that our love was enough. It was a beautiful illusion we both clung to desperately, knowing deep down that reality would eventually come crashing through our carefully constructed fantasy.

We spent hours tangled in hotel sheets, talking about everything and nothing, making plans we both knew we’d never keep. We’d order room service at midnight and eat cold French fries while discussing which city we’d run away to—Paris, maybe, or Barcelona. Somewhere far enough that our past couldn’t follow us. We’d trace patterns on each other’s skin and whisper promises that felt true in the moment but would dissolve like smoke once we stepped back into the real world. Those stolen afternoons and secret evenings became our sanctuary, a place where we could be just two people in love, unburdened by the weight of our circumstances.

“Take me to Italy,” she said one afternoon, her head resting on my chest, her fingers tracing lazy patterns on my skin. “I want to see where you come from.”

“It’s not as romantic as you think,” I told her, pressing a kiss to her hair. “The Valentinetti estate is no longer ours.”

“I don’t care. I want to see it. I want to see everything.”

I wanted to give her that. Wanted to give her the world. But even as I held her, even as I promised her things I had no right to promise, I knew the truth.

Eventually, my life would rear its ugly head. I knew it deep in my bones, the way I knew a storm was coming before the first drop of rain fell. Eventually, I would be forced to return to Chicago, to the blood and the darkness and the violence that had defined my family for generations. To the empire my father had built on broken bones and broken promises. To the legacy I’d been running from since the day I understood what it truly meant to carry our name. Eventually, I would have to walk away from the love of my life because that was what men like me did. We destroyed the things we loved. We poisoned everything we touched. It was in our DNA, passed down like brown eyes or a crooked smile. We were toxic, dangerous, incapable of holding onto anything pure without corrupting it.

The thought haunted me relentlessly. Kept me awake at night even when she was sleeping peacefully beside me, her breathing soft and steady, completely unaware of the war raging inside my head. I would watch her in the darkness, memorizing every detail of her face. The curve of her cheekbone, the way her lashes cast shadows on her skin, the small scar above her eyebrow that she got falling off her bike when she was seven. I was trying to prepare myself for the inevitable moment when I would have to let her go, trying to store up enough memories to last me through the long, lonely years that would follow.

But I wasn’t ready. I would never be ready.

So I kept pretending. Kept living in our bubble. Kept telling myself that maybe, somehow, we could make this work.

Then everything changed.

It was a Tuesday afternoon in late November. We had been seeing each other for almost two months, though it felt like both a lifetime and no time at all. She had come to the hotel earlier than usual, and I knew something was wrong the moment I saw her face.

She was pale. Shaking. Her eyes were red as if she’d been crying.

“What happened?” I demanded, pulling her into the room and checking the hallway behind her. “Are you hurt? Did your father⁠—”

“No.” Her voice was barely a whisper. “It’s not that.”

“Then what?”

She looked up at me, and I saw fear in her eyes.

Real, bone-deep fear that made my blood run cold.

“I’m pregnant.”

Her words hung in the air between us, heavy and fragile, impossible and undeniable. They seemed to echo in the silence of the room, repeating over and over in my mind until I couldn’t hear anything else.