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I shake my head, unable to form words.

“You should have come to me,” he says quietly. “When you needed money. Not D’Angelo.”

He thinks I’m Chiara. Should I correct him? Would that make things better—or worse? My mind’s racing too fast to know the answer.

“I—” I start, but nothing follows. I should tell him I don’t know who he is, that I couldn’t have gone to him because I have no fucking clue what’s going on.

He steps closer, so close that I can smell his cologne. It smells expensive, like out of one of those bottles that cost hundreds of dollars. Despite the carnage he caused, there’s no blood on his suit, somehow. No trace of the chaos he just left behind.

“You’re safe now,” he says.

I look around me—scattered furniture, blood on the floor—and then at him. At the gun he’s tucking back into his jacket.

Safe is not the word I would use.

But when he reaches out a hand, when his dark eyes meet mine, I don’t pull away.

I should be terrified. I should be calling the police or running for the door. Instead, I’m noticing the width of his shoulders under that expensive suit, the curve of his mouth, the intensity in his eyes. For the first time in my exhausting, responsibility-filled life, I want to be someone else.

I want to be her. I want to be Chiara—reckless, wanted, untouchable. The girl who gets protected. The one he’d destroy the world for. Just for tonight.

“Chiara,” he says again, his voice lower this time, worry softening his eyes. “You’re trembling.”

He reaches out a little farther—just enough to let me know he’s there, if I need him.

I take his hand, warm and steady, while my fingers shake like hell.

My whole life has been about doing the right thing. Double shifts. Paid bills. Playing it safe while my sister burns the world down.

And for what?

So I can come home to a shitty apartment, cheap microwaved chicken, and get a knife to the throat for my efforts?

No one’s ever stepped in for me.

Not when foster parents locked us in closets.

Not when I dragged myself through double shifts with pneumonia.

Not when Chiara’s chaos became my responsibility.

But now—he did.

“Thank you,” I whisper. And somehow, despite everything… I mean it.

His dark eyes search mine, and I can’t help but wonder—what does he see in me to make him watch over me like some kind of guardian angel?

Or maybe it’s not me he sees at all. Maybe it’s Chiara.

Has he met her? He knows her name. Knows she’s in deep.

Does it matter?

He’s gently caressing my hand now, and I’m already forgetting the blood on the floor, the broken furniture, the way everything spiraled. Forgetting the debt. Forgetting that my sister’s nowhere to be found.

The heat from his fingers sinks into me, makes everything blur—like I’m floating in this thick, heady fog where all I can think about is his hands on my skin. I want him to tear off my clothes and press me up against the wall. I want him to make me forget my name—Aria, Chiara, whoever the hell I’m supposed to be.

The thought should scare me.