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“Look at me, please.” The words are meant to come out as order but instead they are much softer.

Slowly, she turns, gripping the bottle in her hands as if it’s her only anchor. “What do you want?”

I hesitate, the words forming before I can stop them. “About last night…”

Her lips part slightly, a flicker of something unreadable passing over her face. I brace myself for her anger, for her disappointment. I deserve all of them.

“I thought maybe—just once—you’d remember what you have. What’s right in front of you. And maybe—just maybe—you’d see me as something more than duty. More than some contract you’re bound to.”I was a monster. She told me something so heart-wrenching and I brushed it off like it meant nothing. She never deserved that from me.

She steps closer, hesitating only slightly before lifting her chin. “The next words that should come from your lips are either ‘I am sorry’ or ‘Forgive me’. If those aren’t the words you have for me, then I would rather just go back to bed. I have faced enough humiliation for one day.”

On cue, thunder cracks outside the window and shakes the kitchen window. I can see the silhouette of the city just beyond the horizon. Even in the darkness, New York has a certain beauty.

I set my glass down with more force than necessary, my fingers tightening around the edge of the counter. The words are foreign, almost unnatural on my tongue—but when I meet her eyes, I know they need to be said.

“I’m sorry, Maria.”

At first, she looks a little stunned. As if she cannot believe that I just apologized to her. My heart clenches in my chest. I have been an asshole to her all this time, and last night simply proved that to me.

She stood there, vulnerable in her lingerie, practically begging me to take her, to want her. And I had looked her in the eyes with nothing but cold brazenness and told her I didn’t want her.

I had lied. I want her, I want her so badly that it physically pains me how hard I have to hold myself back.

“What I did last night, it was wrong. I shouldn’t have turned you away the way that I did. You didn’t deserve my harshness. I should have been more kind and understanding with you.”

She casts those doe eyes to the floor and she shifts her weight from foot to foot. “Okay… I just wish things were different.”

She wants this to be real, but I am not in the space or the capacity to give her that, and I don’t think I ever will.

I want to tell her these words, but for some reason, they lodge themselves in my throat.

“Look, Matteo.” She steps toward the center island and sets her bottle down. “I get it, okay? I was never meant to be yours. This whole marriage thing threw you for a loop the day Daniele decided to run away.”

She exhales sharply, running a hand through her hair as if trying to steady herself. “And I know you’ve been trying to make the best of it, just like I have. But let’s be honest—neither of us chose this. We’ve just been playing our parts, pretending like any of this makes sense.”

Her voice wavers, but she doesn’t back down. “I was the foolish one to think that maybe this—us—could be something real.

Her words hang in the air above us. They move through the kitchen with a thick tension that hits me in the middle of my chest.

Her eyes hold mine, never once leaving my gaze.

I lick my lips, preparing to speak. I am a man who has stared down the barrel of a gun and never once did I flinch. But here I am looking at my wife, and my knees feel like they are buckling.

“I had a wife before you.” The words slip past my lips before I can speak. “I loved her deeply and I lost her unexpectedly. The things that you want from me, I cannot give you. I won’tapologize for that. But what I can say is this, I should have been more gentle with you. You deserved better.”

The silence passes between us. She muses over my words again, digesting them one by one.

“I didn’t want you to be kind or understanding. I simply wanted you to fuck me. Last night, I was under no impression that you would give me love or anything like that. I simply wanted you to have sex with me the way you did the night of the gala. You did things to my body that I never felt in my entire life. I… I want that again.”

She speaks with such confidence in her tone, but the blush that tints her cheeks betrays her. She is still innocent, so uncorrupted.

“At some point, I forgot that you were a mafia boss. There is nothing kind or soft about you. You have jagged edges, and I cannot expect you to somehow find softness overnight.”

“For you, I would have.” The words slip past my lips on their own accord. But it doesn’t make them any less true. For her, I would find the gentleness within myself.

“I never wanted it gentle. I wanted you to give me everything you had—and you did.”

No, I didn’t.