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“You okay?” he asks, but it’s not really a question. It’s a test.
I shrug. “I’ve been worse.”
He hums, like he believes it. Like he knows the exact scale of my pain and how close to the edge I’ve always been. “Saxon North being here… that shook you.”
“I’m fine.”
“He’s not your world, Maxine.”
That gets my hackles up.
“I know that.”
He raises an eyebrow, not buying it. “You sure? ‘Cause from where I was standing, it looked a little complicated.”
“It’s not,” I snap, too fast.
Lucky studies me.
Not in the leering, strip-you-bare kind of way I’ve learned to recognize from too many men with too much power and too little soul. No, this is worse. This is the Gatti kind of scrutiny—clinical, razor-sharp, and quiet. The kind that peels you open without ever laying a hand on you. He doesn’t blink. He just watches, like he’s dissecting every breath I take. Every truth I haven’t admitted to myself. Every lie I’m still trying to wrap around my broken edges.
He’s younger than Brando—my brother-in-law by marriage, mafia by blood—but that doesn’t mean a damn thing. There’s nothing soft about Lucky Gatti. He’s just as dangerous. Just as lethal. He doesn’t need to raise his voice to be terrifying, and he doesn’t need to pull a gun to be deadly. And standing in front of him now, I realize how small I’ve become under their collective shadow.
It’s been a year since I came back—after having my body torn apart and stitched back together. And I’ve spent every day since with their eyes on me. Watching. Hovering. Shielding. Suffocating. They mean well, I think. I hope. But sometimes protection feels an awful lot like possession.
And it doesn’t help that Uncle Mason—my uncle by name, but my sister Mia’s biological father—takes their side without question. Without hesitation. Every time I want to breathe, Mason is there. Arms crossed. Jaw tight. A storm in his eyes, ready to burn the world if I so much as wince the wrong way. And Lucky? He’s never far behind.
I used to think safety meant freedom. But around them? Safety feels like a cage.
“He’s bad news, Maxine. And I don’t want to see you get hurt.”
I let out a soft, humorless laugh — not because it’s funny, but because I’m just so damn tired. I tell him what he wants to hear.
“Yeah, Lucky. I know he’s dangerous.”
I wrap my arms around myself, gaze dropping to the floor. I don’t tell him what I’m really thinking.
It’s not the kind of dangerous you can punch your way through, or the kind you can outrun. It’s the kind that stays. That settles under your skin and makes a home there. The kind that changes you long before you even realize it.
“You’d do well to remember that he’s a Federal Agent,” he reminds me.
“He’s not here for me.”
Lucky steps closer. Moonlight catches in his eyes. “No?”
“No,” I say firmly. “He thinks I can help him. Identify the people still moving girls. That’s all. He’s not here because of… whatever you think.”
There’s a beat of silence. Then Lucky nods, slow and deliberate.
“Good,” he says, his voice low. “Because the second you start thinking it’s anything more, you become a liability. And I don’t want to watch that happen to you.”
My throat tightens. “You know where my trust is. Where my loyalty is.”
Lucky’s gaze sharpens, a flicker of warning flashing in his eyes.
“You don’t have to trust him, Maxine. Just remember who you trustmore.”
The implication sinks in like teeth. Mason. Brando. The girls. The Gattis.