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Penelope

I get off the plane at JFK, and New York hits me all at once.

Car horns blare from the pickup area, loud and insistent.

The heat presses against me, carrying the pungent scent of jet fuel, and my shirt clings to my skin with sweat.

Behind me, my suitcase rattles over the floor, its wheels noisy against the tile.

Everything is louder than I remember. Or maybe I’ve just forgotten how sound works here. How every honk, every distant shout, and every rush of wind between buildings surrounds me from all sides.

Italy was quieter. Here, the noise crashes over me all at once, relentlessly.

Three years away dulled the edges of this place. But now I’m back.

I tighten my grip on my suitcase and step onto the curb. I should feel something—nostalgia, maybe, or relief. Instead, there’s only a strange hollowness, like I slipped out of this city’s rhythm and can’t find my way back in.

“Penelope!”

Gianna’s voice cuts through the chaos, and then she’s pushing through the crowd with arms outstretched and her floral dress fluttering around her knees. She’s barely taller than me, still wearing that same unimpressed expression, like the world exists just to inconvenience her.

She hugs me tight, and for a second, it feels like home.

“Took you long enough,” she mutters, pulling back to scan me up and down. “You look... alive.”

“Wow,” I deadpan. “So heartfelt.”

She grins. “Come on, let’s get you settled.”

I crossed an ocean for my sister—her wedding’s tomorrow, and she guilt-tripped me into coming early to help. I have no money, no plan. Just this. And I guess that’s enough.

Italy was an escape, a hazy blur of cramped apartments and late shifts at a trattoria. My hands were raw from dish soap. Aunt Carla’s Florence apartment where I stayed stank of garlic and old wine.

I ran there after I got the call from Adriano that Sophia had died.

After my best friend was ripped from my hands.

One moment, we were laughing at my house.

A few hours later, she was on the ground, her body mangled on the pavement and blood spilling from her mouth.

Her fingers had twitched like she was trying to hold on.

I’d dropped to my knees and screamed her name. She didn’t answer. She just stared at me, eyes wide, unblinking like she knew this was the end.

I was seventeen. And she was gone before I could even beg her to stay. Or ask for her forgiveness.

Until today, those sad eyes as she laid there have never left me. They lurk in the quiet. I still wake up choking on the visual, gasping like I did that night, reaching for her even though I know there’s nothing left to hold.

People say grief softens over time. They’re wrong. It doesn’t fade. It carves you into someone you don’t recognize, someone who has to keep going and pretending you’re okay when everything inside you is still bleeding.

“Penelope, move your ass!” Gianna waves from the parking lot, her blonde hair bouncing. Her red 2003 Honda Civic is parked crooked at the curb with the hazards blinking.

I smile, dragging my suitcase over. “Still a control freak, huh?”

She rolls her eyes. “Damn right. Coffee—now.”

She hops in, already bossing me around, and a big part of me is glad some things didn’t change.

***

We end up at a small coffee shop in Brooklyn, the kind with a glinting neon sign and tables sticky from spilled sugar. Gianna talks with her hands, like the drama queen, rattling off wedding details and barely pausing for breath.

I’m stirring my latte, nodding along like I’m invested, when I see him.

My breath catches, and my spoon clanks onto the table.

He steps out of the black SUV with an easy grace, the crisp lines of his dark suit molding to him like a second skin.

His double-breasted jacket hangs open, effortless and suave and the flash of his sleek watch reflects the light as he gestures.

Strawberry-blond hair, now brushed with silver, falls over his forehead, unruly as ever.

Well over six feet, broad-shouldered and built like a fortress.

And those tattoos, midnight and ragged, climb his neck in uneven strokes, bold against his skin, like a story half-told in shadow.

The man I used to sneak looks at when he grilled burgers in his backyard, watching the way his forearms flexed as he flipped them. I was just a kid then, unaware of what that strange pull in my stomach meant. Back when he was only my best friend’s father and nothing more.

But this isn’t the man from my childhood. This version of him is a facade of his former self I’m not familiar with.

Across the street, Adriano Vieri stands near a black luxury vehicle, deep in conversation with a man I don’t recognize.

He looks the same but not quite.

I hold my cup tighter.

He’s always had that presence, the one that makes people pay attention.

Makes them afraid. The kind that drives people to reckless acts, altering the lives of three individuals in a single night.

I speak from experience, yet I find myself unable to look away.

Part of me foolishly hopes he'll notice me, or worse, say hello.

My throat tightens inexplicably. It shouldn't matter anymore; it's been three years. So why, then, does the crush I thought long buried return the moment I lay eyes on him, as if it had never faded?

I should look away. Instead, I continue to stare as my pulse hammers.

“Is that—?” My voice falters, coming out thinner than I want. I don’t want Gianna to think he still affects me.

Gianna tracks my stare, and her breath hisses out. “Yeah.”

“Who’s that with him?” I nod at the guy beside him with a scarred face and black hair yanked into a tight knot, leaning in like they’re plotting a hit.

“Ralph. His latest shadow.” She shifts. “Psycho with a leash and only listens to Adriano.”

I swallow hard, watching them pause by another black SUV, all glossy menace.

Their heads tilt close, their words lost in the hum of the city.

Ralph’s hand twitches toward his jacket, and Adriano’s stance, still broad, screams control.

Too much money flows through him for it to be clean.

He has always been rich. It’s been obvious from those cars, the beach houses, and the way people scatter when he walks in.

Sophia used to laugh it off and call him “the boss of everything,” but we never asked. Because somehow we all knew.

“Stop staring,” Gianna mutters, slumping back in her chair. “It’s a one-way mirror. He can’t see you anyway.”

But I can see him.

I drag my eyes off him. “Is he doing okay?”

Her nails tap the mug’s edge with a restless clink. She doesn’t answer fast. And gives me a look that says, What do you think? But she answers. “He’s not over it.”

Something inside me folds.

“He did try faking it for a while,” she continues, her spoon swirling her coffee slowly. “Paraded women around from blondes to brunettes, whoever. Didn’t stick. So he plunged himself into work. Acquiring companies going under here and there. He’s not the guy we knew.”

I nod, remembering the cool but kind, gruff laughs over dinners. No one can really be the same after that.

“Ruthless doesn’t even cover it.” Gianna’s voice dips, her eyes flicking up. “I heard if you cross him wrongly in his businesses, you’re meat. Last I heard, he strung a guy up last month for like three days. Made his men beat him to a pulp until he was bleeding slowly and begging.”

A chill winds its way up my spine, but there’s heat too, coiling low and unwelcome—yet not entirely. I despise it, though not enough. Adriano Vieri has never pretended to be a man you could cross and walk away unscathed.

Gianna’s eyes search mine. “You still blame yourself, don’t you?”

I don’t answer.

“Penelope,” she sighs, her voice softer now. “It wasn’t your fault.”

I shake my head, staring at the table. “She called me that night. I ignored it.”

She reaches across and squeezes my wrist. “You can’t keep carrying this.”

I let out a shaky breath. “I know it’s not healthy.” Hence why I even went to Italy in the first place after the incident. So why don’t I feel better? It’s been three damn years. But trust grief to have its way and creep back in just when you think you’ve finally let go of it.

Gianna doesn’t push. Just watches me with that quiet understanding only she ever had.

I swallow hard, then look back at him. “You still see each other, right?”

“Yeah. While you were gone. He made sure Mom was taken care of. Her rent at first. Then her medical bills when she got admitted. He checks on me sometimes. Sent me money once when I was broke and Gerald and I weren’t speaking.

” She pauses. “We still hold conversations when we can but since he moved, I hardly see him. He is clearly... different now. The accident messed him up.”

A slow pulse starts at the base of my throat. I know Adriano has always been part of our lives, but I didn’t know he’d been this involved.

I remember Sophia’s funeral with Adriano standing rigid and his eyes hollowed out, his fists clenched like they were the only things holding him together. I wanted to say something, to reach out, but I didn’t.

I just stood there.

My hands tremble as I snap out from my reverie. Outside, Adriano’s and the other SUV are gone, their red lights fading. My stomach twists as I realize that in a way, he’s a ghost again. And even after all this time, I still can’t stop chasing him.

Gianna breaks the silence. “He’ll be at the wedding, you know.”

I exhale slowly, staring into my cup.

“Oh, it’ll be fun,” she adds. “Adriano in a tux? I’d ditch my groom if I could.”

I choke on my coffee. “Jesus, Gianna. He’s Sophia’s dad.” I get that she is trying to make light of the situation but I honestly can’t. Yes, Adriano has always had the female population of Brooklyn turning and he might have indulged a few but I doubt it’s the same now.