Page 10

10

Isadora

The car slows as we enter a neighborhood I’ve never seen—not the kind of place Antonio De Angelis would allow his daughter to visit. Buildings crowd together like tired soldiers, decades of grime dulling their facades. Graffiti marks territory in a language I understand despite never having been taught: this belongs to us, not you.

Alessio—no, Stefano—drives through these streets with the quiet confidence of a man returning home. His eyes constantly scan our surroundings, but there’s familiarity in his movements now, the rigid enforcer posture softening almost imperceptibly.

“Not what you expected?” he asks, catching my assessment.

“I didn’t know what to expect,” I answer honestly. After meeting Maria, nothing about this man feels predictable anymore.

He parks beside a weathered brick building, unremarkable except for the faded blue door. No doorman, no security cameras—just worn concrete steps leading to an entrance that’s seen better decades. Worlds away from the fortified mansions we both inhabit now.

“This is where Maria brought you?” I ask as he kills the engine.

He nods, eyes fixed on the building. “Third floor, apartment 3C. Home for eighteen years.”

I try to imagine it—the feared Calvino enforcer as a small boy climbing these steps, holding Maria’s hand. The image doesn’t align with the dangerous man beside me, yet I know it’s true. More real, perhaps, than the identity he wears now.

“Come on,” he says, opening his door. “We don’t have much time.”

The building smells of cabbage and disinfectant, with undertones of something more permanent—lives stacked upon lives, years of existence pressed into peeling wallpaper and creaking stairs. A baby cries somewhere, the sound echoing through thin walls. An old television blares a game show through one door.

Real people. Living real lives. Not calculating power moves or contemplating vengeance.

Alessio stops at 3C, fishing an old key from his pocket. The door opens with a familiar squeak he doesn’t seem to notice. Inside, the apartment is small but meticulously clean—Maria’s influence is still evident, though Alessio mentions she hasn’t lived here for some time now.

“I keep it,” he explains, noting my surprise at finding the place furnished. “Safer than any safe house in my network. No one hunting Alessio Gravano would look for him here.”

The space is modest—a tiny kitchen opens to a living area with worn but clean furniture and two small bedrooms visible through doorways. Family photos line one wall—Maria and a growing boy who becomes the man standing beside me. School pictures. A graduation. Moments from a life hidden from the world.

“She gave you a childhood,” I say, studying a photo of teenage Alessio in a baseball uniform.

“As normal as possible under the circumstances.” He moves to the kitchen, his large frame incongruous in the small space. “She worked three jobs sometimes. Cleaning houses, night shifts at hospitals. Whatever it took.”

I trail after him, noting how he moves through the apartment without thought—muscle memory guiding him around the wobbly kitchen chair, hand automatically steadying the cabinet door that doesn’t quite hang straight.

“She kept newspaper clippings,” he continues, reaching to the top cabinet. “Every mention of Giancarlo Calvino. Every business acquisition, every charity gala, every rumor of his criminal enterprises.”

He retrieves a weathered shoebox and places it on the small table. When he opens it, I see dozens of yellowed newspaper clippings, meticulously dated. Headlines about the Calvino family rise from the pile—business successes, society events, and underneath those, darker stories that rarely made front pages.

“She never let me forget,” he says, fingers hovering over the articles. “Not who he was. Not what he’d done. Not who I was meant to be.”

“Stefano Calvino,” I say, testing his real name.

His jaw tightens. “A dead boy. A ghost.”

“Until now.”

He looks up, amber eyes locking with mine. “Until now.”

He shows me more evidence—documents Maria salvaged the night of his mother’s murder, birth certificates, photographs of his mother that make his voice rough when he explains who she was. Sophia Calvino, born Sophia Mancini, daughter of a dying capo who trusted the wrong man with his empire and his daughter.

“I was just a transaction,” he says, bitterness edging his words. “A son to cement Giancarlo’s claim to the Mancini holdings. Once my grandfather died and the organization accepted Giancarlo’s leadership, we became expendable.”

“Because of Luca’s mother,” I say, remembering Maria’s explanation.

“Suzette had been his mistress for years. Already pregnant with Luca when he ordered the hit on my mother.” His fist clenches on the table. “He wanted to start fresh. New wife, new heir. No complications.”

I reach across the table, covering his clenched fist with my hand. His skin is warm, the tendons rigid beneath my touch. For a moment, he remains tense, then slowly turns his hand to clasp mine.

“What happened that night?” I ask softly. “When Maria took you?”

His eyes cloud with memory. “Rain. I remember the rain.” His thumb traces absent patterns on my wrist as he speaks. “Maria was taking me for a walk. I had just turned six the previous week. My mother asked her to tire me out before bedtime.”

The casual domesticity of the scene contrasts sharply with what I know comes next.

“We were almost home when Maria overheard Giancarlo’s men in the alley beside our house. They were reporting that the ‘missus’ was eliminated, but the child was missing.” His voice hardens. “I remember a fire and gunshots once we were in the car. Maria drove as fast as she could and ran with me. Took nothing but her purse and me. Disappeared into neighborhoods where Calvino’s men wouldn’t think to look.”

“And Giancarlo?”

“Reported to the press that his beloved wife and son had died in a tragic house fire.” His laugh is cold, humorless. “Even had a funeral with empty caskets. Quite the grieving widower, by all accounts.”

I try to imagine it—a man ordering the murder of his wife and child, then publicly mourning them. The calculated evil of it makes my skin crawl. Yet Giancarlo Calvino is the man my father respects, the man whose son I’m meant to marry.

“How did you become Alessio Gravano?”

“Necessity. Maria raised me as Stefano Romano until I was fifteen. Then I learned the truth.” He releases my hand, standing abruptly. “I created Alessio Gravano from nothing. Built his reputation piece by piece. Made him someone Giancarlo Calvino would want in his organization.”

“You’ve been planning this for twenty years,” I say, awed by the dedication, the single-minded focus.

“Every day.” He moves to the window, staring at the street below. “Learning his operation. Gaining his trust. Finding his weaknesses. Building my own network of loyal men. All so that when I finally reveal myself, he’ll have nowhere to run.”

I join him at the window, standing close enough to feel the heat radiating from him. “What happens after?”

He turns to me, surprise flickering across his features. “After?”

“After you get your revenge. What then?”

Something shifts in his expression—uncertainty replacing the cold determination. “I never thought about after.”

The admission breaks my heart in ways I can’t fully understand. This man has lived for a single purpose so long that a future beyond it is unimaginable.

“Maria asked you the same question, didn’t she?” I guess. “At the nursing home.”

He nods, looking away. “She wants me to have a life after vengeance.”

“And will you?”

His eyes return to mine, searching. “That depends.”

“On what?”

“On what you decide to do with everything I’ve shown you.”

The weight of his trust hits me fully then. He’s placed his entire operation, twenty years of planning, his very life in my hands. I could destroy him with a single phone call to my father or to Giancarlo himself.

“Why me?” I ask, the question that’s been burning since he appeared in my bedroom before dawn. “Why trust me with this?”

“Because you deserve to know what you’re marrying into.” He steps closer, his proximity sending electricity across my skin. “And because you’re the only variable I didn’t account for.”

“I don’t understand.”

His hand rises to my face, knuckles brushing my cheek in a touch so gentle it makes my breath catch. “You weren’t part of the plan, Isadora. Meeting you that night, wanting you... none of it was calculated.”

The confession hangs between us, charged with all the unspoken desire we’ve been suppressing since the moment he walked into my garden as my appointed protector.

I close my eyes briefly, letting myself lean into his touch. “I’m glad I searched your jacket.”

“And you found more than you should.” Not an accusation, merely a statement of fact.

“Yes.”

His thumb traces the curve of my lower lip, leaving fire in its wake. “Reckless of me.”

“No,” I counter. “You weren’t careless. I was looking for answers. I was looking for...” I hesitate, then decide on honesty. “For reasons to explain why I can’t stop thinking about you.”

His pupils dilate, darkening those amber eyes. “And did you find them?”

“I found more questions. About who you really are. About what I really want.”

In the heartbeat that follows, something snaps between us—the tenuous restraint we’ve maintained since discovering each other’s identities. His mouth claims mine with the same devastating hunger from that night in the club, his hands tangling in my hair as he backs me against the wall.

I meet his passion with my own, weeks of denied desire crashing through carefully constructed barriers. My fingers clutch his shoulders, feeling the solid strength beneath the expensive fabric. He tastes of coffee and danger and something uniquely him that I’ve tried and failed to forget.

His body presses against mine, hard planes against soft curves, his hands moving from my hair to trace the outline of my body with possessive intensity. When he breaks the kiss, we’re both breathing hard, his forehead resting against mine.

“We shouldn’t,” he says, the rasp in his voice betraying his desire. “Your wedding—”

“Is a business arrangement I never wanted,” I finish, pulling him back to me. “This is my choice. My decision. For once in my life, something I’m taking instead of being given.”

Something fierce and protective flashes in his eyes. “Are you sure? There’s no going back from this, Isadora.”

In answer, I reach for him, pulling his mouth back to mine. The kiss deepens, his hands lifting me as my legs wrap around his waist. He carries me from the living room to the smaller bedroom—his childhood room, I realize through the haze of desire.

What follows is nothing like our frantic coupling in the club bathroom. This is slower, more deliberate—each touch imbued with newfound understanding, each kiss weighted with revelations shared. He undresses me with reverent hands, his eyes never leaving mine as if searching for hesitation that isn’t there.

When we’re skin to skin, the last barriers between us fall away—no longer enforcer and heiress, no longer Gravano and De Angelis, but simply Stefano and Isadora. Two people discovering each other anew in the growing light of morning.

His scars tell stories beneath my fingertips—the bullet wound near his collarbone that came from his first assignment with the Calvinos, the knife slash along his ribs from a territory dispute, the oldest one on his shoulder from the night Maria fled with him.

As he hovers above me, his eyes locked on mine, I feel like he sees me—the real me.

“Are you sure?” he whispers, searching my eyes for any indication I might change my mind.

“Yes.” There’s no hesitation, no tremble in my voice. I’ve never been so sure of anything in my life.

Instead of answering, he bends his head to me and steals the breath from my lungs with a kiss that sets my blood on fire. I weave my fingers into his raven black hair and hold him to me, refusing to relinquish the contact. His lips trail along my jaw, setting fire to my nerves with each tantalizing caress.

“Alessio.” I breathe his name, unable to keep the tremble from my voice.

“Stefano.” His lips lock around my earlobe, tongue teasing the sensitive skin. “I’ve told you my name. Only fair for you to use it.”

He takes my earlobe between his teeth, biting down, not hard enough to hurt, but hard enough to send pleasure thrumming down to the base of my spine.

“Stefano.” I whimper his name, wrapping a leg around his narrow hips, welcoming him with everything I have, everything I am.