Page 35 of Until You Break

EMILIO

The gallery after hours didn’t look like the same room they’d toasted in earlier.

Spotlights off. Crowd gone. Only the echo of shoes on marble and the faint scent of champagne.

Security lingered beyond the glass doors, two shadows in a pool of light.

In here, it was ours for the night, emptied of everyone but us and the walls holding my work.

Damiano walked beside me, a final glass of champagne in his hand. The crystal caught stray light as we moved, each reflection folding into the silence between us. He brushed his knuckles along my cheek, a gesture that asked as much as it claimed.

“Are you happy?” he said. “Did you see it coming?”

Emotion still pressed behind my ribs. I swallowed against it.

“I didn’t. Not the party. Not my brothers showing up.

Not even the gallery…I never thought I’d see my work lit that way.

” Gratitude flickered through me, sudden and unsteady, that he had given me more than survival.

He had made the kind of night I used to only imagine, and somehow turned it real.

“And the answer?”

“I’m happy,” I admitted, voice rougher than I meant. “More than I thought I’d be.” The truth of it struck me even as I said it.

When had that happened? From being drugged and dragged into the Bellandi family, to being claimed, to wearing his ring, to standing here now with a glass in my hand and calling it happiness.

He lifted his own glass, drank slow, then pressed the rim to my mouth until the sharp dryness slid over my tongue.

Champagne burned sweet down my throat. He didn’t let me stop, but tilted the glass higher until it spilled cold past my lips, down my chin, onto my throat.

His mouth followed, stealing the taste back, licking the corner of my lips, then lower, over my jaw, my throat, each stroke filthy with ownership disguised as tenderness.

His tongue caught the fizz as it slid down, licking slow, making me swallow under his gaze.

The kiss lingered, wet and hungry, his teeth grazing until the sound of our glasses knocking together broke it.

He set the flute aside with a soft clink against marble.

Damiano’s mouth brushed my skin once more.

“Mine,” he whispered against my throat. He pulled back just enough to take my hand.

“Come. Walk with me.” The echo of our first steps carried into the hush of the gallery.

We moved deeper inside, candlelight bending over each canvas. Damiano paused before one, tilting his head. “What did you mean when you painted this?”

The chandelier study wavered in its frame, droplets of light falling across dark paint.

“It was my neighborhood,” I said after a pause.

“One broken chandelier outside a bar, light falling across the street like it was trying to make something beautiful out of nothing. I caught it once in a sketch and wanted to keep the moment before it disappeared.”

His mouth curved. “Light like that doesn’t belong to the street forever. It reminded me of you, bright even where it shouldn’t be, impossible to ignore.”

Another painting. My mother’s hands, unfinished. His gaze lingered there, heavy. “And this?”

I hesitated. “Absence. What’s missing still shapes you.”

He didn’t mock me. He only touched my jaw again, thumb dragging heat along my skin. “Then absence is mine too, because you let me see it.”

We moved on. His gaze snagged on a canvas I hadn’t meant to show, the one painted in a night of rage, broad black strokes tearing across the frame like a wound. I froze when he stopped in front of it.

“What is this?”

“Anger,” I admitted. “The year after she vanished. I painted until my hands split. It never belonged on a wall, not really.”

He studied it too long. “It belongs. It looks like prophecy.” His thumb brushed my neck, hot against my pulse. “Keep it. It tells me you’ve always had fire in you. I only lit it brighter.”

We strolled past canvases crowned in candlelight. Shadows moved across brushstrokes, stretching what I had painted into something that looked larger than mine. Damiano paused here and there, studying quietly, letting me breathe beside him.

“Tell me,” he said finally, tilting his glass toward the work around us. “Where do you see yourself? In all of this.”

I shook my head. “Not in the art. Not only in the art. I want to work, yes, to keep painting, but not as a way to live. What makes me happy is knowing I can build something that lasts. That I can stand beside you, not as decoration, but as your right hand.”

His gaze cut toward me, weight sharp but not unkind. “Even if it means stepping into the fight?”

“That depends against who,” I said. “Not my family. I can't. I really hope that one day the Valentis and the Bellandis walk side by side. No more fighting. No more tearing each other apart.”

Damiano’s mouth curved, dangerous and sure. “Good. I want that too. I need it. Together we’ll rule Palermo, piccolino.” His thumb stroked under my jaw, a rare softness in the steel. “And if we burn it down along the way, at least we’ll own the ashes.”

Heat flooded me, dizzying. The word Palermo rolled through me like a church bell, shaking ribs, blood, breath.

I saw the city in my mind, streets slick with rain, balconies heavy with flowers and laundry, men smoking in corners, women watching from behind shutters.

I imagined walking there at his side, no longer hidden, no longer second to anyone, the weight of his hand at my back making space where none had been before.

Papa would look at me differently then, not as an enemy to oppose, not as a hostage to pity, but as an ally standing beside him.

Respect, even trust, might come slow, but it would come.

The thought twisted heat through my chest, half dread, half triumph.

For the first time, the idea of belonging to him and to this city didn’t feel like a prison.

It felt like power, and it felt like peace.

Papa, who hadn’t been here tonight.

I set my glass down on the nearest table, condensation marking a ring on the polished wood.

“My brothers said something tonight. About my mother. About the warehouses. They think someone’s sniffing around.”

Damiano’s gaze stayed steady, not surprised. “That’s why Salvatore was allowed as far as he came the night of the fight. Up on the roof, guards at his back, thinking he could trade riddles for your safety.”

The question had been in my chest since that night, and I let it out now. “You fought for me, he fought for me—how the hell did Salvatore even get that far? Onto the roof?”

“He dangled something we couldn’t ignore and climbed higher than he should have. He hasn’t shown all of it. But he was right about one thing—someone is on the case.”

“Digging up corpses,” I muttered. “Looking where they shouldn’t.”

“Then they’re not ordinary rivals,” Damiano answered. “Ordinary rivals don’t waste time with ghosts, they want cash, shipments, men on corners. This is someone who already knows too much. An insider, or someone with an insider feeding them.”

“Which means a snitch.”

“Which means rot,” he corrected, his hand closing warm at the back of my neck, firm enough that my pulse tripped.

“Rot spreads if you don’t cut it out. That’s why betrayal ends in basements, tied to chairs, bones broken until the mouth remembers who it should have served.

You want to sit beside me? Then understand that the danger is real, and it’s close. ”

My breath caught, but I forced myself steady. “Do my brothers know who this person is? Who’s digging where they shouldn’t?”

Damiano’s eyes sharpened with approval. “Good. Ask the right questions, and you’ll get the right answers. I’ll allow your brothers in, not because I need what they’re carrying, but because family is blood, and because you asked it.”

Damiano’s eyes sharpened with approval. “Good. Ask the right questions, and you’ll get the right answers.”

“And you’ll still allow my brothers in?”

“I will. Not because I need what they’re carrying, but because family is blood, and I respect that. And because you asked it. You want your brothers near the table, then you’ll be the one to seat them.”

Heat rose in my throat—weight I wanted, not weight I feared. “Then that’s what I want. To stand beside you. To have them see me that way.”

Damiano’s thumb brushed over my jaw, his mouth curving faintly. “Then that’s how they’ll see you.”

He didn’t let go immediately. His hand stayed at my throat, pulse under his thumb. “You talk about standing beside me. What does that mean to you, piccolino? My chair? My name?”

“Not your chair,” I said. “Beside you. So when they look at us, they see Bellandi and Valenti, not enemies, not history. Two names at one table instead of knives under it.” Images of dinners past flashed in my head: mothers crying in kitchens, men shouting behind closed doors, hands hidden under tablecloths where steel waited. “I don’t want that anymore.”

His eyes sharpened, weighing the truth. “Then you’d bleed for it, if you had to.”

“I would. For you. For us.”

The words left my mouth and filled the gallery like a vow.

My skin buzzed with the weight of it, his hand still at my throat, the echo of rain against the glass, the scent of wax and smoke thick in the air.

Gratitude curled with the fear, because he had pulled me from silence into something louder, fiercer.

For the first time, I wanted the future not only as survival but as conquest, his beside mine, the city beneath us.

The rest of the gallery hushed around us.

Rain slipped down the windows in silver threads, candlelight licking the frames of paintings that looked like confessions.

I felt the weight of the future pressing in, not as burden but as promise.

We had spoken it into the walls, into the canvases, into the silence that chose us both.

We moved toward the exit, glasses still in hand, the city waiting wet and restless beyond the doors.

Our footsteps echoed over marble, the sound swallowed by velvet-dark corners.

Candle wax dripped slow, thin rivers glinting like gold against the floor.

The windows showed only rain and the faint scatter of stars drowned by city light.

I thought the night was finished until the words pressed out of me.

“At the party… from all the mafia families crowding the room, my eyes kept coming back to the Soriano twins. Charming, too handsome, too practiced. They smiled like they owned the room, but their eyes were looking too hard. Too long. Like they were measuring debts.”

I remembered how they’d stood, hands loose, laughter too polished, eyes never quite matching their smiles. They watched me while pretending to watch the room. One of them toasted too late, as if waiting for me to look his way first. It hadn’t felt like attention. It had felt like calculation.

Damiano’s mouth tilted. “Charm is cheap. Eyes like that mean something else. Remember them. They’re not done circling yet.”

The weight of his warning pressed down harder than any toast I’d endured earlier.

Damiano stilled, studying me with a heat that wasn’t champagne. His voice was low, rough velvet. “You noticed.”

“I did.”

His thumb pressed under my jaw, lifting my chin. “Good. I told you to look, and you did. Even drunk on applause, you saw the right men. That’s how you’ll stand beside me.”

Pride coiled sharp in my chest, heavier than any toast I’d been handed earlier. “Then I’ll keep looking.”

“You will.” His mouth brushed mine, slow and claiming, then deepened with hunger that had nothing to do with wine. His hand closed at the back of my neck, heat searing through me. “You surprise me, piccolino. Makes me proud. Makes me want more.”

He pressed me back against the cool glass wall, champagne still stinging my tongue.

My shoulders struck the pane, reflections layering over us, his dark outline, my pale throat, the faint glow of candles doubled in the smoked glass.

His breath burned my ear as he murmured, “I should take you here. Against your own canvases. Let you watch yourself come with your art as witness.” My body flushed, shame and heat colliding.

His mouth crushed mine once more, then broke with a rough smile. “Not yet. But soon. I’ll show you exactly what you’ve earned.”

The gallery gave us back our silence. Outside, the city lights bled through rain, stars smothered but still trying. Inside, I carried his promise like a brand, dark, possessive, waiting to be collected.

When we finally stepped out, the car waited with its engine low and steady.

Guards shifted but did not speak. Damiano’s hand stayed at the small of my back, directing, claiming.

I slid into the leather seat and the city’s glow spilled across his face through the wet glass.

He looked at me the way men look at territory already theirs, and yet still worth conquering again.

“The city claps for art,” he said quietly, voice nearly drowned by the rain on the roof. “But it whispers about power. You’ll learn to take both.”

I breathed deep, the scent of smoke, champagne, and his cologne thick in the air. “Then let them whisper,” I answered. “As long as they know it’s us.”

The car slid through wet streets, lights bending into streaks across the glass. Rain hammered the roof like a crowd refusing to quiet. Guards followed close behind, shadows in their own cars.

Damiano’s hand stayed over mine, heavy, certain. “Next time we sit at a table,” he said, “you’ll keep your eyes open the whole night. You’ll see who leans too close, who waits too long to smile. You’ll tell me before I have to tell you.”

I nodded, throat dry, pulse steady under his thumb. The order felt less like a burden than a crown placed carefully on my head.

His hand caught mine, visible enough for the driver to see in the mirror. A small gesture, but heavy as oath. The city slid by, blurred lights and black rain, while his thumb pressed against my pulse, teaching it the same rhythm as his.