I was about to ruin my life for a man who didn’t even know my name.

My hand shook just enough to smear the ink as I slid the folded receipt onto the white linen beside his crystal tumbler. From across the dining room, it probably looked like a bill. Up close—if he actually read it—it was a death sentence. For him. For the people aiming at him. For me.

“Aurora” was one of those Manhattan rooftop restaurants that pretends gravity doesn’t apply to its prices. Forty-three floors above Midtown, floor-to-ceiling glass, skyline spread out like a screensaver, waiters gliding around in black and white like we were part of the décor. New York hummed beneath us—sirens distant, taxis threading through the grid, Times Square bleeding neon into the sky.

At table 17, by the glass, sat Dante Russo.

He didn’t look at me when I set down the check presenter. Just lifted his glass, the cuff of his charcoal suit sliding back enough to flash the edge of a watch that could have paid my rent for six months. His girlfriend laughed at something on her phone, the sound bright and fake in the low murmur of expensive conversation.

“Any dessert for you and your guest tonight, sir?” I asked, like my pulse wasn’t trying to claw out of my throat.

His eyes finally dropped to the paper.

Read it, I begged silently. Read it now.

He unfolded it with two fingers, casual, like this was the hundredth note a server had slipped him tonight. His gaze skimmed the words.

For half a second, nothing changed.

Then everything did.

His jaw tightened. That was it. No flinch, no curse, no dramatic glance toward the windows or the exits. Just the smallest shift—the kind you only catch if you’ve spent your nights memorizing rich men’s moods because your rent and your little brother’s school shoes depend on it.

“Is there a problem?” his girlfriend purred, leaning into him, perfume thick enough to sting my eyes.

Dante’s gaze rose and hit me like a spotlight. Up close his eyes were darker than they looked from the bar, almost black, framed by lashes no man had any business having.

“Stay,” he said softly.

It wasn’t loud, but my feet obeyed before my brain caught up. I stayed, tray clutched to my chest, heart banging against the metal like it wanted out.

He placed the note back on the table, face down, as if it were nothing. As if it didn’t say, in my messy handwriting:

Your girlfriend sold you out.
Four men inside – one at the bar, three near the kitchen.
Sniper across the street, 15th floor, corner window.
They’re here to kill you.

Twenty minutes earlier, I’d been in the last stall of the ladies’ room, door locked, sitting on a closed toilet scrolling my phone on my five-minute break. The bathroom at Aurora was marble and mirrors, too bright, too echo-y, every sound bouncing off polished surfaces.

Her heels hit first. Sharp clicks on stone, that unmistakable red sole flashing in the gap under my stall door. Then the perfume—expensive, sharp, the kind you smelled in magazines but never in your own life.

“I told you, he’s at the window table,” she said. Her voice drifted over the stall wall, low but just a little too loud for a private call in a public bathroom. “By the glass.”

I stopped scrolling.

She paused, listening, then continued, almost bored. “The others are already in position. One at the bar, three near the kitchen entrance. You’ll have a clean shot as soon as he settles.”

I froze so completely my phone almost slipped from my hand.

Water ran as she turned on the tap, the sound blurring some of the words, but I still caught the important ones: “clean shot”, “as soon as he settles”, “fifteen”. Then her tone dropped and she switched languages, sliding into something I didn’t understand. Harsher consonants, quick and quiet. Russian, maybe. Code wrapped around the rest of the details.

I planted my feet and prayed she wouldn’t bend down and check for shoes.

The door opened. Closed. Her heels clicked away down the hallway. I counted to thirty twice before I unlocked the stall and stepped out, heart pounding so hard it made my vision pulse.

By the time my break was over and I walked back onto the floor, the pieces weren’t hard to match. One guy at the bar nursing the same drink, eyes flicking more to the window than his phone. Three “diners” near the kitchen who cared more about the angle of their chairs than their plates.

And by the glass, with a perfect view of the building across the street and Midtown glittering behind him, was Dante Russo.

I knew his name before that night. It was the kind of name that traveled in whispers through Queens apartment hallways and back-of-house kitchens. Russo Imports. Real estate. Nightclubs. “Security solutions.” A man you didn’t cross, didn’t owe money to, didn’t stare at for too long if you liked your kneecaps.

I also knew what I’d heard in that bathroom wasn’t a maybe. It was a timetable.

I spent exactly four minutes trying to convince myself to mind my business. Four minutes of refilling water glasses and dropping checks and pretending my hands weren’t trembling. Four minutes of thinking about my brother Jake alone in our Queens apartment, my tips keeping the lights on, and the thousand ways this could go wrong for me.

Then I wrote the note.

My pen dug too hard into the paper. Your girlfriend sold you out. Four men inside… My handwriting looked like someone had written it in a shaking car, which, emotionally, I had.

Now I stood next to the table, staring at the back of that folded receipt, waiting for something to happen.

“I think we’ll skip dessert,” Dante told me, his voice smooth as the whiskey in his glass. “But I’ll need a moment with the manager. And with you, Cassie.”

He remembered my name. Of course he did. Men like Dante Russo didn’t sit in restaurants like this without knowing every variable in the room.

“I… I can get him for you,” I managed.

He tilted his head a fraction. I didn’t have to turn to know that somewhere behind me one of his security guys had already moved. I’d clocked them the second their party sat—broad shoulders, straight backs, earpieces disguised as sleek earbuds, no alcohol.

“I said,” Dante murmured, “stay.”

The hair on the back of my neck rose.

That was when the house lights caught it: a tiny flicker in the glass behind him. A glint from the building across the street, fifteen stories up, exactly where I’d seen it ten minutes earlier on my break.

The sniper was adjusting his aim.

“Get down.”

I dropped the tray and lunged.

The crash of metal, plates and crystal exploding against marble, was swallowed by the sharper crack of the window shattering. I hit Dante’s shoulder hard enough to knock him sideways, my hip slamming the edge of the table as the bullet punched through the glass exactly where his head had been a heartbeat before.

His girlfriend screamed. Someone else shouted. Chairs scraped. People dove under tables. The room blew apart into chaos.

Dante’s security moved like they’d rehearsed this a dozen times. Two of them closed around us, a living wall of muscle. Another tackled the girlfriend. Someone yelled “Stay down!” and my knees obeyed as a heavy weight dropped over me.

My cheek hit carpet that smelled like wine and cleaning chemicals and panic. A forearm braced beside my head, solid and immovable. Glass crunched under someone’s hand.

“Don’t move,” a voice said, low by my ear.

Dante.

His body covered mine, not crushing, but deliberate, like he’d calculated angles and decided exactly how much of him it took to keep a second bullet from finding its mark. His hand wrapped around my wrist so tightly I could feel my pulse hammering against his fingers.

Another shot cracked the air. Distant, then closer noise—shouting by the bar, a thud from somewhere near the kitchen, someone moaning.

I twisted my head enough to see past his shoulder. One of the men I’d marked earlier—Mr. Scotch-For-Forty-Minutes—lay on the marble floor, shoulder blooming dark. Alive, but not moving much. Dante’s guys had shot to stop, not kill.

“The sniper,” I started, breathless.

“Already handled,” Dante said. His grip shifted, thumb pressing into the frantic beat in my wrist. “You’re shaking.”

“Someone just tried to kill you,” I hissed. “And I just… didn’t let them.”

His gaze pinned me, close enough that I could see the faint white line of a healed scar near his temple, the gold flecks in those almost black irises.

“Why?” he asked.

I didn’t have a good answer. Not one that would make sense to someone like him.

“I don’t know,” I said, and for once it was the absolute truth. “I heard her. In the bathroom. I heard her set it up. And I just… I couldn’t. I couldn’t just let it happen.”

His eyes narrowed, assessing whether I was lying, whether I was insane, whether I was something in between. Footsteps pounded. One of his men appeared at his shoulder, speaking fast.

“Russo. Sniper’s gone. We’ve got one down in the kitchen, two restrained at the bar. Cops are en route.”

“Of course they are,” Dante muttered.

He rose in one smooth motion and dragged me up with him. My legs didn’t get the memo right away. He steadied me with a hand on my elbow, impersonal and precise.

“How many?” he asked.

“Four inside,” I said. “One by the bar. Three near the kitchen. And the sniper across the street. Fifteenth floor, corner window. I saw the reflection when I came back from my break.”

He studied me like I was a code he was trying to crack. The restaurant was chaos around us—managers yelling, guests crying, staff scrambling—sirens wailing closer somewhere below Manhattan’s glass skin.

“Take her,” he said.

“What? No.” I tried to pull back, but the security guy he’d nodded to already had my arm. “I need to stay. I need to give a statement to the police.”

“The police,” Dante said softly, stepping in close, “are going to want to know how a waitress knew there was a sniper before he fired. They’re going to ask a lot of questions, Cassie. Questions I don’t think you want to answer.”

“I didn’t do anything wrong,” I shot back.

“You did something incredibly right.” His mouth curved, but it wasn’t a smile. “Which makes you either very brave or very valuable. I haven’t decided which yet.”

“I’m neither. I work here. I serve food. That’s it.”

“Not anymore.”

He nodded to the security guy—Marco, if I remembered the name from the reservation notes.

“Marco will take you somewhere safe while I clean this up,” Dante said. “Don’t fight him. Don’t run. And for God’s sake, don’t talk to anyone until I say you can.”

“You can’t just—”

“I can,” he cut in, voice dropping to something that slid cold along my spine. “Because whoever set this up knows you interfered, and they’re going to want to know what you saw, what you heard, and whether you’re going to be a problem for them.”

The words hit harder than the gunshot.

I’d been so focused on not letting a stranger’s skull explode in front of me that I hadn’t thought about the aftermath. About the woman with the red-soled heels who’d just listened to her plan fall apart because some nobody waitress couldn’t shut up.

“My brother,” I blurted, throat tight. “He’s home alone. He’s thirteen.”

“Address,” Dante said instantly.

I rattled it off before I could think better of it—our Queens walk-up, crappy elevator, cracked tiles in the hallway. He pulled out his phone, typing fast.

“Marco, take her to Gramercy House,” he told the man holding my arm. “Send Tony and Luca to this address to pick up her brother. Quietly. No lights. No drama. Just get him somewhere safe.”

“Wait, you can’t just grab my brother—”

“Would you rather leave him where he is?” Dante’s gaze locked on mine. “Alone and unprotected? In an apartment anyone with a halfway competent surveillance team can find in the next twenty minutes?”

I wanted to tell him to go to hell. To say no, absolutely not, we didn’t need him or his men or his terrifying certainty that my life had just become collateral on someone’s ledger.

Then I thought about that photo from the bathroom in my mind—the view of the dining room, the window, his head, the line of sight to the building opposite. About the woman in the red soles saying, “The others are already in position.”

“Okay,” I whispered.

He didn’t relax, exactly, but something in his expression shifted. Satisfaction, maybe. Or recognition, like I’d just confirmed I was smart enough not to die stupid.

“Smart girl,” he said.

Then Marco was moving me through the wreckage of the dining room, past shattered glass, crying guests, flashing lights below, through a service hallway that suddenly felt like a tunnel leading away from everything I’d thought my life was an hour ago.

I’d saved Dante Russo’s life.

And for the first time, it occurred to me that might be the worst mistake I’d ever made.

The Gramercy House was not a house. It was a fortress disguised as a penthouse—steel, glass, soft charcoal furnishings, and security cameras discreetly tucked into corners. The elevator ride up required two key cards and a fingerprint. When the doors opened, they didn’t reveal a hallway. They opened directly into a living space with views of Manhattan so clean it felt like a movie backdrop.

“Wait here,” Marco said, the first words he’d offered since we left the restaurant.

He disappeared down a hallway, leaving me standing on marble floors that reflected the city lights back at me. I pulled out my phone. Twelve missed calls from my manager. Six texts from my coworker Amy asking if I was okay. Nothing from Jake, which meant he was either sleeping or gaming with headphones on, both equally likely for a thirteen-year-old in Queens.

I started to dial him, then stopped, thumb hovering over the screen. Dante’s men were already on their way. Calling might just alert whoever might be watching our building that something had gone wrong.

God. Was someone actually watching our building? Or was Dante just that paranoid?

“Your brother’s safe.”

I spun around so fast I nearly dropped my phone.

Dante stood in the hallway entrance, jacket gone, sleeves rolled up to his elbows. There was a thin cut along his cheekbone I hadn’t seen before, a line of dried blood from flying glass.

“How do you know?” I demanded. “Your guys just left—”

“They’re ten minutes from your address,” he said. “I’ve got eyes on the building. No unusual activity, no cars that don’t belong.”

He walked past me toward the kitchen, which looked like a showroom—black granite, stainless steel, pendant lights. He opened a cabinet, pulled out a bottle, poured amber liquid into two glasses like this was a normal Tuesday.

“Sit,” he said.

“I’d rather stand.”

He gave me a long look, something recalibrating in his expression. “You’re in shock,” he said, more observation than judgment. “Sit down before you hit the floor.”

My knees wobbled at exactly that moment, traitors that they were. I sank onto a bar stool, fingers curling around the edge of the counter.

He slid one of the glasses toward me.

“Drink.”

“I don’t—”

“It’s whiskey, not poison. Drink.”

I picked it up. My hands shook so badly the alcohol trembled. I took a sip. It burned down my throat, hot and expensive, nothing like the plastic-bottle vodka Amy and I sometimes split after brutal double shifts.

“All of it,” Dante said.

I knocked it back because arguing felt impossible. The warmth spread through my chest, loosening something that had been locked tight since the first shriek of breaking glass.

“Better?” he asked.

“No.” I set the glass down harder than I meant to. “I just watched someone try to kill you. I got dragged out of my job by strangers with guns. You sent men I don’t know to snatch my little brother out of bed in the middle of the night. So, no, I am not better.”

“But you’re angry,” he said. The corner of his mouth ticked like he was half a second from a smile. “That’s better than terrified.”

“I’m both.”

“I know.” He leaned against the opposite side of the counter, arms crossed. “Tell me exactly what you heard in that bathroom.”

So I did. The red soles. The perfume. The part in English—“window table”, “by the glass”, “one at the bar, three near the kitchen”, “clean shot”—and the part in the other language. The way her voice changed when she switched. How my gut had known what it meant long before my brain caught up.

Dante listened without interrupting, his face a mask, but the tension in his jaw told me he was slotting every detail into the blood-and-money map of his city.

“The other language,” he said finally. “Did it sound Russian?”

“Maybe. I don’t know. I’m not great with guessing. It wasn’t Spanish or French. It was… sharper. More… hard edges.”

“Like this?” he asked, then said something short and clipped that definitely wasn’t English.

I frowned, replaying the bathroom sounds in my head. “Yeah,” I said slowly. “Kind of like that.”

His eyes went colder.

“Vivian’s grandmother was Russian,” he said. “She doesn’t speak it often. Apparently she does when she’s selling me to the Volkov Bratva.”

“The what?”

“Russian organization,” he said. “Been trying to move into my territory for two years. I’ve been pushing back.”

He said “organization” like other people said “family” or “company” and “pushing back” like it meant something a lot bloodier than a strongly worded email.

“And your girlfriend,” I said carefully, “decided to switch sides.”

“She decided she liked the odds better with them,” he said. “Big mistake.”

“Big mistake for her,” I said. “Or big mistake for me, since I’m the idiot who interfered?”

He looked at me, really looked, like he was weighing me against something inside his head.

“You cost them money, time, and reputation,” he said. “In my world, that’s not just a mistake. That’s a sentence. The only question is whether they try to use you as leverage first or remove you as a problem.”

My stomach twisted. “This is insane. I’m nobody. I’m a waitress from Queens whose bathroom sink has been leaking for three months.”

“You were nobody,” he said quietly. “Tonight you became the woman who saved Dante Russo’s life. That makes you extremely valuable to me—and extremely inconvenient to my enemies.”

“I don’t want to be valuable,” I snapped. “I want to go home.”

“You can’t.”

“You can’t just keep me here.”

“I’m not keeping you,” he said. “I’m protecting you. There’s a difference.”

“Is there?” I met his eyes and refused to look away. “Because from where I’m sitting, this feels a lot like being trapped.”

His jaw tightened. “You want to leave? Fine.”

He pushed away from the counter and walked to the floor-to-ceiling windows, hands sliding into his pockets as he stared down at the city like he owned every square inch of it.

“I’ll have Marco drive you back to your apartment,” he said. “You can tell the NYPD detective exactly what you heard, exactly what you wrote on that note. You can hope none of them are on anyone’s payroll. You can tell your brother why men you’ve never met keep watching your building. You can spend the next six months wondering which knock at your door is your last. That’s one option.”

He turned back to me.

“Option two,” he said. “You stay. Here. Under my protection. My rules. You don’t move without one of my people. You don’t talk to cops without a lawyer. You don’t text anybody without assuming someone else is reading it. It’s not fair. It’s not pretty. But it’s the option where you and your brother wake up tomorrow with a heartbeat.”

“I hate both options,” I said.

“Welcome to my world.”

We stared at each other across that expanse of polished stone and bad choices. Somewhere beneath us, New York honked and hissed and glittered like it didn’t care who lived or died inside it.

“Do you want to leave?” he asked, voice softer, but not gentler.

I remembered the bathroom. The note. The glint in the glass. The way his body had covered mine when the window exploded.

“No,” I said hoarsely. “I don’t want to leave.”

Something eased in his shoulders, just a fraction.

“Then we’re clear,” he said. “You stay here until I say otherwise. You don’t leave without Marco or one of my men. You don’t contact anyone who doesn’t already know where you are without going through me. And you definitely don’t talk to the police alone.”

“For how long?”

“As long as it takes.”

“That’s not an answer,” I muttered.

“It’s the only one I’ve got.”

He straightened. “Your brother will be here in thirty minutes. Second door on the left is a guest room. Bathroom’s stocked. If you need clothes, tell Marco.”

“I need my phone charger,” I said. “And I need to call my manager and tell him—”

“Already handled,” he said.

My head snapped up. “What do you mean ‘handled’?”

“You’re on paid leave for the next two weeks,” he said. “Medical trauma. The restaurant’s lawyer will be in touch.”

“You can’t just—”

“Cassie.” He said my name like a warning and a sigh at the same time. “I can make your life more complicated, or I can make parts of it easier while we clean this up. Let me take the easy parts. You have enough to worry about.”

I hated that he was right. I hated that I needed him to be right.

“Why?” I demanded. “Why are you helping me? I’m nothing to you. I’m the girl who refills your water. You could have pretended you never saw that note.”

He studied me for a long moment, something unreadable in his eyes.

“You saved my life,” he said quietly. “In my world, that’s a debt that doesn’t go unpaid.”

“I don’t want you to owe me,” I said.

“Too late,” he replied. “Get some rest. Tomorrow we start figuring out who else knew about tonight and how badly they miscalculated.”

“And then what?” I asked.

He paused in the doorway, profile carved against the city lights.

“Then,” he said, “I make sure it never happens again.”

The guest room was bigger than my entire Queens apartment. King-size bed with hotel-white linens, a bathroom with heated floors and a shower overhead that looked like rain. I sat on the edge of the mattress and felt less free than I ever had lying awake listening to the drip of our busted sink.

My phone buzzed.

Unknown number.

Bad choice, Little Bird. Should have stayed quiet.

My blood went cold.

Another text came a second later.

We know where you live. We know about your brother. Next time, Russo won’t be fast enough.

My hands shook so hard it was hard to unlock the screen. A third message popped up.

It was a photo.

My apartment building. Taken from across the street. Mrs. Chen’s lights on in her second-floor window, which meant the picture had been taken within the last hour.

I hadn’t given my number to Dante or his people. Whoever sent this had gotten it somewhere else—work records, a hacked database, social media. The method didn’t matter. The message did.

I stood, heart pounding, and walked back down the hallway.

Dante was in what looked like an office—dark wood shelves, screens on the wall, one of them showing a traffic cam view of a familiar street in Queens. He was on the phone, voice low and controlled, but he cut whoever he was talking to off mid-sentence when he saw my face.

“What happened?” he asked.

I held out my phone.

He read the texts. The temperature in the room dropped ten degrees.

“Marco,” he called, voice sharp as broken glass.

Marco appeared in the doorway like he’d been stationed just out of sight.

“Get Tony on the line,” Dante said, handing him my phone. “I want a trace on this number and eyes on every camera within three blocks of her building. Someone just made a very stupid decision.”

Marco nodded and vanished.

Dante turned back to me. The look on his face should have scared me. It did. But what scared me more was how safe it also made me feel.

“Your brother is two minutes out,” he said. “When he gets here, you’re going to act normal. You’re going to tell him there was an incident at work and you’re staying with a friend for a few days while things get sorted out. You are not going to show him those texts. You are not going to tell him people are threatening him. Understood?”

“I can’t just lie to him,” I protested.

“Yes, you can,” he said. He stepped closer, lowering his voice. “Because the alternative is telling a thirteen-year-old that someone just sent his sister a photo of his front door. That’s a weight he doesn’t need to carry. So you lie. You let him be a kid for as long as he can.”

A part of me wanted to argue. A bigger part remembered Jake’s face the night our mom didn’t come home from her second job because a drunk driver ran a red light. The way he’d looked at me like I was suddenly supposed to have answers.

“Understood,” I whispered.

The elevator chimed.

Dante’s hand brushed the small of my back as we walked toward the entryway. Not a possessive touch. More… steadying. My heart hated me for noticing.

Jake came in with two men behind him, hair sticking up like he’d fallen asleep on the couch, wearing the hoodie I’d thrifted and the sneakers I’d worked three months of double shifts to buy him. His eyes widened as he took in the marble, the windows, the art on the walls.

“What the hell, Cass?” he said. “Some guy showed up and said you needed me to come with him. Do you know what time it is?”

“I know,” I said, pulling him into a hug so tight he made a strangled noise. “I’m sorry.”

“Okay, chill, you’re crushing my lungs,” he muttered, but he hugged me back for a second longer than his usual four-second limit.

“There was… an incident at the restaurant,” I said. “Nothing crazy, but they want me to take a few days off. I didn’t want you alone, so…”

“So we’re in a Marvel villain’s apartment?” he asked, eyes bouncing from the view to the art to Dante, who had leaned casually against the doorway like he had all the time in the world.

“That’s… a friend,” I said, instantly hearing how stupid that sounded. “Dante.”

Jake’s eyes narrowed. He was thirteen, but he’d been thirteen in Queens, which was a very specific kind of education.

“You don’t have friends with places like this,” he said. His gaze darted to the painting on the far wall. “Is that a Rothko?”

I blinked. “How do you even know—”

“It’s real,” Dante said, the corner of his mouth lifting just slightly. “You know art?”

“I know what it goes for at auction,” Jake said. “Seriously, Cass. Who is this guy?”

“Someone who’s helping us out,” I said. “That’s all you need to know.”

“That’s not all I need to know,” he said. “You texted me three days ago saying we couldn’t afford pizza this week. Now we’re standing in a penthouse with a Rothko and a view of the Chrysler Building.”

He wasn’t wrong. The cognitive dissonance had my head spinning too.

“Look,” I said. “It’s complicated. I did something at work that helped him—” I waved a vague hand at Dante “—and until things calm down it’s safer if we stay here.”

“What did you do?” Jake demanded. “Waitress-level help or ‘you’re gonna be on the news’ help?”

“Nothing illegal,” I said quickly.

“That’s not what I asked,” he muttered.

Dante pushed off the doorway. “Your sister prevented a very bad situation from becoming worse,” he said. “The people who caused that situation aren’t happy. Until I’m sure they’re not going to try again, you’re both safer here than in your building.”

Jake looked at him, then at me, processing. Despite being a walking collection of half-zipped hoodies and sarcasm, he’d always been too smart for his own good.

“So basically,” he said slowly, “Cass pissed off some bad people, and you’re the less-bad people who are going to keep us from getting shot?”

“I’m not the good guy,” Dante said. “But I am the guy keeping you alive. For now, that’s close enough.”

Jake stared him down for another beat, then shrugged. “Okay.”

“Okay?” I repeated. “That’s it? Just okay?”

“What do you want me to say?” he asked. “That I’m not scared? I’m always scared, Cass. At least here the locks probably work.” He glanced toward the kitchen. “And it smells like actual food, not instant noodles.”

“Help yourself,” Dante said, nodding toward the fridge.

Jake hesitated, then went, driven by a bottomless teenage hunger that didn’t care about criminal hierarchies.

“He’s smart,” Dante said quietly when we were alone.

“Too smart,” I said. I wrapped my arms around myself suddenly, exhaustion washing over me. “He shouldn’t have to live like this. Counting pennies, listening for footsteps in the hallway, worrying about whether I can keep the lights on. That’s all he’s ever known.”

“And yet he’s still standing,” Dante said. “That’s not nothing.”

“You’re not what I expected,” I said.

“What did you expect?” he asked. “Horns? Tail?”

“More monster,” I said. “Less… human.”

His expression shuttered. “Don’t mistake pragmatism for softness,” he said. “I’m keeping you here because I owe you and because you’re a vulnerability I need to manage. The second that changes—”

“You’ll what?” I cut in. “Throw us out? Let the Russians have us?”

“No,” he said quietly. “But I won’t pretend I’m doing this out of the goodness of my heart. I don’t have one. Not anymore.”

In the middle of the night, after pretending to sleep for hours, I padded back into the living room in bare feet and borrowed sweats. The city glowed beyond the glass. Dante sat in a leather chair facing the window, tumbler of whiskey in his hand like he belonged to the view.

“Can’t sleep either?” I asked.

He didn’t startle. Of course he didn’t. If I had to guess, he’d heard me move the second my feet hit the floor.

“Sleep is a luxury,” he said. “I don’t usually indulge in it.”

“That sounds exhausting,” I said.

“It keeps me alive.”

He gestured to the chair beside his. “Sit.”

I sat, tucking my feet under me, fingers picking at a loose thread in the hem of my borrowed T-shirt.

“Can I ask you something?” I said.

“You can ask,” he said. “Doesn’t mean I’ll answer.”

“Why didn’t you see it coming?” I asked. “Tonight, I mean. You act like betrayal is your worst wound. How did she”—I couldn’t bring myself to say Vivian’s name—“get so close?”

His jaw tightened. For a long moment I thought he wouldn’t answer.

“Because I thought I’d learned my lesson,” he said finally. “The last time someone close to me betrayed me, it cost me everything. My best friend. My territory. Almost my life. I built walls. Systems. Tests.”

“And she passed all of them,” I said.

“Every single one,” he said. “Or I convinced myself she had.”

He stared into his glass like he could read a different life in it.

“In my world,” he said, “human gets you killed. You keep things transactional. Clean. The second you start thinking someone might be different, that you can relax your grip just a little, that’s when they slip the knife in.”

“Is that how you got here?” I asked. “What, you just woke up one day and said, ‘You know what would be fun? Terrifying an entire city?’”

He huffed a humorless breath.

“I grew up in Hell’s Kitchen when it still earned the name,” he said. “My father worked three jobs and still couldn’t keep the lights on. My mother cleaned apartments for people who treated her like background music. When I was fourteen, my father borrowed money from the wrong people. When he couldn’t pay it back, they broke him in the street and made sure my mother and I watched. The cops never came.”

He looked at me, eyes flat.

“I learned three things that day,” he said. “Power isn’t given, it’s taken. Nobody is coming to save you. And the only way to protect the people you care about is to make sure no one can touch you without bleeding for it.”

“So you became the guy everyone’s afraid of,” I said softly.

“So I built an empire where men like the ones who hurt my father cross the street rather than look me in the eye,” he said. “Where the cops answer my calls even when they don’t answer anyone else’s. Where people like you”—he flicked a glance at me—“don’t end up on the pavement because somebody decided you were expendable.”

“Do you want to get out?” I asked.

His eyes met mine. For a second something cracked and I saw it: the bone-deep tired, the edges worn thin.

“Ask me again when this is over,” he said.

His phone buzzed on the side table. He looked at the screen, and whatever softness had been there vanished.

“Marco found her,” he said.

“Vivian?” I asked.

He nodded once. “The Plaza Hotel. Top-floor suite. She’s meeting someone in thirty minutes.”

“How do you know?” I asked.

He gave me a look that said I’d asked something innocent.

“I own the concierge,” he said.

“Of course you do.”

He stood. “Get dressed. You’re coming with me.”

“What? No. Absolutely not.”

“This is your mess as much as mine,” he said. “You’re the only one who heard her in the bathroom. I want you there when I ask her exactly how many bullets she thought my life was worth.”

My mouth was dry. “What if she recognizes me?”

“Then she recognizes you,” he said. “Maybe that will make her think twice before pretending she’s innocent.”

He headed toward the hallway.

“Five minutes, Cassie,” he called over his shoulder. “Don’t make me drag you.”

The Plaza at three-thirty in the morning looked like the inside of a snow globe someone had forgotten to shake. Marble floors, crystal chandeliers, old money that didn’t need to scream to be heard. Dante moved through the lobby like he belonged there. Maybe he did.

Marco and two other men flanked us, suits and calm eyes and discreet bulges where weapons hid.

“She’s in the presidential suite,” Marco murmured. “Two men with her. One is Alexei Volkov.”

“Alexei himself,” Dante said, voice going cold. “She didn’t just sell me out. She went straight to the top.”

We took a private elevator. Dante watched the floor numbers tick up like a countdown. My heart pounded hard enough I could feel it in my teeth.

“When we get inside,” he said quietly, “you stay behind me. You don’t speak unless I tell you to. And you don’t react. No matter what you hear.”

“What exactly am I going to hear?” I asked.

“That depends,” he said, “on how much of her soul Vivian decided to sell.”

The elevator door opened directly into the suite. Marco moved first, gun drawn, sweeping the entryway. Then he nodded, and we followed.

Vivian stood by the bar, champagne flute in hand, curls perfectly messy, robe cinched at the waist. It would have looked casual if not for the way her knuckles whitened when she saw Dante.

“Dante,” she breathed. “I didn’t—”

“Expect me to still be alive?” he asked. “Imagine my surprise when your boyfriend missed his shot.”

Two men stepped in from the adjoining room. One silver-haired, immaculate suit, cold eyes. The other younger, built like a boxer, coat open enough to show the line of a shoulder holster.

“Russo,” the older man said. His accent was thick, the syllables of Dante’s last name turning to ice in his mouth. “You are a difficult man to kill.”

“I’ve had practice,” Dante said, not looking at him. His attention stayed pinned on Vivian. “Tell me something. Was any of it real? Or was I just a payday from the beginning?”

Vivian set the flute down with a hand that shook. “It’s not that simple,” she whispered.

“It’s exactly that simple,” Dante said. “Yes or no?”

“You weren’t supposed to get hurt,” she blurted. “It was supposed to be quick. Clean. You’d never see it coming.”

“That’s the sales pitch?” he asked. “They tell you the murder will be tidy?”

“They promised,” she said, voice cracking. “They promised if I helped, they would let you walk away. They just wanted the docks, the warehouses. They said there didn’t have to be war if you were reasonable.”

He finally looked at Alexei. “Is that true?” he asked. “Was I getting out of this alive if I signed over the ports?”

Alexei’s smile was cutting. “We are reasonable businessmen,” he said. “We prefer cooperation to… waste.”

“Reasonable men don’t put snipers across from restaurants,” I said before I could stop myself.

Every head in the room snapped toward me.

Dante’s eyes flashed a warning—too late.

“Ah.” Alexei studied me with slow curiosity. “The little waitress.”

My stomach clenched.

“The one who ruined an expensive evening,” he continued. “You cost me time, money, and face. That is… unfortunate.”

“Cassie. Enough,” Dante said quietly.

Alexei’s gaze sharpened. “Cassie,” he repeated, rolling the name like he owned it now. “We know where you live. Queens, yes? Little brother. Thirteen. Such a delicate age.”

Ice slid through my veins.

Dante moved before I could blink.

One second Alexei was standing near the bar. The next, his back hit the wall, Dante’s forearm pressed against his throat, face gone red under the pressure.

“Touch her,” Dante said, voice so calm it made my skin crawl, “and I will burn your entire organization to the ground. Every business. Every account. Every man who’s ever taken your money. I will dismantle what you’ve built brick by brick and make you watch.”

The younger man went for his gun.

Marco’s weapon was suddenly out, steady and aimed at his head.

“I would not,” Marco said.

“You cannot kill us all,” Alexei choked.

“No,” Dante said. “But I can make you wish I had.”

He leaned in.

“You think you know pain?” he asked softly. “You think you know consequences? Test me. Please. Give me an excuse.”

He released Alexei. The Russian stumbled, coughing.

“We’re leaving,” Dante said. “And you’re going to forget her. Her name, her face, her brother, her building, all of it. If I hear a whisper that you so much as breathed in their direction, I will not come to talk next time.”

“The ports—” Alexei started.

“Are mine,” Dante cut in. “They stay mine. You want war over them, I’ll finish it.”

He turned to Vivian. For a heartbeat, something like grief flickered over his face.

“You’re alive tonight because killing you would be a mercy,” he said. “But you’re done. With me. With my people. With this city.”

“Dante, please,” she whispered. “You said you loved me. You said—”

“I said a lot of things,” he said. “So did you. Every word out of your mouth from now on is someone else’s problem.”

He held out his hand.

“Cassie,” he said. “We’re done here.”

I took it. Because the alternative was staying in that room with a man who looked at me like I was a bug he’d decided whether or not to crush.

I didn’t start shaking until we were back in the SUV.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I shouldn’t have—”

“Spoken?” Dante asked. “Stood up to him? Pointed out that ‘reasonable businessmen’ don’t hire snipers?”

“You told me not to react,” I said.

“And you did anyway,” he said. “Because someone treated a life—my life—like a bargaining chip, and you couldn’t pretend you didn’t hear it. That’s who you are, Cassie. It’s dangerous. And it’s the only reason I’m still breathing.”

“Is that a compliment?” I asked. “Or an insult?”

“I haven’t decided yet,” he said.

My phone buzzed. This time it wasn’t a threat.

Detective Sarah Ramos, NYPD. I need to speak with you about the incident at Aurelio. Tomorrow, 10 a.m., Midtown South Precinct. This is not optional.

I turned the screen toward Dante.

His jaw tightened. “Ramos,” he said. “She’s been trying to build a case on me for three years.”

“What do I tell her?” I asked.

“Nothing,” he said. “Not without a lawyer.”

“I can’t afford a lawyer,” I said.

“I can,” he said simply. “Thomas Keating. Best defense attorney in Manhattan. He’ll meet us there in the morning.”

“Dante, I can’t let you—”

“You can,” he said. “Because Ramos isn’t stupid. If you walk in there alone, she’ll spin you in circles until you’ve handed her everything she needs to hang me and paint a target on your back bigger than the one you already have.”

“Why should I trust you?” I asked.

His answer was quiet, almost tired.

“Because, despite everything, I’m the only one in this city currently trying to keep you alive.”

He didn’t say it like a boast. He said it like a man who’d watched too many people die and was not interested in adding my name to that list.

Detective Ramos was exactly what I expected from NYPD: sharp eyes, plain clothes, hair pulled back, no patience for bullshit.

We met her at the Midtown South Precinct—fluorescent lights, scuffed floors, the smell of burnt coffee and paper. Keating looked like he charged a thousand dollars just to make eye contact: silver hair, perfect suit, calm like a shark.

“Ms. Chen,” Ramos said, extending a hand. “Thank you for coming.”

“My client is happy to cooperate,” Keating said smoothly, “within reason.”

Ramos’ gaze flicked to Dante, who stood a little behind us, all dark suit and quiet threat.

“I didn’t realize you’d be joining us, Mr. Russo,” she said.

“I’m here for moral support,” he said mildly.

“Right,” she said. “This way.”

The interview room looked like every cop show I’d ever watched—gray walls, metal table, two chairs on one side, one on the other, a mirror that wasn’t really a mirror.

“For the record,” Ramos said, turning on a recorder, “this is Detective Sarah Ramos interviewing Cassandra Chen regarding the shooting at Aurelio Restaurant on—”

She rattled off the date and time.

“You were working that night?” she asked.

“Yes,” I said.

“You witnessed the shooting?”

“Yes.”

“Walk me through what happened, start to finish.”

I glanced at Keating. He gave me a barely there nod.

“I was serving tables,” I said. “I heard glass breaking, people screaming. I saw a bullet hit the window by Mr. Russo’s table. His security grabbed him. They pushed me down. It was chaos.”

“Before the shooting,” Ramos said. “Did you notice anything unusual?”

Define unusual.

“Like what?” I asked.

“People watching Mr. Russo,” she said. “Strange behavior. Something that might indicate this was planned, not random.”

Keating’s fingers rested on the tape recorder, ready.

“It’s a busy restaurant,” I said. “People watch each other all the time.”

“Multiple witnesses say you were standing right next to Mr. Russo when the first shot was fired,” Ramos said. “Almost like you knew it was coming.”

“I got lucky,” I said. “Wrong place, right time.”

“Or you were warned,” she said.

“I wasn’t warned,” I lied.

“So you just happened to push him out of the way?” she asked. “At the exact second a bullet would have hit his head.”

“Instinct,” I said. “I saw something in the reflection. A flash. And then everything exploded.”

“In the reflection,” she repeated. “From a sniper fifteen stories up, across a Manhattan avenue, at night.”

“It was enough,” I said.

“Here’s what I think happened,” she said. “I think you overheard something. Maybe staff gossip. Maybe a call. I think you realized there was going to be trouble, and you warned him.”

“Detective,” Keating said. “Do you have any evidence, or is this just story hour?”

“I have four men in custody who were hired as ‘security’ for a nonexistent private event at Aurelio,” she said. “All armed. All placed exactly where they needed to be for a coordinated hit. I have a missing woman—Vivian Castellano, last seen leaving the restaurant in a hurry—and I have a waitress who stood between a bullet and a man like Dante Russo. You’re right, counselor. Some of this is story. Some of it is pattern.”

She leaned forward.

“Ms. Chen,” she said. “Do you know what Mr. Russo does for a living?”

“I know he owns several legitimate businesses,” I said.

“He also runs one of the largest criminal organizations in this city,” she said. “Racketeering. Money laundering. Extortion. You name it. He’s not a good man. Whatever protection he’s offering, it comes with a price.”

“Are you charging my client with something?” Keating asked. “Because if not, we’re done.”

“Not yet,” Ramos said. She pulled a card out of her pocket and slid it toward me. “Here’s what I can offer you, Ms. Chen. Real protection. Witness protection. New identity. New city. A chance to walk away from all of this before it eats you alive.”

I thought about the text on my phone. We know where you live. We know about your brother.

“I don’t need protection from Mr. Russo,” I said slowly. “I need protection from the people who tried to kill him. Right now, he’s the only one offering that.”

“You’re making a mistake,” she said.

“Maybe,” I said. “But it’s my mistake.”

She studied me for a long moment. I had the feeling she was very used to being the smartest person in the room and didn’t enjoy being told no.

“Fine,” she said at last. “We’re done for today. But Ms. Chen?” She pushed the card closer. “When this blows up—and it will blow up—call me. If you’re still alive, I’ll pick up.”

She stood and left without looking back.

We didn’t speak until we were back in the SUV.

“You could have given me up,” Dante said finally.

“I know,” I said.

“She offered you a new life.”

“She offered me a new life on paper,” I said. “With my name on a list somewhere and a target painted bigger every time my file crossed the wrong desk. I’ve seen enough cop shows to know witness protection doesn’t come with guarantees.”

“So you chose me,” he said.

“I chose survival,” I said.

He huffed a soft laugh. “There’s a difference.”

We both knew that wasn’t entirely true.

His phone buzzed.

He looked at the screen, and something truly dangerous flashed across his face.

“Change of plan,” he said. “Marco, Pier Seventeen.”

“What’s at Pier Seventeen?” I asked.

“Leverage,” he said.

The warehouse by the water smelled like salt and oil and old secrets. Light filtered through high windows in dusty beams. Crates towered in neat stacks. In the center of the floor, tied to a chair, bruised and furious, was Alexei Volkov.

I didn’t know the details of how he got there. I knew enough from context to assume it had involved a lot of money moving hands and loyalty changing sides.

Dante explained it in about thirty seconds, his voice almost bored. Offshore accounts. Skimmed money. Transfers to a mistress in Miami. A nice, fat file that could go to the feds or to his bosses in Moscow, depending on which version of hell he preferred.

“Call off every contract on Cassie and her brother,” Dante said. “Every interest. Every favor. Or this file finds a dozen inboxes before you make it home tonight.”

Alexei glared at me like it was somehow my fault he’d stolen from his own.

He chose, in the end, the way all men like him choose when the survival instinct kicks in hard enough. He agreed. Dante’s men made calls, anonymous tips were arranged, digital copies of files moved like ghosts.

When we walked back out into the sun, the wind off the East River sharp in my lungs, Alexei Volkov wasn’t the monster under my bed anymore.

He was a man whose world had just been set on fire.

“It’s done,” Dante said as we got in the SUV. “As far as the Volkovs are concerned, you’re off the board.”

“So it’s over,” I said.

“Almost,” he said.

The way he said it made my stomach drop.

“Vivian,” I guessed.

“Vivian,” he confirmed. “She’s been staying at her sister’s place in Park Slope. Marco’s had eyes on it.”

“And?” I asked.

“And she’s meeting with a reporter this afternoon,” he said. “Going to sell herself as the abused girlfriend of a dangerous man. Paint herself as a victim, me as the monster.”

“Let her,” I said, exhausted. “Who cares?”

“I care,” he said. “Because her story includes you. The brave little waitress. The civilian dragged into the crossfire. She makes you sound like my accomplice, and suddenly every prosecutor in the city is saying your name into microphones.”

“What are you going to do?” I asked.

“I’m going to offer her the one thing she never gave me,” he said. “A choice.”

Vivian’s sister’s apartment was everything Dante’s world wasn’t. Plants on the windowsill. Pictures of kids on the wall. A half-finished art project on the coffee table.

Vivian stood in the middle of it looking like she’d been dropped in from a magazine spread. Silk robe, bare feet, hair perfect. For a second her eyes lit up when she saw Dante.

Then she saw me and it died.

“Recording from the restaurant bathroom,” Dante said, setting his phone on the table. He hit play.

Her own voice filled the room. ‘He’s at the window table. By the glass. One at the bar. Three near the kitchen entrance. Clean shot.’

The color drained from her face.

He laid it all out for her in that same surgical tone he’d used on Alexei. Half a million dollars. A plane ticket. A non-disclosure agreement. She could change her name, her country, her loyalties, like she’d changed boyfriends. Or she could sit down with the reporter and watch every ugly detail of her betrayal leak out alongside the payment trail from the Volkovs.

“You threatened her too, didn’t you?” she demanded, turning on me. “Told her you’d kill her if she didn’t help you?”

“I told her the truth,” I said. “That you sold him like a used car.”

Her eyes filled, furious and wet. “Do you really think you’re different?” she hissed. “You think you’re special? You’re a distraction. That’s it. A toy he gets to pretend makes him human.”

My chest hurt, but I held her gaze.

“Maybe I am,” I said. “Maybe this ends in flames. But I made my choice with my eyes open. Can you say the same?”

Her mouth trembled. She signed the papers with a shaking hand.

We left her standing in the middle of her sister’s living room, half a million dollars and a one-way ticket on the table. Another ghost getting ready to leave New York.

We drove in silence for a while, Brooklyn sliding past the windows and turning back into Manhattan, skyscrapers reaching up like steel teeth.

“Why did you defend me back there?” Dante asked finally.

“I wasn’t defending you,” I said. “I was defending my decision.”

“Is there a difference?” he asked.

“I haven’t decided yet,” I said.

I watched his profile for a second, the hard line of his jaw, the faint scar near his temple.

“When this is over,” I asked, “what happens to me and Jake?”

“That depends,” he said.

“On what?”

“On what you want to happen,” he said.

“You’re giving me a choice?” I asked.

“I’m giving you what no one ever gave me,” he said. “An exit. Clean. If that’s what you want.”

He turned to me fully, something unguarded in his eyes.

“You take some money,” he said. “You get a new place. Keep your job at the bookstore. Your brother finishes school. You build a life that doesn’t involve my name on your mail. You and I become a story you tell yourself when you can’t sleep.”

“And if I don’t want that?” I asked, my heart pounding so hard I could hear it.

“Then you stay,” he said simply. “In my world. Knowing exactly what it is.”

“I’d be in danger,” I said.

“You’d be in more danger than you’ve ever been,” he said. “More money, more enemies, more nights like the last three. I can’t promise you safety. Only that I will stand between you and whatever comes until I physically can’t anymore.”

“Why?” I whispered. “Why does it matter what I choose? You barely knew my name three days ago.”

He hesitated. Then he reached across the space between us and took my hand, his fingers threading through mine like it was the most natural thing in the world.

“Because somewhere between the receipt and now,” he said quietly, “you stopped being a debt I owed and became something I can’t afford to lose.”

My breath caught.

“That’s not an answer,” I said.

“Then let me be clear,” he said.

His free hand came up, fingers cupping my jaw, turning my face toward his.

“Stay,” he said, voice rougher than I’d ever heard it. “Not because you’re scared. Not because you think you owe me. Not because you don’t know how to leave. Stay because you want to. Stay because when you look at me, you see the man I might be instead of the man I had to become. Stay because when I look at you, I see the only person in this city who heard what was going to happen to me and chose to save me instead of sell me.”

“Dante—”

“I know I’m asking too much,” he said. “I know I’m dangerous and wrong and that anyone with sense would run. But I’m asking anyway.”

His forehead rested against mine. I could feel his breath, smell his cologne and the faint trace of whiskey.

“Stay,” he whispered.

I should have said no. Should have taken the clean exit, the money, the chance at normal.

Instead, I kissed him.

It wasn’t soft. It wasn’t careful. It was three days of adrenaline and fear and late-night confessions and impossible choices crashing into one moment. His hand tightened in my hair. His other arm came around my waist, hauling me closer despite the awkward SUV seat and the fact that Marco was pretending very hard not to exist in the front.

When we finally pulled apart, we were both breathing hard.

“Is that a yes?” he asked.

“It’s a maybe,” I said. “Ask me again when my little brother isn’t sleeping in your penthouse and half the city isn’t trying to kill us.”

He smiled then—really smiled, for the first time since I’d met him. It hit me harder than the kiss.

“I can work with maybe,” he said.

Two weeks later, I was locking up a bookstore in the Village when my phone buzzed.

Ms. Chen, this is Detective Ramos. Just wanted to update you: Alexei Volkov took a plea. Twenty years, minimum security. He turned on half his own organization to avoid extradition. As far as we can tell, any active threat to you or your brother is gone. You can go back to your life.

I stared at the text for a long moment.

My life.

I walked instead of taking the subway. Twenty blocks uptown, city air cool against my face, New York humming around me. I passed our old Queens train line out of habit. Passed a pizza place I still couldn’t afford even with my new job. Passed a building whose rooftop I now recognized from a sniper’s angle.

When I reached Gramercy House, the doorman nodded like he’d been expecting me. Maybe he had.

Dante was on the balcony, jacket off, sleeves rolled up, Manhattan laid out below him in lights.

“Ramos texted,” I said, stepping out beside him. “Volkov took the deal.”

“I heard,” he said. “Marco has a friend at the DA’s office.”

“Of course he does,” I muttered.

“She says I can ‘go back to my life,’” I said, doing air quotes.

“And can you?” he asked.

“I could,” I said. “I could take Jake, find some overpriced shoebox in Queens or Brooklyn, pretend the past few weeks were just one of those New York stories people tell in bars.”

“Are you going to?” he asked.

I thought about the note. The window. The bullet.

I thought about Jake at his new school, arguing about philosophy with kids whose parents owned things. About Dante teaching him chess at the kitchen island, patient in a way he claimed he didn’t know how to be.

I thought about the way my chest didn’t feel so tight in the mornings now. The way I’d started to laugh again, even if it was usually at Dante doing something shockingly normal, like overcooking pancakes.

“No,” I said. “I’m not going to.”

He turned. That unguarded look came back—the one that made him look younger and older at the same time.

“Cassie,” he said.

“But I have conditions,” I added, holding up a hand.

“Of course you do,” he said. “You’d be disappointing if you didn’t.”

“I keep my job at the bookstore,” I said. “I pay my own rent, wherever we end up. Jake stays at that school, but I am involved in every decision about his future. And if this gets too much—if it gets too dangerous, too complicated, or just wrong—I walk. You let me. No threats. No making it impossible to leave.”

“Deal,” he said immediately.

“You didn’t even think about it,” I said.

“I’ve been thinking about it since the night you dropped a tray and knocked me out of a sniper’s line of sight,” he said. “Anything else?”

“Yeah,” I said. “No more secrets. You don’t ‘handle’ things that affect me and Jake without telling me. We do this together or we don’t do it at all.”

He stepped closer, crowding my space in that way he had that somehow made me feel trapped and safe at the same time.

“Together,” he said.

He cupped my face in his hands and kissed me.

This kiss wasn’t adrenaline. It wasn’t terror-fueled. It was slower. Surer. Like we suddenly had all the time in the world instead of stolen seconds between crises. His thumbs brushed along my jaw. The city hummed below us like white noise.

When he pulled back, his eyes held something I’d never seen in them before.

“I love you,” he said simply.

The words hit harder than any threat I’d heard him make.

“I didn’t plan to,” he said. “Didn’t want to. But somewhere between you scribbling on that receipt and you telling a Russian mob boss that ‘reasonable men’ don’t hire snipers, you became the only thing in this city I’d burn to the ground to protect.”

“That’s a little dramatic,” I said, voice shaky.

“I’m a dramatic person,” he said.

“I noticed,” I said. I swallowed. “I love you, too. Even though you’re dangerous and controlling and you make terrible decisions about when to be honest.”

“I’ll work on that,” he said.

“You’d better,” I said.

He kissed me again. Manhattan stretched out around us—dangerous and bright and indifferent.

A week after I saved his life with a note scribbled on a receipt, I thought I’d ruined mine.

Standing on that balcony, my brother safe, the city still standing, a man like Dante Russo looking at me like I wasn’t invisible, I realized something else.

I hadn’t ruined my life.

I’d simply stepped into a different one.