But I can’t.
To be fair he’s made me come with eye contact and a twitch of his lips. Not even a real smile.
My pussy remembers in inconvenient detail.
And here I am. Watching him eat. Again.
His hands. Jesus Christ, his hands. I forgot how big they are. The way his fingers wrap around the fork, controlled and precise.
I’m watching him eat and remembering those hands on my arm. Wondering how they’d feel wrapped around my throat. My hips.
His mouth. The way his lips close around the fork.
He’s right there. Twenty feet away. And I can’t breathe.
One look at Dario and I remember what I actually want. What I’ve always wanted.
To be seen by someone dangerous
He’s eating lunch in his own restaurant, making notes on papers that probably involve money laundering or racketeering or whatever it is crime families actually do. He’s free and healthy and completely unaffected by the testimony that cost me everything.
He’s okay.
That’s all I needed. Just to see it. Just to know the chocolates weren’t a lie, that the note meant what it said, that I didn’t destroy him.
Dario Marchetti is alive and well and eating with mechanical precision. I can go back to my beige apartment and my beige life and…
He looks up.
Not at me. At the server approaching his table.
But for a second, just a second, his gaze sweeps the room.
And I feel it like a physical touch. Like electricity. Like every nerve in my body lighting up at once.
He doesn’t see me. I’m in the back corner, hat on, sunglasses pushed up on my head now because wearing sunglasses indoors is suspicious and I’m trying to be not suspicious.
I’m failing at not suspicious.
But he doesn’t see me. And that’s worse.
He finishes his lunch. Checks his phone. Makes one more note on his papers. Drains the last of his espresso.
Then he stands. Heads toward the back of the restaurant. Bathrooms, maybe. Or kitchen. Secret mafia portal?
I don’t know. I just know this is my shot.
My moment.
To do... what, exactly?
Leave cookies on his table like a deranged tooth fairy? Write a note on a napkin like a teenager passing messages in class? This isn’t a plan, this is a mental breakdown.
I should go. Back to Saul’s gentle check-ins and coffee recommendations. Back to the man who only knows the faded version of me. And can’t ever be more because his job says so.
But Dario is right there.
And he knew me at full brightness. Unhinged and obsessive.
