Page 151 of Forged

Her eyes narrow. “Don’t tempt me to take control of this situation. I can order men up here to make you eat if I have to.”

I pick up the pastry, even though I’m not sure I’m hungry. “You’re becoming just as protective as Enzo.”

She rolls her eyes, though there’s warmth in it. “Eat your pastry, Neomi.”

I do. The buttery layers and sugar hit my taste buds and I hum. Maybe I was hungry.

Her features soften. “Okay, spill it. How are you feeling? And don’t sugar coat it.”

I look away first, because I hate crying in front of people, hate the loss of control in it, the vulnerability. But Zara’s family and she knows what it’s like to be married to a man like Lars, so this is the safest place to let it all out.

“I’m so angry,” I say, and my voice breaks on the last word. “I’m so angry I can’t even think straight sometimes.”

Zara slides off the stool and comes around the island without hesitation, wrapping her arms around me and holds me.

“At Falco?” she asks quietly.

“At Falco,” I say into her shoulder. “At Gabriel. At myself for still—” I stop, then a tear-filled laugh escapes me because there’s no point lying to her when I can barely breathe with the weight of the truth. “God, Zara, I still love him.”

She leans back enough to look at me, her hands staying on my arms. I shake my head, wiping at my cheeks with the heel of my hand.

“I shouldn’t. Getting over him should be the easy part. Helied to us. He came into our lives for all the wrong reasons and somehow…” My voice frays again. “Somehow everything with him felt real. Itstillfeels real.”

Zara stays standing beside me, one hip against the counter. “Because it was,” she says gently.

“Neomi,” she says, quieter now, “Gabriel could have run. He could have taken what he came for and vanished before any of you ever realized what he was. Instead, he went to Enzo.”

“He got caught.”

“Maybe Dante helped force the timing,” she allows. “But he still walked into Enzo’s office knowing it might end with a bullet. Men like him don’t volunteer for that unless something inside them has already changed.”

I stare at my hands. My fingers are trembling around a napkin. “He chose the worst possible moment.”

“There was never going to be a good one.”

I close my eyes for a second, and when I speak again my voice is smaller, stripped down.

“I had it all. Lars, Gabriel…us. It felt like I stepped into some version of my life I didn’t know I was allowed to want. And now I keep thinking maybe I got greedy. Maybe I built a fantasy out of a situation that was never going to survive the truth.”

I shake my head. “When I started playing poker, one of my mentors told me, ‘Don’t gamble with what you aren’t willing to lose.’ I never knew it would apply to real life too.”

Zara is quiet for a beat, and when she answers there’s steel under the softness. “You were not greedy for loving fully. Don’t reduce your feelings like that.”

I look up. She crosses her arms, thoughtful now.

“The world our men live in asks us to make peace with impossible things. Violence, secrecy, power. The knowledge that love and danger share walls more often than they should. You didn’t fail because you wanted joy inside all this. You found something beautiful in the middle of something brutal.”

My throat tightens all over again.

“I don’t know what my ideal life even looks like anymore,” I admit. “Before Gabriel, it was simple. Lars and me. A marriage and a future. And then Gabriel walked in, and it wasn’t simple anymore, but it felt bigger, more complete. I loved what we were becoming.” I swallow hard. “And now I don’t know if I miss him or if I miss the version of us that made room for all of it.”

Zara’s mouth curves sadly. “Probably both.”

A laugh escapes me, shaky and tired. “That’s not helpful.”

“No,” she agrees. “But it’s the truth.”

I take another breath and press my fingertips to my eyes. “Lars won’t talk about him. He talks about Falco, about security, about schedules, about where his men are posted and which routes I’m not allowed to drive. He asks if I’m sleeping. He kisses me like he still loves me, and I know he does, but then he disappears again before the conversation can turn into anything real.”