Page 92 of Valentino

"Then stop running from me."

"I'm not running. Not anymore." I press my forehead against hers. Our breathing tangles together in the narrow space between us. I close my eyes. "I don't know how to do this," I tell her. "I know how to protect people. I know how to kill people. I don't know how to hear someone say they love me and not start looking for the door."

Her thumb traces along my jaw. The pad of her finger catches on stubble, and I feel it in every nerve ending I own.

"I'm not asking you to know," she says. "I'm asking you to stay."

I kiss her again. Slower this time. Her fingers slide from my shirt to the back of my neck, nails dragging lightly across skin.

Someone clears their throat.

The sound carries the unmistakable weight of a man who has walked into a room, assessed what he's seeing, and decided to announce himself rather than retreat. Which means Luca Farro has more nerve than sense tonight.

Amanda's legs tighten around my waist. Her fingers freeze on the back of my neck. I don't move immediately because there's a stubborn part of me that refuses to retreat just because we have an audience, but the operational half of my brain wins the argument.

I pull back from Amanda. Her lips are swollen. Her cheeks are flushed and tear-streaked. My hands slide from her thighs to her hips, steadying her as I lower her to the floor. Her feet touch the tile and she sways once before finding her balance.

I turn around.

Luca stands in the kitchen doorway, arms folded, wearing the expression of a man with plenty to say and enough sense not to say it. His green eyes move from me to Amanda and back to me with the calm, unhurried precision of someone cataloguing a crime scene.

"Better have a reason," I say.

He doesn't blink. Doesn't shift his weight. Luca never wastes movement. It's one of the things that makes him lethal and, in moments like this, profoundly irritating.

Amanda steps around me before Luca can respond. She pushes her hair back from her face with both hands, and walks toward the hallway.

"I'm taking a bath," she announces.

"Wardrobe in the second bedroom," I tell her. "Fabio stocked clothes. Should be your size."

Amanda pauses in the hallway. Her back is to me. She nods once and disappears around the corner.

I count three breaths before I face Luca.

"Our men are spread across Trastevere's perimeter," he says. "Fabio's at the north entrance. Two on the bridge. One at the market square. The building across the street has a clean sightline to both exits, so I put Loretto there with comms."

I nod. Good coverage. Luca builds perimeters the way architects build cathedrals. With obsessive attention to angles and an absolute refusal to leave gaps.

"I need to know the next steps," he tells me. "Whether we're holding here or preparing to move. Whether Bruno's sending reinforcements or pulling us back. The men need rotation schedules, and I can't build those without knowing the operational timeline."

All reasonable. All necessary. All things that could've waited another ten goddamn minutes.

I walk toward him. Luca doesn't retreat, because Luca doesn't retreat from anything, which is both his greatest asset and the quality most likely to get his teeth rearranged tonight. I stop close enough that he has to tilt his chin up to maintain eye contact. He's tall, but I've got two inches on him and right now I'm using every single one of them.

"You're the best man I have," I tell him. The words come out quiet.

Luca's expression doesn't change. His eyes hold mine with that pale, unnerving green that makes most people look away first.

"When I'm with her," I say, and the emphasis lands on her like a hand on a table, "you make the decisions. You run the perimeter. You handle the rotations, the comms, the men. You handle whatever Bruno sends. You handle everything that doesn't require me standing here answering your questions."

A muscle in his jaw tightens.

"And you don't interrupt me." I lean closer. "Because the next time you clear your throat while I'm occupied, Luca, you'll get my fist instead. Right across that pretty face."

The silence stretches for exactly two beats.

Then something happens that I've seen maybe four times in six years of working with this man. The corner of Luca's mouth moves. Luca doesn't smile the way other people smile. It's more like a tectonic shift. One millimeter of movement that transforms his entire face from stone monument to something almost, distantly, human.