Chapter 4 Coffee and Paper Cuts
They walked out of the hospital side by side like they were meant to be side by side..
No guards rushing in. No whispers following them. No sense of urgency pressing at Isabella’s spine the way it usually did when she stayed too long in one place. Just sunlight, glass doors sliding shut behind them, and the sound of traffic breathing through the city.
Alessandro broke the silence first.
“Coffee,” he said, not as a question. “Before you disappear again.”
She glanced at him, one brow lifting slightly. “You assume I was planning to.”
“I assume you’re good at it,” he replied.
That earned him a quiet smile. Not flirtatious. Assessing.
“There’s a place,” she said after a beat. “If you’re willing to walk.”
“I am.”
She didn’t ask why. She turned and headed down the street, moving like someone who knew exactly where she was going—and exactly how not to be noticed.
Alessandro matched her pace easily.
The café was tucked between a bookstore and a flower shop that spilled color onto the sidewalk. Nothing about it was impressive. No sign worth remembering. Inside, the air smelled like ground coffee and old paper, the kind of place that made time slow whether you wanted it to or not.
“This is where you bring men you barely know?” Alessandro asked lightly.
“This is where I bring myself,” she replied, pushing the door open. “Men are optional.”
He liked that answer more than he should have.
Inside, the café blurred into the bookstore beside it—no real division between the two, just shelves bleeding into tables, books stacked where menus should have been. People sat alone, together, nowhere important.
Isabella moved like she belonged there.
She ordered without looking at the menu. Paid before he could. Took a seat near the back where the light fell soft and forgiving.
Alessandro watched her like it was a study.
“You come here often,” he said.
“When I’m in the country.”
That was the first real piece of information she gave him.
“In the country,” he repeated. “So you don’t live here.”
She shook her head. “Not anymore.”
“Where, then.”
She wrapped her hands around her cup, warming them. “Out of it.”
That was the second thing.
He smiled slightly. “You’re very good at not answering questions.”
“I answer the ones I like,” she said calmly.
“And what do you like.”
She thought about that. Really thought.
“Quiet places,” she said. “Books that smell like dust. Coffee that isn’t trying to impress anyone.”
“And?”
“People who don’t rush me.”
That last one landed deliberately.
Alessandro leaned back in his chair. “Your family sent you away.”
Her gaze lifted slowly. Met his.
“Yes.”
Not defensive. Not angry.
Just factual.
“To keep you out of trouble,” he guessed.
Her lips curved faintly. “To keep me out of their trouble.”
He didn’t push.
That restraint surprised her.
They talked—not about danger, not about names or blood or power—but about things that seemed small until they weren’t.
Books that had ruined them.
Cities that felt wrong no matter how beautiful they were.
The exhaustion of being expected to become someone you never volunteered to be.
Alessandro tried—carefully—to steer the conversation toward her.
What she did.
What she wanted.
Who she was when no one was watching.
Each time, she slid away without lying.
“I’m between things.”
“I don’t stay long anywhere.”
“I belong to myself, most days.”
It should have frustrated him.
Instead, it pulled him in.
“You know,” he said finally, “most people tell me too much.”
She smiled into her coffee. “Most people want something.”
“And you don’t.”
“I didn’t say that.”
The silence that followed was heavy—not uncomfortable, but charged.
The almost kind.
They wandered into the bookstore after, drifting between shelves like coincidence had planned it. Isabella reached for a book without thinking, fingers tracing the spine with familiarity.
“You’ve read this,” Alessandro said.
She nodded. “More than once.”
“Why.”
“Because the ending doesn’t change,” she said softly. “And sometimes that’s comforting.”
He studied her profile. “You don’t strike me as someone who likes certainty.”
She looked at him then—really looked. “That’s because you’ve never seen what uncertainty costs.”
He didn’t have a response to that.
They stood close enough now that he could smell her—clean, understated, nothing engineered. Real.
He lifted a hand, hesitated, then brushed a strand of hair back from her face. Slow. Asking.
She didn’t pull away.
Her breath caught.
The world narrowed again, just like at the gala—but this time there was no music, no crowd to interrupt them.
His hand lingered at her cheek.
She tilted her head slightly.
Closer.
Her lips parted.
Almost—
Her phone rang.
The sound was sharp. Jarring. Wrong.
She flinched like she’d been struck.
Pulled back instantly.
“I—” She swallowed, already reaching for it. “I have to take this.”
Her voice had changed.
She turned away, walking toward the door as she answered, her words low and fast, too controlled to be casual.
Alessandro watched her—every instinct screaming that whatever was on the other end of that call did not belong in this quiet place.
When she came back, something had closed in her expression.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I need to go.”
Already leaving.
Already vanishing.
“Will I see you again,” he asked.
“I don’t know,” she said with a sad look into those beautiful eyes.
Then she was gone.