We’re Gonna Make it, Right?

We’re Gonna Make it, Right?
Enzo

He left Dottie’s room to the soft click of the door behind him. For a moment, he just stood there in the hall, hand still on the handle, letting the silence settle.
The city beyond the glass hummed low and steady, but everything inside the penthouse felt muted, like the air had been turned down.
He rolled his shoulders once, more to shake off the weight of her words than anything else, and started down the corridor. Each step brought him closer to the suite he shared with Lola, the one place left in this building that still felt human.
When he opened the door, the lights were low. Lola sat on the couch, knees drawn up, Enzo’s shirt hanging loose off one shoulder, her hair damp from a shower that had probably done nothing to wash away the day. She looked up when he entered, eyes rimmed in quiet.

“Dottie settled?” she asked.

“Yeah,” he said, shutting the door behind him. “She approves of the linens. And the chair.”

That got him a ghost of a smile; small, tired, but real.
He walked over and stood in front of her, thumb brushing the edge of her jaw before he bent down, pressing a kiss to her forehead. The smell of her soap and cigarette smoke from Dottie’s scarf, coffee, and the faintest trace of skinsettled in his chest.

“She told me something,” he said softly.

Lola’s brows lifted, wary. “Should I be nervous?”

“She said…” He hesitated, then sat down beside her, their knees brushing. “She said this is the first person you’ve ever lost.”

Lola didn’t look at him. Her gaze stayed fixed on the skyline outside, on the flicker of lights from the Strip far below. “Yeah,” she said after a while. “It is.”

He let the quiet hold them.
Enzo turned toward her, fingers finding her hand. “You didn’t deserve to carry that kind of loneliness.”

She huffed out a small laugh, not cruel, just hollow. “Didn’t ask if I did.”

He wanted to tell her he’d carry it for her, all of it: the loneliness, the fire, the fury but he’d learned enough to know some pain couldn’t be carried by anyone else. It had to burn its way clean.

So instead, he squeezed her hand and said, “We’ve got to fly out to Utah.”

Her head turned. “Utah?”

“My family estate,” he said. “For Nico’s memorial.”

Her expression flickered, shock first, then something heavier. “That soon?”

“Fly in, fly out,” he said. “One night. No press, no guests outside family. It’s not open casket. Just… closure.”

Lola nodded slowly, thumb tracing circles on the back of his hand. “You want me there?”

“I need you there,” he corrected.

Her throat worked, but she didn’t argue. “Of course I’ll go.”

He reached up, tucking a loose strand of hair behind her ear, his fingers lingering along her neck. “You sure you’re up for it?”

She met his eyes, and for the first time all day, they didn’t look hollow. They looked alive. “If you’re walking into that, you don’t go alone.”

Something in him eased at that, just a little. Enough to breathe.
He leaned in and kissed her. Not the kind of kiss that tried to erase pain, but the kind that acknowledged it. Her lips tasted like salt and coffee and the smallest, sweetest bit of defiance. She kissed him back, slow at first, then deeper, fingers curling into the front of his shirt.
When he pulled back, their foreheads stayed pressed together.

“Tomorrow,” he said quietly, “I’ll have the flight ready. Private bird, in and out. No detours.”

“Fancy,” she murmured. “You gonna let me pick the playlist?”

He smiled into her hair. “Not a chance.”

“Then they better fly fast,” she whispered, breath warm against his jaw.

He kissed her again, slower this time, softer, and when he pulled her onto his lap, she came willingly, curling against him like she was trying to memorize the shape of his body. His hands traced her back, her hips, the edge of his shirt hanging loose on her.
They didn’t need to speak. The room said everything; quiet hum of the fan, low light spilling over the bed, the ache of what they’d lost, and the fragile thing they still had left.

Lola lifted her head just enough to look at him. “We’re gonna make it, right?”

Enzo brushed his thumb along her cheekbone. “We’re gonna make them wish we hadn’t.”

That got her to smile, barely, but it was there. She leaned in, kissed him once more, then whispered against his mouth, “Good.”

When they finally lay down, her body folded into his like gravity knew where it belonged. The air between them felt clean for the first time in days.
Enzo stared up at the ceiling, his arm around her waist, her heartbeat pressed against his ribs.

We fly, we say goodbye, we come back.
Then we start pulling at every thread we can find until we find something.

Sleep came slow, but when it did, it found them tangled together, two survivors with fire in their bones, resting before the next storm.

Lola

The jet hummed low and steady beneath them, a sound that might have been comforting if it didn’t sit over the hollow in her chest.

Everyone looked carved from something expensive and sharp—black suits that could cut a man, pressed collars, gold cufflinks glinting like quiet threats. Enzo in black on black, Dom with his tie loosened but shoes shined to a mirror, Gino’s sleeves rolled just enough to show ink, and her—Lola—in a long-sleeved black dress that felt like armor stitched in silk.

Dottie had said it once: You can dress grief up, but it’s still grief.

Enzo poured the first round of whiskey mid-flight. No one needed to say what for. They just passed the glasses, the clink soft but solid.

“To Nico,” Gino said, voice rough.

“To the idiot who thought he could drive faster than God,” Dom muttered.

That got them all to breathe. Almost laugh.

Lola lifted her glass last, the amber liquid catching the cabin lights like fire trapped in glass. “To the man who somehow made all of us a little less unbearable.”

Even Enzo cracked a grin at that, quiet but real. They all drank. The whiskey burned the whole way down hot, bitter, clean.

Outside the windows, Utah stretched wide and endless, all bone-colored mountains and gold light bleeding through the clouds. The Marchesi estate sat like a fortress carved into the world’s jawline: stone, glass, and money. Too still. Too perfect.

When the helicopter touched down on the private pad beside the main house, Lola’s stomach went cold. The weight of air changed here. It smelled like marble and legacy and the kind of silence only money could buy.

Enzo offered his hand as she stepped down. She took it, even though she didn’t need to.

Inside, the memorial was a cathedral made of glass and grief. White lilies spilled from polished vases, and in the center—like a goddamn centerpiece at a banquet—sat a marble urn, clean, cold, gleaming under the lights.

Nico.

Her chest clenched so hard she almost laughed.
You hated attention. You’d be losing your mind right now, being the main event. 

She could almost hear his voice in her head; something smug, something kind.
Look at you, showing up on time for once. I knew you loved me.

Shut up, she thought, and the smile ghosted across her mouth anyway.

Enzo’s hand found her lower back, guiding her forward through the crowd. His mother—elegant, grave-faced, smelling faintly of gardenias—kissed Lola’s cheek. “Thank you for coming, cara mia \[my dear\].”

His sister followed, a fragile smile and trembling hands. Nico’s parents were next, and that was worse. His mother’s eyes were swollen, his father stone-faced in that way Italian men mourned—silently, violently, inward. Lola murmured something polite but could say what it was because it was like she wasn’t really there.

Then came a blur of handshakes and condolences, faces she didn’t recognize, names she didn’t care to. Men in dark suits murmuring words about “legacy” and “brotherhood.” Women with pearls and perfect lipstick saying how “Nico was so kind.”

She heard none of it.
Her focus never left the urn.
It was too white. Too polished. Too final.

Enzo drifted off with Gino and Dom, shaking hands, doing the polite mafia dance of mourning, keeping the business wolves at bay even here. Lola stayed behind.

She stepped closer to the urn. Close enough that her reflection ghosted faintly across the marble.

“Hey, Nic.”
She ran a thumb over the cool marble. “You’d tell me to stop looking at you like that. Say something dumb to make me laugh.”
She exhaled, long and quiet. It almost steadied her. Almost.
Her voice broke just once. “Could’ve waited to see how it all turned out, you impatient bastard.”

And then she saw them.
A bouquet—black roses, velvety and obscene in their perfection—laid neatly at the base of the urn. No card on top. No one around who looked like they’d just placed them there.
Her stomach didn’t drop. It coiled.
She bent slightly, fingers brushing one of the petals. The black was so deep it almost shimmered blue under the lights.
Then she saw it; a sliver of paper, tucked between the stems. Small, folded, deliberate.

She glanced around. Enzo was still talking to Nico’s father. Gino and Dom were flanking a senator who’d probably come to sniff blood in the water. No one looking her way.

Lola slipped the note free and opened it.

Black suits you, Pet.
The words were thin and elegant, the ink dark enough to feel personal.

Her pulse didn’t spike. It sank low, heavy, cold.

Of course. Even here. Even now.

She folded the paper once, neat and slow, tucking it into her clutch like a secret she planned to feed to fire later.

You really thought you could slither into this moment? Into his goodbye?

Her jaw locked. A quiet fury uncoiled in her chest, clean and focused.
Fine. You want to play? I’ll show you what happens when the wrong girl remembers she was built for survival.

She looked back at the urn—Nico’s name carved sharp into marble, surrounded by too much softness. The corner of her mouth twitched.
“Looks like I dragged you into one more mess,” she whispered, eyes on the marble urn. “Sorry, Nic. Guess I don’t know how to quit while I’m ahead.”
Her fingers brushed the cool stone once, a ghost of touch. “Hope you’re watching, though. Because I’m not done yet—and it’s about to get really fucking interesting.”
A small, crooked smile tugged at her mouth. “You’d like that part.”

She could almost hear him sigh, that familiar mock frustration laced with affection. “You’re impossible, Lo.”

“I love you Nic,” She pressed her fingers once to the cold marble, a silent goodbye, then turned on her heel.