Chapter 114 Amelia

Chapter 114 Amelia
Amelia

I make it back to my room before my legs actually stop working properly.

I close the door, lean back against it, and stand there a long moment just breathing, my heart still going too fast, my mouth still carrying the ghost of a kiss I ended myself and already miss anyway. That's the part I can't get past. Not the kiss itself but how badly I wanted it to keep going.

I cross to the mirror without deciding to, and I stand there studying my own reflection like it might have some answer written across it that I haven't found yet. My lips are still faintly swollen. My cheeks are still flushed. I touch my mouth without meaning to, fingers brushing against skin that still remembers exactly how his felt against it, and I snatch my hand back down like I've been caught doing something shameful.

I'm not ashamed of the kiss. I need to be clear with myself about that much, at least. I'm furious at how much of myself I lost inside it, how completely every careful argument I've built against wanting him evaporated the second his hand found my jaw.

I change out of my clothes slow, careful of my shoulder, and sit on the edge of the bed in the dark for a long time before I even try to talk myself back into any kind of clarity. My reflection in the window across the room stares back at me, a stranger for a moment, someone who kissed a Mafia boss and meant it, someone I don't fully recognize despite having lived inside her skin for the entirety of the last several weeks.

I sit on the edge of the bed and try to talk myself back into the version of clarity I had standing in that sitting room. Ren is dangerous. Ren kills people, has killed people, will probably kill more people before either of us finishes whatever this turns out to be. Ren runs an empire built on fear the same way Falcon apparently runs his. Ren is engaged.

That last one sits heaviest of anything else on the list.

I've known about Sophia since before any of this happened, since back in Verona when whispers about the family's business arrangements still felt like distant gossip instead of anything that actually mattered to me personally. I never let myself think about it too closely, because thinking about it meant admitting how much I already cared what Ren's future looked like, and admitting that felt more dangerous than any gun pointed at my head.

I think about her now, lying here with my pulse still not fully settled. Sophia, chosen for reasons that have nothing to do with love and everything to do with alliances and territory and whatever careful, patient calculations his father makes about the future of that entire world. I don't hate her. That would be easier, honestly, to have someone simple to direct all of this frustration toward.

Instead I just feel tired, staring at the ceiling, turning the whole tangled mess over in my mind. Sophia belongs in his world. She was raised for it, prepared for it, chosen specifically because she fits into it the way I never could and never will. I'm not jealous of her. I'm something more complicated than jealous. I'm aware, painfully aware, of exactly how much space exists between the woman his father expects him to marry and the woman currently lying in this bed replaying a kiss she ended herself.

I think about Lucian too, about a father capable of raising two sons in complete secrecy from each other, capable of arranging a marriage for the son he did claim with the same cold calculation he apparently used to erase the one he didn't. Whatever Ren tells himself about eventually choosing his own path, I wonder how much of that choice actually exists inside a family built entirely around a man that patient, that controlling. I don't voice any of that out loud, not tonight, not to anyone. I just let it sit there alongside everything else keeping sleep out of reach.

I don't sleep well that night. I drift in and out, catching fragments of dreams that dissolve the second I try to hold onto them, and by morning I'm exhausted in a way that has nothing to do with my healing shoulder and everything to do with a mind that won't stop working through a problem it doesn't have an answer for. I lie there in the gray early light for a long while before finally forcing myself up, aware that whatever today holds, exhaustion isn't going to be an excuse either of us gets to use.

I try to act normal the next day. I eat breakfast at the small table in the kitchen, exchange a few words with the woman who's been helping with my recovery, stretch and pace the way I've been doing since I first started rebuilding strength back in that other room, the one I refuse to think about too closely except when I absolutely have to.

The morning passes slow, ordinary in a way that feels almost surreal given everything currently sitting unresolved underneath it. I read a few chapters of the same battered paperback I never finished in that other room, the one I picked specifically because it looked like it had actually been read, and something about continuing a story I started under such different circumstances settles part of the restlessness still churning in my chest.

The story itself barely registers. I read the same paragraph three times before giving up on actually following the plot, and instead just let the physical act of reading occupy my hands and eyes while my mind keeps circling everything from the night before. I think about how strange it is, holding this exact object, a thing that once sat on a nightstand in a room I was never allowed to leave, now sitting in my lap in a house where the door doesn't lock from the outside at all.

I set it down eventually and go looking for something more useful to do with my restless energy, ending up in the small kitchen, helping the woman who's been assisting my recovery chop vegetables for something she's making for dinner. It's mindless work, the kind that doesn't ask anything of me except steady hands and a knife, and something about the ordinary rhythm of it settles part of the churn still sitting under my ribs.

Ren doesn't mention the kiss. I catch him once, midmorning, crossing the hallway with papers in hand, and he pauses just long enough to ask how my shoulder's healing, nothing in his voice suggesting last night happened at all. I answer the same way, careful, ordinary, and we both walk away from the exchange without acknowledging the particular tension sitting underneath every word neither of us actually says.

It should feel like relief, that restraint. Instead it just makes everything worse, because every time our eyes meet across a room, I know exactly what he's remembering, and I know he knows I'm remembering it too. Something passes between us in those brief, careful glances that neither of us has the courage yet to name out loud, and the not-naming somehow carries more weight than actually saying it would.

My phone rings a little after noon, an unfamiliar number, and something in me goes instantly alert before I even answer it.

"Captain Russo," a voice says, formal, unfamiliar. "This is Major Reyes, from your command."

My stomach drops.

"I'm calling regarding your extended absence," he continues, no preamble, exactly the clipped efficiency I remember from every superior officer I ever served under. "You've been listed as unaccounted for over five weeks now. I need you to understand that a formal inquiry is already underway."

"I understand," I say, forcing my voice into the same careful, controlled register I used to use briefing senior officers, even though my pulse is hammering harder than it should for a conversation this ordinary.

"We'll need a full account of what happened. Where you were held. Who was involved. Whether any classified information was compromised during your captivity." He pauses, something almost human bleeding briefly through the formal tone. "Your brother's already provided a preliminary statement. We need yours as well, as soon as you're medically cleared to give it."

"When."

"As soon as possible. This isn't a request, Captain. It's protocol, and frankly, given the circumstances, considerably more lenient protocol than a disappearance this long would normally warrant."

I close my eyes, pressing my fingers against my temple, feeling the entire weight of a life I haven't thought about properly in weeks pressing back down on me all at once. My unit. My command structure. Every ordinary obligation of a career I spent years building, all of it apparently still running exactly as it always has, waiting patiently for me to step back into it the moment I'm cleared to do so.

"I understand," I say again, because there's nothing else to say to a man who isn't asking permission, just informing me of exactly how much of my old life is still very much expecting me back.

"Good. We'll be in touch about scheduling. And Captain." His voice softens fractionally. "Welcome back."

He hangs up before I can respond, and I sit there holding the phone a long moment, staring at nothing, letting the full weight of that conversation settle properly. I set the phone down slowly on the edge of the dresser, my hand not quite steady, and cross to the window, staring out at a stretch of property I've barely explored since I woke up here, still turning over everything the major just said.

A formal inquiry. A statement. Questions about who was involved, about classified information, about every detail of a captivity that's already complicated enough without adding a Mafia lord's rescue operation into the official record. What exactly am I supposed to tell them. The truth, unedited, would tangle Ren and his entire organization into a military investigation in ways that could get more people killed than already have been.

I don't have an answer for that yet. I don't know how much I'm supposed to protect, how much I even want to protect, given everything currently unresolved between us.

I find Ren later that afternoon, going over something with Alessandro in the study, and I wait until Alessandro steps out before I say anything.

"My command called," I say.

He looks up immediately, something careful crossing his face. "What did they say?"

"They want a full account. Where I was held. Who was involved. There's already a formal inquiry underway." I cross my arms, feeling suddenly exposed standing in this room, this world, talking about the one that's about to collide with it. "I have to give a statement, Ren. Soon."

Something tightens behind his eyes, calculation replacing the earlier concern. "What are you going to tell them?"

"I don't know yet." I hold his gaze. "That's the problem. Whatever I say becomes part of an official record. If I tell them everything, exactly what happened, exactly who got me out, that puts you and your entire organization directly in the path of a military investigation. If I don't tell them everything, I'm lying in an official statement, which is its own kind of violation I've never once considered before in my entire career."

"You don't owe me protection," he says quietly. "Whatever you need to tell them to keep yourself clear of consequences, that's what you should say."

"It's not that simple."

"Why not?"

I study him a long moment, trying to find the words for something I've barely worked out myself yet. "Because protecting you isn't actually the complicated part. The complicated part is that I don't know which version of the truth I even believe I owe them. I spent years believing loyalty to my command was absolute. Right now, standing here, that certainty doesn't feel as solid as it used to."

Something shifts in his expression, understanding dawning slow and careful. "You're worried this is the first crack."

"I don't know what it is yet. I just know it's real, and it's not going away just because I want to spend the next few weeks figuring out whatever this is between us instead." I gesture vaguely between the two of us, encompassing everything unresolved since last night. "My old life is still out there, Ren. Waiting. Expecting me back exactly as I was before any of this happened, and I don't know if that version of me even exists anymore."

He doesn't answer right away, and I watch him turn the problem over the same careful, methodical way he turns over every other problem currently sitting between us.

"When do you need to give the statement," he asks finally.

"Soon. Days, maybe. Not weeks."

"Then we have days to figure out what you're actually comfortable telling them." His voice carries something steady now, practical, the particular calm he brings to every crisis since I've known him. "I'm not going to pretend this doesn't complicate things. It does. But we'll figure it out together, the same way we've figured out everything else."

"Together." I test the word, turning it over. "That's a strange thing to promise someone you kissed."

"I meant what I said last night. I'm not giving up on any of this. That includes helping you navigate whatever your command throws at you, whether or not you and I ever figure out the rest of it."

Something in the steady, unconditional way he says it settles part of the unease currently sitting in my chest, though it doesn't fully resolve the larger, more tangled question underneath everything else. I still don't know what I'm going to tell my command. I still don't know how to reconcile the woman standing in this study, wanting a man she has every logical reason to walk away from, with the officer who's about to have to explain her entire disappearance to people who expect absolute honesty as a matter of duty.

I leave the study without fully resolving any of it, and I spend the rest of the afternoon turning the problem over from every possible angle I can manage. By evening, I still don't have an answer, and something about that unresolved tension follows me all the way to sleep, restless and unsettled in a way that has nothing to do with Falcon or Sophia and everything to do with a version of my own life I'm no longer certain I know how to step back into cleanly.

My phone buzzes again just as I'm finally drifting off, another unfamiliar number, and something cold settles into my chest before I've even read the message.

Unknown number. Single line of text, no context and no explanation.

The inquiry into your captivity has already been flagged for cross-reference with an active organized crime investigation. Expect a visit within the week.

I sit up fast, my shoulder protesting the sudden movement, and stare at the screen like it might resolve into something less alarming if I just look at it long enough.

It doesn't.

I read the message three more times, searching for anything that might tell me who actually sent it. No name. No prior contact. Just a number I don't recognize and a single sentence carrying enough weight to upend whatever careful timeline I thought I still had. I think about calling it back, some instinct telling me the answer might be worth whatever risk that carries, before I decide against it. Whoever sent this wanted me to have the information without giving me a way to trace where it actually came from, and that alone tells me something about how carefully constructed this warning actually is.

Whatever careful, private negotiation I thought I had days to work through with Ren just collapsed into something urgent, and I don't even know yet who sent the message, or how they knew enough about my situation to send it at all.

I get up, careful of my shoulder, and cross to the door, already reaching for the handle before I fully decide to go find him. Whatever this means, whoever sent it, Ren needs to see it tonight, not tomorrow, not once I've had time to sit with it properly. Some things don't get better with waiting. This feels like exactly that kind of thing.

I pause with my hand on the handle, phone still clutched in my other palm, and take one steadying breath before I step out into the hallway. Whatever conversation waits on the other side of this door, whatever this new complication means for the careful negotiation we started building only hours ago, I already know one thing standing here in the dark.

My old life and this new one aren't circling each other from a safe distance anymore. They've already started colliding, faster and messier than either Ren or I had any time to prepare for, and I have no idea yet which version of myself is actually going to survive the impact.