Chapter 35: Smoke Without Fire
Marco hadn’t come to bed in three nights.
Not that Sofia expected him to. Ever since the incident at Alyssa’s school, and their brief, explosive argument, he’d buried himself deeper into his work, like a man fleeing a house already burning. The study lights stayed on long past midnight. The security staff whispered about new patrol rotations and encrypted protocols. One even mentioned surveillance being extended to outside her university campus, though Sofia pretended not to hear.
She passed by the study that night and paused. The door was cracked open, light spilling into the hall.
Inside, Marco sat hunched over a table scattered with maps, photos, and intel files. His shirt sleeves were rolled up, tie abandoned, stubble shadowing his jaw. On one screen, a CCTV feed looped in silence, grainy footage of alleyways, license plates, faces blurred by distance.
Kristoff.
The name hadn’t been said aloud in days, but it lived in the house now haunting Marco’s movements, turning his silences into thunderclouds.
“Another dead end,” he muttered, eyes fixed on a laptop. “Every time we get close, he pulls the trail from under us.”
Giovanni, sitting opposite him with a drink in hand, leaned back. “He’s a ghost for a reason. You taught him half these tricks.”
Marco exhaled sharply through his nose. “And now he’s using them to circle us. I don’t like how quiet it’s been.”
“You think he’s waiting for something?”
Marco’s jaw clenched. “No. I think he’s already doing something. We’re just blind to it.”
Meanwhile – Sofia’s Room
I curled up on her bed, phone pressed to my ear, textbook forgotten beside me.
“You sound like someone who’s trying really hard to pretend everything is normal,” Lucia said from the other end, her tone light but probing.
I sighed. “Everything is normal.”
“Oh, so no brooding mafia husbands pacing the halls like a wolf in silk suits? No guards whispering about encrypted surveillance? No tension so thick you could slice it with a cake knife?”
I groaned. “You’re dramatic.”
“And you’re lying.” Lucia's voice softened. “Come on, Fifi. Talk to me. Has he said anything about that night? The gala? The almost kiss? The actual kiss?”
Heat crept up my neck. “Nothing. We’re pretending it didn’t happen.”
Lucia scoffed. “Right. Because denying explosive sexual tension always ends well.”
“I’m serious, Luce. He’s back to business as usual. Barely says a word. And when he does, it’s about Alyssa. Or work. Or Kristoff.”
Lucia hesitated. “Is that what you want?”
I didn’t answer for a long moment. I stared at the ceiling, thinking of how it felt to fall into Marco’s arms in that moment of chaos. The kiss, furious, desperate, undeniable. The slap I gave him after, more from fear than anger. The way his hand lingered just a second too long on my wrist before he let go.
“I don’t know what I want,” I said quietly. “But I know I’m tired of being handled like I’m a pawn.”
Lucia snorted. “Oh, sweetheart. You’re not furniture. You’re the fire hazard in his perfectly controlled world.”
I smiled despite myself. “And you’re the devil whispering on my shoulder.”
“I do my best.”
Back in the Study – Late Night
The house had gone silent again. Giovanni had retired, and the guards had rotated shifts. But Marco remained, sitting in the cold glow of the monitors.
He rewound the security footage for the third time, watching a man in a dark coat disappear into a blind spot outside one of their warehouses.
Not Kristoff. But connected.
His mind should’ve been focused.
Instead, it was drifting again.
To the image of Sofia curled beside Alyssa in bed. To the soft way she spoke to his daughter. The way her laugh, when it slipped past her walls lingered longer than it should in his memory.
To her lips, parted with surprise after their kiss. The sting of her slap hadn’t hurt nearly as much as the shame in her eyes.
He hadn’t meant to touch her like that.
Or maybe he had.
He ran a hand over his face, groaning quietly.
He didn’t know what he was doing anymore. With the business. With Kristoff. With her.
And yet, when he closed his eyes, her voice always found him.
You make danger look seductive.
Maybe because she was danger, too.
But unlike Kristoff, this danger didn’t want to kill him.
It wanted to change him.
And that… was worse.