Chapter 48 -
The door had closed, but Leo had not left.
Nia realized this the moment she turned around, expecting the solitude that would allow her to fall apart properly. Instead, she found him standing in the hallway just beyond the threshold, his hand still extended as if he had not quite finished holding her arm. As if some part of him could not bear to fully release the contact.
She stepped back into the doorway, taking in the sight of him. His white shirt was still partially unbuttoned, the fabric clinging to his chest where tension had made sweat bead along his skin. His dark hair fell across his forehead in a way that made him look younger, less like the Enforcer and more like the boy Micheal had described. The boy who had learned too early that the world was cruel.
“Leo,” she said, her voice still raw from the tension of the party. “What are you doing?”
He did not answer immediately. Instead, he reached out and pulled her back into the hallway, his hand closing around her arm again with that same firm, immovable grip. The door to her room swung closed behind them with a soft click, leaving them alone in the corridor. The sounds of the party below were muffled now, barely audible through the thick walls and expensive soundproofing.
They stood inches apart, close enough that she could see the individual lines of exhaustion etched around his eyes, close enough that she could feel the heat radiating from his body. Both of them were breathing hard, their chests rising and falling in sync, as if they were synchronized in their fury and their fear.
“Let go of me,” Nia said, but her voice lacked conviction. Some traitorous part of her did not want him to release her. Some broken part of her wanted to stay in this moment, suspended between anger and something else entirely.
“Not until you understand,” Leo said, his voice rough with emotion. His grip on her arm tightened slightly, not painful but insistent. It was a physical manifestation of his desperation to make her see something that he seemed incapable of articulating.
“Understand what?” Nia demanded, trying to pull her arm free even as part of her remained still. “That you are a monster? I already knew that. That you are a liar? Also already established. So what exactly is it that I am supposed to understand, Leo?”
“That you are not safe here,” he said, the words tumbling out like a confession. “Not really. Not in any way that matters. Santiago is not just making threats for the sake of it. He meant every word. And Micheal, for all his good intentions, is still a man raised in a family of killers who sees the world as a game to be played.”
“I know that,” Nia said, her voice dropping to match his intensity. “I have always known that. From the moment you put a gun to my head, I have understood that safety is not something that exists in your world. So why are you telling me this now? Why do you suddenly care whether I understand my own precarious situation?”
Leo’s eyes were intense, swirling with a grey storm that looked almost like pleading. For a second, the mask of the Enforcer cracked, and she saw the man beneath—the one who was drowning in a sea of obligations and blood.
“Because you are a tool in a mission I cannot afford to fail,” he snapped, though his voice lacked its usual bite. “If something happens to you before I get the answers I need, it all falls apart. I need you focused. I need you alive. Nothing more.”
Nia felt a sharp sting at his words, a cold reminder of her status in this house. “Then let me go,” she whispered, her voice trembling. “If I am just a tool, send me home. Use me from a distance. Let me go back to my life.”
“I can’t,” he replied, the words barely a whisper.
“Why not?”
Leo did not answer. The silence in the hallway became heavy, vibrating with all the things they were both too afraid to say. He looked at her, his gaze dropping to her lips for a fraction of a second, and for one heartbeat, Nia thought he might move closer. She thought he might break every rule he had ever set for himself.
Then, as quickly as the moment had arrived, it vanished. Leo stepped back abruptly, his hands falling to his sides as he straightened his posture. The wall was back up, higher and thicker than before.
“Goodnight, Miss Wallace,” he said coldly.
He turned on his heel and walked away, his footsteps echoing against the marble floor until he disappeared into the shadows of the west wing. Nia stood alone in the hallway, her heart still hammering against her ribs, wondering if the man she had seen for that brief second was real, or just another ghost in the house of DeSanto.
The silk of the sheets felt like ice against Nia’s skin as she paced the length of her room. Sleep was a ghost she could not catch, a luxury that felt far too dangerous to indulge in tonight. Every time she closed her eyes, she felt the phantom heat of Leo’s hand on her arm. Every time the house creaked, she heard his voice—rough, broken, and dangerously close.
She stopped by the window, staring out at the same moonlit grounds they had looked at together. Her mind was a tangled mess of “whys” and “almosts.”
What was he going to say?
The word had been right there, perched on the edge of his lips before he snatched it back and replaced it with coldness. Because… Because what? Because she was a tool? He had said that later, but the pause before it had felt like a different truth entirely. It had felt like a confession that was trying to claw its way out of a chest made of granite.