Three days.
I'd been thinking about her for three days and I still hadn't figured out how to stop.
That was the problem. Not the fact that she was eighteen, not the fact that she was Romeo's sister, not the fact that my world would eat her alive before she even saw it coming. All of that was true and I knew it and none of it had done anything useful.
I sat through an entire meeting without retaining half of it. That had never happened to me before. I ran operations worth more money than most people would see in ten lifetimes. I sat across from men who would put a bullet in me if they thought they could get away with it.
Distraction wasn't something I did. I didn't zone out, I didn't lose focus, and I definitely didn't spend an hour and a half nodding at the right moments while thinking about someone I had no business thinking about.
I got halfway through the drive back before I realized I couldn't remember a single number from the last two hours. I'd have to get the details from someone else. That had never happened before either.
I shook hands, walked out, got in the car. Called Romeo on the way out of the parking lot.
"You coming?"
"Yeah. Twenty minutes."
He mentioned food and hung up. I drove and ran the list again. The same one I'd been running for three days because apparently my brain thought repetition was going to eventually do something useful.
She's eighteen. She grew up in Romeo's house. She's been through enough already, more than I knew the full details of, more than she'd probably ever tell anyone. She deserves to finish growing up without someone like me making it complicated.
I'd been in this life long enough to know what it did to the people around you. Caring about someone wasn't just a personal risk. It was a risk to them. I knew all of that. I'd always known all of that.
She was still the first thing I'd thought about when I woke up this morning.
I took the longer route without deciding to. Added about ten minutes. When I pulled up Romeo was already outside, jacket on, arms folded.
"Thirty minutes," he said.
"Traffic."
He gave me the look. The one I'd seen him use on people who thought they were getting away with something. Romeo and I had been friends for years, long enough that I'd watched him grow from a reckless seventeen year old into someone who ran one of the most controlled operations in the city.
He didn't miss things. He noticed when something was off and he stored it and came back to it at exactly the right moment. It was what made him good at what he did and occasionally made him the most inconvenient person to be around.
We went inside and I heard her before I saw her.
Laughing. Not the careful version she wore at the party when she was working the room. This was the real one. Loud, unfiltered, then I heard Matteo's voice going on about something and the sound of something clattering on the counter.
Romeo shook his head without slowing. "They've been in there for an hour."
We walked in and I read the room the way I always did.
Andrea at the counter with flour on her hands and flour on her cheek she hadn't noticed.
Mixing bowls and trays spread out, a bag of chocolate chips that Matteo was working through at a pace that suggested the cookies weren't seeing many of them. Elio at the table with a book, sitting at exactly the right distance to be present without being involved.
Luca in the doorway with his arms crossed, looking like a man who'd wandered in and hadn't found a good enough reason to leave.
"You're eating the chips," Andrea said to Matteo. Didn't look up.
"Quality testing."
"You've done half the bag."
"I'm thorough."
"You're annoying."
Matteo put a hand over his chest like she'd actually hurt him. She still didn't glance up. Romeo went straight to the counter and stole a piece of dough. Andrea swatted his hand without looking at him. Matteo laughed at Romeo's face, Romeo flicked him on the side of the head, and Andrea told both of them to grow up without missing a beat.
I stayed near the entrance and kept quiet.
She was different here. That was what I kept landing on no matter how many times I told myself to stop paying attention. At the party she'd been performative, keeping enough distance between herself and the room that she stayed in control of what she gave away.
Here she wasn't doing any of that. She was just in the kitchen with her family, not watching herself, not managing anything.
Romeo came and stood beside me after a while. Handed me a glass of water without saying anything about it.
"You good?" he said.
"Yeah."
He looked at me. Looked at the kitchen. Back at me. Said "good" and walked off toward Luca.
I watched them for a minute. They'd been doing this their whole lives, falling into these low quiet conversations that looked casual but never fully were. Romeo was my closest friend. I'd known him since we were teenagers doing things that don't get talked about now.
He trusted me with more than most people got access to and I'd always taken that seriously. In ten years I'd never given him a reason to question my judgment.
I already knew what he'd think about this.
Romeo was protective of Andrea in a way that didn't leave much room for grey area, and he was smart enough that he'd have figured out what was happening in my head before I finished the sentence. He'd be right too, which was the worst version of that conversation.
I knew the cost of my world, The meetings happened in places without windows. The men I worked with didn't separate business from personal when it came to leverage, because personal was where the leverage lived. I'd watched what happened when someone found out what you cared about. It stopped being yours pretty quickly after that.
I had kept everything at a distance for exactly that reason, for years, and it had worked.
She'd already had one person fail her badly.
One person who was supposed to be safe and wasn't, who was supposed to protect her and chose not to. She'd come through it and built something real from the other side and you could see it in the way she stood in that kitchen — like someone who had decided where she belonged and wasn't asking anyone's permission for it. She deserved to keep all of that exactly as it was.
I had that straight.
Then she pulled the tray from the oven and Matteo appeared at her shoulder and when she turned to respond her hair fell across her face and she blew it away with one quick impatient breath.
I looked at the counter.
The cookies came out and Matteo burned his mouth on one and made it everyone's problem. Andrea watched him with an expression that was trying hard not to be fond and losing. Elio took one without saying anything. Romeo called Matteo an idiot.
The kitchen was warm and loud and easy in that specific way you can't manufacture, the way that only exists between people who've been through something and stayed.
She fit here. She'd always fit here. Watching her move around that kitchen, laugh at her brothers, be completely at ease — it was obvious. She'd built something real in this house and it suited her.
My world was a different conversation entirely. A short one, if I was being honest with myself.
I'd gotten back to that when she glanced up. Not at me specifically, just one of those unfocused looks between tasks. Her eyes moved across the room and landed on me and stopped for half a second. Something moved through her face. She didn't get it back under control in time.
I felt it like something in my chest.
She looked away. Said something to Matteo. The room kept going like nothing had happened.
I stayed exactly where I was. Romeo was still talking to Luca and at some point he was going to look over and I was going to need to look like a person who had things figured out.
I didn't particularly feel like one right now. Three days of keeping my head straight and one look from across a kitchen had put a crack in most of it.
I needed to get it together.
Standing there watching her laugh at her brother, I was fairly certain that was going to be a real problem.