She barely finished the word before he moved. His hand tangled in her hair, yanking her head back, and his mouth crashed against hers — not the careful kiss of the night before, but something ravenous, claiming, all teeth and tongue. He pushed her backward onto the bed, his weight pinning her down before she could catch her breath.

His hands were everywhere at once — rough palms sliding up her thighs, fingers digging into her hips hard enough to bruise. She gasped against his mouth, and he swallowed the sound, his grip tightening. When he pulled back, just inches, his gray eyes were dark, pupils blown wide, and there was nothing careful left in them.

"Say it again," he growled, his voice lower than she'd ever heard it. "Tell me you want this."

"I want it," she said, and her voice didn't shake. "I want you."

He didn't wait. He flipped her onto her stomach, one hand pressing between her shoulder blades, and she felt the heat of him behind her, the rough fabric of his slacks against her bare thighs. He pulled her hips up, and she let him, her fingers gripping the sheets as she heard his belt unbuckle, the rasp of his zipper. Then his cock pressed against her, not entering, just there — hot, thick, a promise she could feel in her pulse.

"This is what you asked for," he said, and his hand slid from her back to her hair, fisting it gently, a warning. "You don't get to change your mind."

She didn't answer with words. She pushed back against him, and he took the invitation — shoved into her in one thick stroke, filling her so fast she cried out, a raw sound that was half pain, half relief. He was bigger than she remembered, or maybe she was just tighter, still new to this. He stilled for half a second, letting her adjust, but his hand in her hair stayed taut.

"Move," she whispered. And he did.

He fucked her hard, his hips slapping against her ass, each thrust driving her forward into the mattress until she couldn't tell where the pleasure ended and the ache began. His grip on her hair pulled her head back, a leash, and she loved it — loved the way he took what she'd offered, the way his breath came ragged against her ear, the way he groaned her name like a curse. She came with his hand on her throat, not squeezing, just there, a claim, and he followed seconds later, buried deep, his body shuddering against hers.

Afterward, he didn't pull away. He stayed inside her, his chest pressed to her back, his mouth against her shoulder. His hand found hers and held it, and she felt the aftershock in his fingers, the way they trembled against her palm.

That week became a rhythm she didn't want to break. Mornings in his bed — the heavy cotton sheets tangled around her legs, the smell of him on her skin, the way he always woke before her and watched her open her eyes. He made her coffee, dark and bitter, the way he drank it, and she didn't correct him. Breakfast at a diner around the corner from the Ritz, where the waitress called him Mr. Bianchi, and he called her Lou and tipped her twice the bill. Afternoons at fittings and shows, where Tisha walked runways under hot lights, and he sat in the front row, gray eyes tracking her every step, never clapping, just watching.

He took her shopping on a Tuesday — not anything fancy, just a stroll through SoHo, his hand on her lower back, his thumb tracing the curve of her spine through her sundress. She tried on a yellow dress in a tiny boutique, and when she came out of the dressing room, he was leaning against the wall, arms crossed, his expression unreadable. She spun slowly, the fabric flaring around her knees.

"Well?" she asked.

"You're the most beautiful thing I've ever seen," he said, and it wasn't a compliment — it was an observation, flat and certain, like he was stating the color of the sky. She bought the dress. He didn't let her pay.

At night, he was different. Not the careful lover of her first time, not the rough one of the second. He was both, alternating, reading her like a book she didn't know she was writing. Some nights, he took her against the wall, his hand over her mouth to keep the neighbors from hearing. Some nights, he lay her out on the bed and kissed every inch of her, starting at her ankles and working up, worshiping, until she was trembling and wet and begging. He never made her beg for long. But he always made her ask.

She learned things about him in the quiet moments. That he drank his whiskey neat, three fingers, never more, that he had a scar over his left ribs that she traced with her finger one night, and when she asked, he said "car accident," and she knew it wasn't true, but she didn't push. That he called her "tesoro" when he thought she was asleep — Italian for treasure, she looked it up on her phone while he was in the shower. That he could be soft, sometimes, in the dark, his hand on her cheek, his forehead pressed to hers, not saying anything, just breathing her air.

Friday came fast, the last day of fashion week. Her final show was a triumph — a closing piece that brought the audience to its feet, the designer himself kissing both her cheeks as the lights came up. Pete was there, of course, in his usual seat, and when she caught his eye from the runway, he gave her the smallest nod. Approval. Pride. She felt it warm her chest all the way backstage.

They'd planned dinner at eight. A reservation at a place she'd never heard of, somewhere Pete said was private, candlelit, no cameras. She was supposed to meet him at his mansion — not the Ritz penthouse, but his actual home, the place he kept outside the city. He'd given her the address that morning, written on a napkin, and told her to take a car.

She showed up at seven, wanting to surprise him, wanting to see his face when she walked in early, still flushed from the show, still wearing the yellow dress under her coat. The car dropped her at the gate, and the security guard — a broad man with a shaved head and a wire in his ear — let her through after checking a list. She walked up the long gravel drive, the mansion rising in front of her, old stone and ivy and lit windows that made it look almost welcoming.

The front door was unlocked.

She stepped inside, expecting music, expecting voices, expecting Pete to materialize from somewhere with that half-smile he wore when he was pleased. Instead: silence. The kind of silence that has weight, that presses on your ears. The foyer was grand, with marble floors and a chandelier that caught the last of the evening light, but the air felt wrong. Stale. Waiting.

"Pete?" Her voice echoed off the high ceiling. No answer.

She walked deeper into the house, her heels clicking on the marble, then muffled by a Persian rug as she entered a sitting room. A half-empty glass of whiskey sat on a side table. The ice melted. He'd been here recently. She turned a corner into a hallway, the walls lined with dark wood, old paintings of people who looked like him — same jaw, same cold eyes in oil and frame.

Then she heard it. A scream. Muffled, like it came from behind a door, from below. A man's voice, raw and terrified, cut off mid-sound. Then the wet, uneven sound of a struggle — something heavy being dragged, a chair scraping concrete.

Her blood went cold. Every instinct told her to leave, to walk backward out the front door and get in the car and go. But her feet didn't listen. They carried her forward, down the hall, past a door that was slightly ajar, through which a set of stairs descended into dim light. The scream had come from there. The basement.

She moved like she was underwater. Each step down the stairs felt too loud, the wood creaking beneath her weight. The light grew stronger as she descended, a bare bulb casting harsh shadows on concrete walls. At the bottom, a door stood open, just a crack. She pressed her eye to the gap.

The room was small, windowless, lit by a single work light on a metal stand. A man was bound to a wooden chair, his face swollen and bloody, his shirt torn open to reveal a chest covered in dark bruises. He was breathing in shallow, wet gasps — each exhale a bubble of blood at his lips. Around him stood three men. She didn't recognize two of them — big men in dark jackets, their sleeves rolled up, their hands red. The third was Enzo, Pete's driver. He was cleaning his knuckles with a rag, his face bored, like he'd done this a hundred times before.

And then she saw Pete.

He stood at the far end of the room, his back to her, his suit jacket off, his sleeves rolled to his elbows. He was holding a knife — not a kitchen knife, something longer, narrower, the blade catching the light. He was speaking, his voice low and calm, the same voice he used to order coffee, to whisper in her ear at night.

"You think I don't know," he said to the bound man, "who's been skimming from the Jersey docks. You think I don't know whose kid brother got picked up last week, who's been feeding information to the feds to save his own skin." He tilted his head, and the man in the chair sobbed, a broken sound that made Tisha's stomach clench. "I've known for three weeks, Dominic. I was just waiting to see if you'd come to me. If you'd be a man about it."

The bound man tried to speak, his words lost in a gurgle. Pete stepped closer, the knife held loosely, almost casually, at his side.

"You didn't," Pete said. "So here we are."

He moved fast — faster than Tisha's mind could track. One hand grabbed the man's hair, yanking his head back, and the knife swept across his throat in a clean, practiced arc. The man made a sound like a punctured tire, a hissing gasp that went on and on, and blood poured down his chest in a dark sheet, soaking into his pants, pooling on the floor. Pete stepped back, watching. His face was empty. Not angry. Not satisfied. Just empty, like this was work, like the man on the chair was a broken machine he'd finally gotten around to replacing.

Tisha's hand flew to her mouth. She tasted bile, sharp and hot. The world tilted, the stairs spinning beneath her feet, and she grabbed the doorframe to keep from falling. The wood creaked under her grip.

Enzo's head snapped toward the door. His eyes met hers through the crack.

"Boss—"

She didn't wait to hear the rest. She was already running, her heels skidding on the wooden stairs, her hands catching her weight as she stumbled up. She hit the top of the stairs, the hallway blurring past her, the foyer opening up, the front door — she slammed through it, gravel biting into her feet through her thin heels, the cold air hitting her face like a slap.

The security guard at the gate was looking at her, his hand going to his ear. She didn't stop. She ran past him, down the drive, onto the road, her breath ragged, her vision tunneling. The car that had dropped her off was gone. There was nothing but trees and the distant glow of headlights on a main road she couldn't see.

She ran until her lungs burned, until her legs gave out, until she collapsed onto the shoulder of a country road, her hands scraping gravel, the yellow dress torn at the hem. She vomited into the grass, the whiskey and coffee and bile burning her throat. Then she sat there, shaking, her arms wrapped around her knees, staring at the road.

The man in the chair. The knife. Pete's face was empty, like he'd done it a thousand times before. Like he'd done it before breakfast the other morning, before he'd made her coffee, before he'd kissed her forehead and called her tesoro.

Her phone was in her coat pocket. She pulled it out, her fingers numb, and booked a flight. The next one out of JFK to Manila, departing in four hours. She had just enough time.

She didn't go back to the Ritz. Didn't go back to her walk-up in Brooklyn. She went straight to the airport, taking a cab she waved down on the main road, her voice flat when the driver asked where to. At a counter in Terminal 4, she bought a notebook and a pen. She sat in a plastic chair by the gate, the fluorescent lights humming overhead, and wrote.

Pete,

I saw what you did. I know what you are. I can't be part of this. Don't try to find me. Don't contact me. If you ever cared about me at all, you'd let me go.

She folded the note once, twice, pressed it flat against her thigh. The paper was cheap, the kind that came in spiral notebooks from airport shops, and her handwriting looked childish in the harsh light — looped letters, a tremor in the downstrokes. She didn't read it again. If she read it again, she'd tear it up.

The boarding announcement crackled over the speakers. Manila, final call. She stood, her legs unsteady, and joined the line. The woman ahead of her was holding a sleeping toddler, the child's cheek pressed to her shoulder, his small fist curled in her hair. Tisha looked away. Her eyes burned, but she didn't cry. She couldn't — if she started, she wouldn't stop, and she needed to get on the plane. She needed to be in the air, above the clouds, somewhere Pete Bianchi couldn't reach her.

The flight attendant took her boarding pass with a practiced smile. Tisha walked down the jet bridge, the carpet worn under her feet, the yellow dress still torn at the hem, gravel dust clinging to her heels. She found her seat — window, middle of the plane — and sat down, her coat pulled tight around her. The man beside her was already asleep, his mouth open, his snoring a low rumble. She pressed her forehead to the cold plastic of the window and watched the ground crew load luggage into the cargo hold.

She needed to get the note to him. She couldn't leave it at the mansion — Enzo had seen her, and Pete would find it before she was even in the air. She pulled out her phone, her fingers moving on instinct, and called the only number she knew by heart — her mother's house in Manila. It rang three times, four, before the voicemail picked up, her mother's voice cheerful and recorded, telling callers to leave a message after the tone.

"Ma," she said, and her voice cracked. She swallowed. "I'm coming home. I'm on a flight. I'll land at—" She checked the ticket in her lap. "—six in the morning, your time. I'll explain when I get there. I love you."

She hung up and stared at the phone. The home screen was a photo of her and Pete — she'd taken it in the diner, him caught mid-eye-roll as she aimed the camera at him, the corner of his mouth turned up despite himself. She deleted it. Then she deleted his contact. Then she turned the phone off and shoved it into her coat pocket.

The plane pushed back from the gate. The safety demonstration played on the overhead screens, the flight attendant miming the oxygen mask with robotic cheer. Tisha watched the runway lights blur past as the plane accelerated, the G-force pressing her into her seat as the wheels left the ground. She watched the city lights shrink, the grid of streets becoming a map, becoming nothing. Somewhere down there, Pete was standing in a basement with blood on his hands. And somewhere in her coat pocket, a folded note was waiting for an address she didn't know how to send it to.

She closed her eyes. The man beside her snored. The cabin lights dimmed. And the plane carried her east, into the dark, away from everything she'd thought she knew.