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I wanted her safe, so I protected her until she didn't need me anymore. She thought it meant more than that.

I press the back of my head against the cold wall and stare at the water-stained ceiling.

"I hear you," I say.

"Good." Just like that, the steel comes back into her voice. "Tell my brothers I want to be on the next call. Not after. On it. And Valentino⁠—"

"Yeah."

"Thank you."

The line goes dead.

I slide down the wall and end up sitting on the floor, staying there in the dark hall outside Amanda's door.

The rosary is still in my hand. I don't put it away. I rub my thumb over one bead, letting the repetition give me something to do. Letting it ground me as memories from long ago surface.

There was a girl once. Before the widow. Before all of them. Before I learned to call protection a job.

Her name was Chiara, and she lived two doors down from my mother's house, close enough that I could throw a stone at her window. I did, most mornings, to wake her up so we'd walk to school together.

People in the village thought we were cousins because we were always together and never touching, the way kids are when they've known each other too long to think about it. She had a laugh too big for her body and a habit of finishing my sentences wrong on purpose, just to watch me get annoyed.

I had no sister. She was the closest thing.

We were sixteen.

That night is not a story I tell. Not in confession. Not to anyone. But I know my part in it. I froze. I stood there. I did nothing. A boy with everything in him screaming to move, and nothing moving.

I built a life on that. Every locked door I've guarded, every perimeter I've walked, every woman I've pulled out of danger, it all started with Chiara.

It never fixed anything, but I kept doing it anyway.

I should sleep. Luca's running the perimeter, and I trust Luca more than I trust most of my own thoughts. There's no reason for me to sit on a cold floor outside Amanda's door.

But I stay there anyway.

The other women were easy.

Not easy to save. Easy to understand.

Frightened. Needing. Looking at me like I was something solid they could lean on. That I understood. That's a job, and I'm good at it. When the fear left them, I left too. I told myself that once they were safe, my part was done and I could walk away without looking back.

Amanda isn't like that.

That's the problem.

She's hurt. Drugged. Bruised.

But broken isn't the word for her.

Under all of it, there's something that won't bend. There's steel in her that nobody in my world bothered to look for because they were too busy noticing the gorgeous loud mouth blonde and filing her under harmless or easy or stupid when she is none of those things.

Trying to make sense of her gets me nowhere. Every time she seems figured out, she proves me wrong.

My head tips back against the wall and my eyes shut.

Standing outside a door is easy. The perimeter, the head count, the body between the threat and the person it's coming for.