Gianna
I couldn't breathe.
Not the kind that makes you light-headed. The other kind. The kind where your body is so wound up it forgets how to do the basics – inhale, exhale, repeat – because every nerve is busy running calculations on how trapped you are.
Two weeks.
Fourteen days since Sal had said the word marriage at a table full of people who'd spent their entire life pretending I didn't exist. Fourteen days since Dominic had said not yet like he was reading a timetable, not rejecting a proposal. Fourteen days of waking up with his flat voice in my head and his pale eyes behind my eyelids and the memory of his hand resting close enough to touch under that dinner table.
I had tried. God, I had tried.
Messages first. Polite ones. "Can we talk?" Then less polite ones. "I need to speak with you about what happened at dinner." Then desperate ones. "Please. Just ten minutes." Each one delivered, each one vanishing into the void of his attention like a stone dropped into black water. No ripple. No response. Nothing.
I'd called his office. Been redirected to an assistant who'd taken my name and put me on hold for eleven minutes before the line went dead. I'd tried again the next day and been told Mr. Russo was unavailable. The third time, the assistant didn't even bother with hold – just a polite, mechanical voice saying "I'm sorry, there's nothing available" before the click.
I'd shown up at the manor's main house, hoping to catch him during one of his meetings with Sal. The guards at the east wing entrance had given me a look – not hostile, just blank, the way men look at things they've been told not to engage with – and told me Mr. Russo wasn't on the grounds.
He was always not. Not available. Not on the grounds. Not someone I could reach.
And then it clicked.
Not couldn't. Wouldn't.
He was choosing not to see me. Not because he was busy – a man like Dominic Russo wasn't too busy for anything he decided mattered. He was ignoring me because I didn't matter. Because in his world, I was a line item on a file Sal had handed him, and line items don't get to request meetings.
The thought sat in my stomach like something swallowed wrong – sharp, jagged, impossible to digest.
I was a formality.
And formalities don't get to say no.
I sat on the edge of my bed in the east wing and stared at the wall and felt the bruise on my arm – faded now, mostly yellow, barely visible unless you knew where to look – and thought about all the things I couldn't tell anyone.
Lena and Sara knew about the proposal. They knew about Dominic. They knew I was spiraling. And they knew about Butter&Fig.
No one else did.
Butter&Fig was my secret. My hidden life. The thing I'd built in the cracks between the person my uncle wanted me to be and the person I actually was. An Instagram bakery – no face, no name, no connection to Moretti anything. Just photos. Pastries I'd invented in this very kitchen, shot on the marble island in golden afternoon light, posted under a handle that meant nothing to anyone except the three hundred people who'd found it and ordered and come back for more.
Two years. Twenty-four months of sneaking ingredients out of the manor kitchen in my tote bag, of renting a tiny commercial space on a street no one in my family would ever visit, of waking at four AM to bake before the sun came up and the world could see me carrying boxes through back doors.
Butter&Fig was mine. The only thing in my life that was fully, completely, irrevocably mine.
And the moment I married Dominic Russo, it would be over.
Because Dominic would dig. Not because he cared about my hobbies – because that's what men like him did. They pulled threads. They opened files. They mapped every corner of a person's life until there were no corners left. And when he found Butter&Fig – when he traced it back to the Don's niece sneaking out to sell pastries under a fake name – it wouldn't be my secret anymore.
It would be intelligence. A vulnerability. A loose end to be catalogued and filed and used when necessary.
My bakery would become soiled with blood.
Uncle Sal thought he was giving me protection. A future. A man with enough violence in him to keep the wolves away.
All I saw was the end of the only life I'd created for myself.
I picked up my phone. Called Lena. Then Sara. Conference call, because if I was going to do something stupid, I wanted witnesses.
"I need to talk to Dominic," I said. My voice came out steadier than I felt. "Face to face. In his space. Where he can't ignore me."
Lena was quiet for a beat. "You're going to his office?"
"I'm going to his office."
"That's a terrible idea," Sara said. "I mean, genuinely, top-five worst ideas you've ever had, and you once tried to dye your hair with coffee."
"This is different."
"How? How is this different?"
"Because I'm not trying to dye my hair. I'm trying to save my life. My actual life. The one I built." I pressed the phone against my ear and closed my eyes. "If he marries me, Sara, he's going to find out about Butter&Fig. And when he does, it becomes theirs. Everything becomes theirs. My kitchen. My recipes. My name."
The line was quiet.
"Dominic doesn't even want me," I added. My voice cracked on the last word. "I'm a task. A box to check. If I can just make him see that – really see it – maybe he'll tell Sal no. Maybe he'll find someone else to be his... whatever I am."
Lena's voice came through, low and careful. "And if he doesn't?"
"I have to try."
Another silence. Longer this time.
"If you're going to do this," Lena said, "don't go in soft. Don't go in begging. Go in like you have something he needs to hear, not something you need to say."
"And bring snacks," Sara added. "Hangry men make worse decisions."
I almost laughed. Almost.
I pulled on the least dramatic outfit I owned – a floral dress that hung loose past my knees, a cream cardigan that made me look like a librarian who'd given up on excitement, flats that wouldn't make noise on marble floors. I looked at myself in the mirror.
Presentable.
I grabbed my tote bag. Stared at it. Then I went to the kitchen and filled it with cookies.
Not just any cookies. Brown butter sea salt. The kind that took forty-five minutes to make – browning the butter just so, waiting for it to cool, folding in the chocolate chunks by hand so they didn't break. The kind that had gotten Butter&Fig its first fifty followers. The kind that made people close their eyes when they bit into them.
If I was going to walk into a monster's office and ask him not to own me, I was going to do it with the only weapon I had.
Sugar.
Before I left, I sat on my bed and typed out an email to his office address. The one I'd gotten from Lena, who'd gotten it from a contact who'd gotten it from someone who owed them a favor. The kind of address that felt illegal just to type into a subject line.
Subject:Can we talk? Or at least snack?
Hey Dominic,
Okay, so I know you're probably in the middle of doing something very mafia boss-y right now – like flexing your muscles, sharpening knives, or making very important people disappear. But hear me out: I need to talk.
Here's the thing. I've been trying to reach you, like, a lot, and not even a simple "stop texting me" response has made me write this email on your official id. Next, I'm stepping it up. I'm coming to you.
And because I'm not a total menace, I'll bring cookies. Homemade. Gourmet. The kind of cookies that could probably solve world peace if we tried hard enough. I know that might not sound like much, but I'm telling you, these cookies are life-changing.
Please, just let me talk to you. If nothing else, do it for the cookies. You will regret not having them.
Best, Gianna
P.S. If you're too busy, just let me know, and I'll leave a plate of cookies with your receptionist. I'll try my luck on your next working day. You're welcome.
I hit send. Waited.
One hour. Two.
Nothing.
Not a confirmation. Not a rejection. Not even an automated out-of-office response. Just silence. The same silence he'd been giving me for two weeks.
I stared at my phone. Felt the corner of my mouth twitch – not a smile, something sharper.
"Okay," I whispered to the empty room. "Fine. You want to play this way?"
I opened my map app. Pulled up the address of his office building – a tower of glass and steel downtown that Lena had described as "the kind of place where people disappear into elevators and come out as different people." Squinted at the floor plans like I was planning a heist instead of a conversation.
Then I grabbed my tote bag, checked my hair in the mirror one last time, and walked out of the east wing like a girl who wasn't terrified at all.
The building was worse than I'd imagined.
Not worse as in ugly – worse as in intimidating. Forty floors of reflective glass that caught the afternoon light and threw it back in your face. A lobby that smelled like money and leather and the kind of cleaning product that cost more than my monthly grocery budget. People in suits moving through the space like blood cells through an artery – purposeful, directed, not a single wasted step.
I stood at the entrance for three full seconds, questioning every choice that had led me here. The tote bag hung from my shoulder, heavy with cookies. My floral dress felt suddenly too casual, too soft, too much like something that belonged in a bakery and not in a building where men like Dominic Russo conducted the business of violence.
I walked to the front desk.
The receptionist was polished in a way that was aggressive – perfect teeth, perfect posture, perfect smile that didn't quite reach her eyes. She looked at me the way people in buildings like this always looked at people like me: quick assessment, quiet dismissal, then the professional mask sliding back into place.
"How can I help you today?"
"I, uh." I cleared my throat. Straightened my spine. Lena's voice in my head: don't go in soft. "I have a meeting with Dominic Russo. It's very urgent. He knows I'm coming."
She raised one perfect eyebrow. I watched her fingers move across her keyboard – probably pulling up a schedule, probably seeing nothing, probably preparing the polite rejection I'd been getting for two weeks.
"I don't see any females on the schedule today, miss."
The word females landed weird. Like I was a species, not a person.
"It's not on the schedule," I admitted. The lie felt thin even as I said it. "I just – I need to see him. It's really important."
"Mr. Russo's schedule is handled by his assistant. If you'd like to leave your name–"
"I brought cookies."
The words came out before I could stop them. I held up the tote bag like it was evidence. Like a judge would look at a bag of brown butter sea salt cookies and say, well, clearly this woman belongs on the forty-second floor.
The receptionist stared at the bag. Then at me. Then at the bag again.
"Cookies," she repeated.
"Homemade." I heard my voice go slightly desperate and hated myself for it. "Trust me, they're worth it. You'd want to try one too, probably. They're... they're life-changing. Emotional epiphany kind of good."
There was a pause. A long one. The kind where you could hear the building breathing – the hum of the HVAC, the distant ding of an elevator, the muffled murmur of voices that all sounded like they were discussing things I couldn't afford to know about.
The receptionist looked at me. Really looked. Not the quick assessment from before – a slower one. The kind that takes in details. The floral dress. The cardigan. The wide hips and the soft arms and the round face that hadn't quite figured out how to hide its nerves.
Something shifted in her expression. Not warmth – recognition.
She sighed. "Fine. I'll buzz you up." She held up one finger before I could move. "But if Mr. Russo throws you out for trying to sneak in, don't come crying to me."
"I won't. Thank you." I was already moving toward the elevator, my flats silent on the marble, my heart slamming against my ribs so hard I was sure she could hear it. I threw a look over my shoulder. "I'll leave him a cookie as a peace offering. For the next time he needs to eat his feelings."
The elevator doors closed. As they did, I caught the faintest sound through the gap – her voice, muttering to herself.
"God, aren't you the Moretti girl?"
Darn it.
The elevator ride felt like being swallowed. Smooth, silent, too fast – the numbers climbing on the display above the doors like a countdown. Thirty-two. Thirty-five. Thirty-eight. My reflection stared back at me from the polished steel walls: flushed cheeks, wide eyes, floral dress, cardigan, tote bag full of cookies. I looked like a girl who'd wandered into the wrong building and couldn't figure out how to leave.
Forty-two.
The doors opened.
The hallway was nothing like the lobby. No marble, no glass, no aggressive polish. Just dark wood floors, muted lighting, and a silence so complete it felt like the air itself had been told to be quiet. A single corridor stretched ahead, lined with closed doors, each one unmarked. No names. No titles. Nothing to indicate who sat behind them or what they did.
I walked. My flats made no sound. My heart made plenty.
The door at the end of the hall was different. Darker wood. No window, no nameplate. Just a small brass handle that looked like it had been designed to discourage touching.
I stopped in front of it.
Stood there for five seconds. Ten. My hand hovered over the handle, then dropped. I wasn't going to just walk in – I had some sense of self-preservation, even if it was currently drowning in adrenaline.
I knocked.
The sound was small. Absorbed by the dark wood like it didn't want to exist. I waited.
Nothing.
I knocked again. Harder. The sound was still swallowed, but I pushed more force into it, enough that my knuckles stung slightly.
Nothing.
The silence behind the door was so complete it felt aggressive. Like the room itself was refusing to acknowledge me.
"Dominic?" My voice came out thinner than I wanted. I cleared my throat. Tried again. "It's Gianna. I'm – I'm here to talk."
More silence. The kind that stretches and stretches until you start to wonder if there's anyone behind the door at all, or if you've been sent to an empty office as a joke.
Then – movement.
Not loud. Not hurried. Just a shift. The kind of sound a large body makes when it decides to move – fabric, weight, the subtle displacement of air.
The door opened.
And there he was.
Dominic Russo filled the doorway like he'd been grown there. Dark suit today – charcoal, tailored so precisely it looked painted on. White shirt underneath, no tie, top button undone in a way that should have looked casual but didn't. His hair was the same – short, dark, precisely cut. His jaw was the same – sharp, clenched, the line of it cutting a shadow down the side of his neck.
And his eyes.
Those pale, predator eyes found mine and held, and every thought I'd carefully arranged in my head on the elevator ride up – the speech, the plea, the calm, reasonable explanation of why this marriage was a bad idea for both of us – disintegrated like flour hit by water.
He looked at me the way he always looked at me. Not past me. Not through me. Intome. Like my skin was glass and everything underneath was a file he was reading in real time.
His gaze dropped. Just for a second. Past my face. Past my neck. Down the floral dress that hung loose over my hips, past the cardigan sleeves, to the tote bag I was clutching against my stomach like a shield.
Then back up.
"Gianna." He said my name the way he said everything – low, flat, dangerous. Like it was a word he'd been authorized to use and was still deciding whether he wanted to. "You broke into my building."
"Not broke in," I said. My voice came out small, but defiant. "I was buzzed up."
"With cookies."
"I brought cookies. Yes."
He stared at me. I stared back. The hallway was silent. The door was open behind him, revealing a sliver of office – dark wood, minimal furniture, a window that looked out over the city like a throne. The space smelled like him: smoke, metal, winter. The same scent from the alley, the café, the dinner table. It hit me like a memory I hadn't asked for.
"You got my email," I said. It wasn't a question.
"I got the receptionist's call." His voice was dry. "She said a Moretti girl showed up with baked goods and emotional epiphanies."
Heat flooded my face. "She said that?"
"What I'm wondering," Dominic continued, leaning against the doorframe with the casualness of a man who had all the time in the world and none of the patience, "is why."
Why.
Such a small word. Such an enormous question.
I opened my mouth. The speech was right there – the careful, reasonable, Lena-approved explanation. I'm not the right person for this. This marriage doesn't benefit you. Let me go, and we can both forget this happened.
But what came out was: "I thought if you tried the cookies, you'd realize I'm not who you want for this."
The words hung in the air between us. I could feel my face burning. My hands were sweating around the tote bag straps. I looked ridiculous – I knew I looked ridiculous now. A girl in a floral dress standing in a hallway that smelled like violence, offering baked goods to a man who probably had a body count higher than my cookie recipe archive.
Dominic's expression didn't change. Not exactly. But something moved behind his eyes – a flicker, quick and controlled, like a fish moving under ice. His lips twitched. Not a smile. The ghost of one. The kind of micro-expression that most people wouldn't have caught.
I caught it.
It made my stomach flip.
"Your strategy," he said slowly, "is baked goods."
"It's a good strategy."
"It's a terrible strategy."
"The cookies are good."
"I don't doubt the cookies, Gianna." He said my name again. He kept doing that – saying it like he was testing the weight of it. "I doubt the logic of walking into a building full of people who know what my last name means, announcing yourself as a Moretti, and using baked goods as negotiation tool."
"I wasn't negotiating. I was... starting a conversation."
"You were panicking."
The accuracy of it hit me. I opened my mouth to deny it, but nothing came out. Because he was right. I was panicking. Had been panicking for two weeks. Was panicking right now, standing in his doorway with cookies and a heart that wouldn't stop hammering.
He watched me. Still. Patient. The way he'd watched me in the kitchen, on my knees in the flour, scrubbing nothing. The way he'd watched me through the café window. The way he'd watched me at dinner while an entire room pretended not to see what was happening.
Always watching. Always seeing. Never giving anything back.
"Come in," he said.
Two words. No warmth. No invitation. A command dressed in politeness, the way a blade is dressed in leather.
I stepped forward.
His office was exactly what I'd expected and nothing like I'd imagined. Dark wood floors. A desk the size of a small car, cluttered with files and a single glass of water. One chair behind the desk – his. One chair in front. A window behind him that took up the entire wall, forty-two floors of city stretching out like a kingdom. Minimal. Cold. Every surface clean except the desk, which was organized chaos – papers stacked in precise piles, a pen laid parallel to the edge, everything in its place except the one thing that wasn't.
There were no personal touches. No photos. No art. No evidence that a human being spent time in this room. It was a space designed for function, not feeling – a machine room for a man who operated like one.
I stopped in the middle of the office. Clutched the tote bag. Didn't sit.
He closed the door behind me.
The click of the latch was loud in the silence. Not a lock – I didn't think – but close enough that my body reacted before my brain could catch up. My shoulders tightened. My breath shortened. Every nerve in my body went alert, the way an animal goes alert when it realizes the cage door just closed.
He walked past me. Not close – close enough that I felt the air shift, felt the warmth of him move through the space where I was standing. He sat behind the desk. Leaned back. Picked up the glass of water. Took a sip. Set it down.
Then he looked at me.
"Sit."
I sat.
The chair was harder than it looked. Uncomfortable. The kind of chair designed to keep you alert, not relaxed. I perched on the edge, tote bag in my lap, and tried to remember the speech.
Nothing came.
"So," Dominic said. "Cookies."
I looked down at the bag. Then up at him. His face was that same unreadable mask, but there was something underneath it now – something I hadn't seen before. Not warmth. Not patience. Something closer to... curiosity. The kind a cat shows when a mouse does something unexpected.
I pulled the container out of the bag. Set it on his desk. The lid was still warm from my hands – or maybe that was just my imagination.
"Brown butter sea salt," I said. "Forty-five minutes to make. The butter has to brown exactly right – too far and it's bitter, not far enough and you lose the nuttiness. The salt is flaky. Maldon. It has to be Maldon or the whole thing falls apart."
He looked at the container. Then at me.
"You're nervous again," he said.
"I'm not–"
"You listed the ingredients. Nervous people list ingredients."
"That's because you had a problem with my butter!"
I pressed my lips together. My face was on fire. He was doing it again – seeing things I didn't want seen, naming things I didn't want named, peeling me open with nothing more than a flat voice and pale eyes.
"I'm here to talk," I said. Steadier this time. Forcing it. "About the marriage."
"What about it?"
"I don't want it."
The words came out clean. No crack. No tremor. Lena would have been proud.
Dominic didn't react. Didn't flinch. Didn't shift. He just looked at me with those pale eyes and waited, like he knew there was more and was willing to sit in silence until I gave it to him.
So I gave it to him.
"I know Sal put you up to it. I know it's a loyalty thing, a power thing. And I know I don't get a say in what Sal decides. But I'm asking you – not my uncle, you – to look at this clearly." I gripped the tote bag so hard my knuckles ached. "I'm not built for your world. I bake cookies. I like reading. I'm what my college called a nerd, although I dislike that word. What possible use could I be to you?"
He was quiet for a long time. The city hummed behind him through the window – forty-two floors of noise compressed into a whisper.
"And the cookies?" he asked.
"What?"
"You brought cookies to convince me you're not useful." His lips twitched again. That ghost of something that wasn't quite a smile. "You're either terrible at persuasion, or you're the most confident person I've ever met."
My mouth opened. Closed. "That's not–"
"Because the cookies are a contradiction, Gianna." He leaned forward. Just slightly. Just enough that the light from the window shifted across his face and I could see the sharp line of his jaw, the hollow beneath his cheekbone, the dark pupils surrounded by that impossible pale. "You walked in here saying you have nothing to offer. But you brought something you made with your own hands. Something that takes skill. Something you're clearly proud of." He paused. "That's not nothing. That's the opposite of nothing."
The air in the room changed. Thinned. Tightened. Like the walls had moved closer while I wasn't looking.
"That's not why I brought them."
"No?" His voice was low. Quiet. The same dangerous smoothness from the doorway, but closer now, aimed directly at me. "Then why?"
I couldn't answer. Because the real reason – the one I hadn't said out loud, the one about Butter&Fig and the secret life and the fear of being found out – was too close to something I couldn't afford to show him. If I told him about the bakery, I wasn't defending myself. I was handing him a trophy.
"I just wanted you to try them," I whispered.
He looked at the container on his desk. Then at me. Then at the container again.
"If I try one," he said, "will you stop looking at me like I'm about to execute you?"
"I'm not–"
"You are."
I wasn't. I was looking at him like he was about to do something far worse than execute me. Like he was about to see me. Really see me. And I wasn't sure what would be left when he finished.
He reached for the container. Opened it. The smell hit the room immediately – brown butter, caramel, chocolate, salt. The kind of smell that made people close their eyes without meaning to.
He didn't close his eyes.
He picked up a cookie. Examined it the way he examined everything – with precision, with attention, like it was a piece of evidence. Turned it over in his fingers. The chocolate chunks caught the light. The flaky salt gleamed.
Then he bit into it.
I stopped breathing.
He chewed. Slow. Deliberate. His expression didn't change – of course it didn't – but something in his jaw shifted. A subtle relaxation. The faintest unclenching of a muscle that I wouldn't have caught if I hadn't spent two weeks memorizing the geography of his face.
He swallowed. Set the rest of the cookie on the desk.
"Well?" I asked. My voice came out barely audible.
He looked at me.
"I'm seeing if these cookies taste as desperate as this little plan of yours."
The words landed like a match dropped on gasoline. My face burned. My hands shook. I wanted to disappear into the chair, through the floor, out of the building entirely.
But underneath the humiliation – underneath the heat and the shame and the oh God he said that out loud – there was something else.
His lips had twitched when he said it.
Not a smile. Not warmth. But something adjacent to amusement – the kind a man shows when he's surprised despite himself. When something has slipped past his defenses without permission and he hasn't decided yet whether to be annoyed or intrigued.
I'd made Dominic Russo almost smile.
With a cookie.
The battle for my freedom had begun.
He was going to lose to me, one stubborn, desperate, humiliating cookie at a time.