For once, Lorenzo did not answer immediately.
Then he held out his hand, just as he had inside the restaurant.
Only this time nobody was watching.
“That,” he said, “doesn’t have to be pretend.”
I looked down at his hand.
Six months earlier I had believed losing Ethan meant losing the future I had planned.
Four days earlier I had marched into Lorenzo Moretti’s office because I wanted to borrow another man’s power long enough to survive one humiliating dinner.
But standing there beneath the rain, I finally understood what had actually changed.
Lorenzo had not rescued me.
He had walked into the room, held out his hand, and allowed me to decide whether to take it.
The rest had been mine.
The truth.
The refusal to apologize.
The moment I stopped protecting people who had never protected me.
I placed my hand in his.
This time, I wasn’t doing it because Ethan was watching.
And when Lorenzo smiled, just slightly, I realized that was the first choice I had made in a very long time that belonged entirely to me.
