Page 454 of Rosetti Family New York
"Exactly."
For the next twenty minutes, Rick grudgingly teaches me grocery shopping while I pepper him with questions and enthusiasm. He shows me how to check expiration dates, find the best produce, and navigate sales.
"This is the most anyone's ever talked to me during a shift," he grumbles, but when I insist on taking a selfie with him, he almost—almost—cracks a smile.
"You're not terrible," he concedes as I head to checkout. "For someone who gets excited about pasta sauce."
"That's the nicest thing anyone's said to me all day!"
"That's sad."
"No," I say, grinning as I load my generic pasta onto the belt. "It's perfect."
I emerge from the store with two bags of groceries I chose myself, employed at a job I earned myself, living in an apartment I found myself. The evening sun casts long shadows on the sidewalk, and I'm humming something jazzy for Omar's theoretical approval.
That's when I notice him again.
The same man from yesterday, or someone remarkably similar. Leaning against a building across the street, ostensibly scrolling his phone. But there's something about his posture—too still, too aware. When I shift my grocery bags, his eyes flick up for just a second before returning to his screen.
My stomach flutters with old warnings, but I push them down. Chicago's a big city, but neighborhoods are small. People shop at the same stores, walk the same routes. I'm being paranoid.
Still, I take a different path home, weaving through side streets just to prove to myself that I'm imagining things. By the time I reach my building, I've almost convinced myself.
Inside my studio, I unpack my groceries with reverent care. Generic pasta, store-brand sauce, cereal with marshmallows, milk that I chose based on Rick's grumpy recommendation. It's a feast of ordinary choices, and I've never been happier.
Tomorrow I'll start at the gallery. Omar will scowl at my humming. I'll charm him with coffee and competence. Life will be beautifully, wonderfully normal.
The freedom is intoxicating.
Even if shadows seem to follow me home.
3 - Van
Forty-eight hours. That's how long the Rosetti princess has been making me look incompetent.
I stand outside the River North gallery where she's already started her first day of work—a job she somehow secured while I was still checking the decoy apartment her brother thought she'd use. Through the window, I watch her move between paintings with the kind of natural grace that comes from growing up surrounded by beautiful, expensive things.
The phantom pain in my wrists flares as I catalog every detail. Dark curls catching the morning light. The way she touches the elderly woman's arm while explaining brushwork techniques. That sunshine smile that probably gets her whatever she wants.
She's even more beautiful than the surveillance photos suggested, which makes my failure to intercept her at the airport two days ago burn hotter in my chest.
I should have been there. Should have been waiting when she stepped off that plane, ready to fulfill my debt to her family by keeping her safe. Instead, I arrived to an empty gate and the kind of fury that makes my hands cramp into useless fists—muscle memory from zip ties and rope burns, from being restrained while people under my protection died.
The security footage had been my only consolation. One small figure with a backpack, moving fast through the terminal. She'dcaught a cab and vanished into Chicago like smoke. But it confirmed what I'd started to suspect—this wasn't some princess having a tantrum. This was planned. Methodical.
The guard had mentioned others looking for the same footage. Two men in suits, asking the same questions. The Torrinos were already hunting.
Yesterday was worse. Twenty-four hours of following breadcrumbs through the city. The apartment in Lincoln Park that Dom swore she'd be using—empty, lease cancelled, the caretaker grinning because she hadn't asked for her deposit back. Coffee shops where baristas remembered her smile but not where she went. A bookstore where she'd bought art history texts with cash.
She'd been building this escape for months. Learning the city through research, setting up her own safe apartment, creating a life that existed completely outside her family's knowledge. The kind of systematic preparation I'd use for a military operation.
Smart girl. Too smart for her own good.
Through the gallery window, I watch her handle a transaction with professional confidence. She knows the inventory, the pricing, the computer system. Probably spent yesterday learning the systems while I was checking hotels and youth hostels like an amateur.
The elderly couple purchases a small piece, and she processes their credit card with easy familiarity. When they ask about the artist's other work, she pulls up a tablet and shows them imagesfrom memory, discussing technique and inspiration like she's been studying art her entire life.
Which she probably has. Rosetti women aren't raised to be decorative. They're raised to be dangerous in their own way.
