Dripping Sin

Ten Minutes

I stared at his card for three hours before I called.

I told myself I was calling about Eli. About answers that three weeks of tests had failed to deliver. I told myself this was a mother making a practical decision and nothing else.

I dialed anyway.

He picked up on the second ring.

"I wondered how long you would wait," he said.

His voice came through the phone and settled in my chest like it already knew where it lived. I pressed my back against the hospital corridor wall and steadied myself.

"We need to talk," I said.

A pause. Short and deliberate.

"Why didn't you tell me you were married," he said. "With a child."

It wasn't even a question. He said it the way someone states a fact they find mildly interesting, no heat, no accusation, just that cool unbothered tone that somehow made it worse than anger would have.

I opened my mouth and nothing came out for a moment.

"I wasn't wearing my ring," I said.

"I noticed," he said. "That's not what I asked."

I looked down at my left hand. The ring was back this morning, slid into place before I left the house. I turned it once with my thumb and said nothing.

"There's a coffee place on Birch and Lenox," he said. "Ten minutes."

"I didn't agree to meet you."

"You called me," he said. "You have ten minutes to get there."

He ended the call.

I stood in the corridor staring at my phone and my pulse was doing something completely unreasonable. The arrogance of it. The sheer flat certainty in his voice, like my showing up was not a question he had bothered to ask because he had already decided the answer.

My phone buzzed in my palm.

Daniel.

I looked at his name on the screen. My husband, calling mid-afternoon, which he almost never did. I thought about this morning, the cheek kiss that barely landed, the way he had walked out without asking how Eli's night had been.

I declined the call.

I switched the phone off entirely.

I walked to my car.

---

The place on Birch and Lenox was small and quiet. Dark wood, low music. Luca was already there when I arrived, jacket off, sleeves rolled up, a cup in front of him and his eyes on the door before I had fully stepped through it.

I sat across from him and kept my back straight.

"I almost didn't come," I said.

"But you did," he said, and moved on like that point was already settled.

He looked at me across the table and there was nothing soft in his expression. Not unkind, but measured. The way a man looks when he has already made a decision and is simply waiting for the paperwork to catch up.

"Last night was a mistake," I said. "I was in a bad place and I made a decision I shouldn't have and I think the best thing for both of us is to leave it where it is."

Luca said nothing.

He picked up his cup, drank slowly, set it back down. The silence stretched and I resisted the urge to fill it.

"I don't share what belongs to me," he said finally.

I blinked. "I beg your pardon."

"You heard me." His eyes held mine without effort. "You walked into my night. You came to me. That means something whether it is convenient for you or not."

"I am married," I said. "I don't belong to you."

"You didn't feel married last night," he said simply.

The words hit me somewhere I wasn't prepared for. My jaw tightened.

"That was one night," I said. "It doesn't give you any claim over me."

"One night is enough," he said. "I know what I want and I know how to keep it." He leaned forward slightly, not aggressively, just closing the distance between us with the ease of someone who never questioned whether the space was his to take. "You're mine now Mia. The ring on your finger doesn't change that."

I stared at him.

"You can't just decide that."

"I just did."

My heart was hammering and I hated that it was and I hated even more that it wasn't entirely from anger. He was watching me with those steady dark eyes and there was no performance in him, no bluster. He meant every word and the calm certainty of it was more unsettling than shouting would have been.

"My son is the reason I called," I said, trying to find solid ground. "Nothing else. If you have any decency you will separate the two."

Something shifted in his expression. Not softness exactly, but a loosening.

"How is he?" he asked.

"The same." My voice tightened. "Three weeks and they still don't have clear answers. He's tired all the time and his immunity is almost nonexistent and every time I walk into that room he looks smaller than the last time."

Luca was quiet for a moment, watching my face.

"I've already spoken to the head nurse on his floor," he said. "She has instructions to update me directly. He will be watched around the clock, best staff on rotation."

I looked at him. "Why would you do that?"

"Because you're worried about him and you can't be in that building every hour." He held my gaze. "Which brings me to something else." He reached into his jacket and set a single folded paper on the table between us, sliding it toward me. "Tomorrow morning. Seven o'clock. Carver Group, forty-second floor."

I looked at the paper and back at him. "What is this?"

"Your new job," he said. "Personal assistant. My personal assistant."

I almost laughed. "You're not serious."

"I don't make jokes about business." His eyes didn't move from mine. "You're in that hospital every day watching your son and going home to a husband who apparently doesn't see you. You need somewhere to be and I need someone I trust close to me." He paused. "At least at the office I can keep an eye on what's mine."

The possessiveness in that last word should have made me stand up and leave.

It did not make me stand up and leave.

"I don't even know what your company does," I said.

"You'll learn," he said. "Seven o'clock. Don't be late."

He stood, buttoned his jacket, and dropped a note on the table for the bill without checking the amount. He looked down at me once more and the look said everything his words hadn't needed to.

"Your son will be well looked after tonight," he said. "I've made sure of it."

He walked out.

I sat in that coffee shop alone with the folded paper in front of me and my switched-off phone in my bag and the feeling that something had just been decided about my life without my full participation.

The terrifying part was that I picked up the paper.

I folded it carefully and put it in my bag.

And I started thinking about what to wear at seven in the morning.