Hellbound With You

CHAPTER 4:My Space

Lorenzo Moretti POV

New York smelled almost the same. Airport coffee, rain on concrete, too many people moving too fast.

Different and familiar at the same time, like coming back to a song you used to love and realizing it didn’t sound the same anymore

JFK was packed. Loud. Everyone moving like they had somewhere urgent to be and no patience for anyone in their way. Typical New York. The city had no concept of easing you back in.

I scanned the crowd.

No Damon.

Of course.

I pulled out my phone.

"Where are you?"

"At the airport obviously." A pause. "And I think I can see you—"

Before he finished the sentence I spotted him. Cutting through the crowd with that walk he had — too confident for someone always late to everything.

"Hey sweet cou." He grabbed my hand and pulled me into a bro shake, grinning like he'd been waiting all morning to annoy me.

He had probably been waiting all morning to annoy me.

"You changed," he started. "Like a lot. Have you been sleeping in the gym? You look like a bouncer. A very expensive bouncer but still—"

I stopped listening.

I turned to my driver and instructed him quietly to get my luggage to the car. Then I walked ahead leaving Damon to finish his monologue to nobody.

He caught up within seconds.

"Seriously though," he said, falling into step beside me. "The arms. The jaw. What are you doing differently? Is it the Mediterranean diet? Is it rage? It's rage isn't it."

I flexed once.

"I KNEW IT. Alessandro owes me twenty euros."

I almost smiled.

"Home sweet home," I said as Demon pulled into my garage.

It came out more sincere than I intended.

Damon looked at me. Really looked. And for a second the jokes stopped and it was just my cousin — the one who had known me since we were seven years old stealing Uncle Ric's good biscuits — looking at me like he was genuinely glad I was back.

He moved like he was going to hug me

I stepped out of the car instead.

He laughed and shut the door behind me.

I didn't acknowledge what I'd just done. Neither did he.

The penthouse was spotless in the unsettling way places become when nobody actually lives in them.

Two years of a housekeeper maintaining it without me in it. Everything clean and perfect and arranged exactly as I'd left it. But it felt like a photograph of a place rather than the place itself.

Two f*****g years.

I stood in the living room for a moment just breathing it in. My space. My rules.

The first place in two years where nobody could ask anything

"Get my luggage to the master," I told the housekeeper.

Then I walked to my room.

And stopped at the door.

Something stopped me from going in immediately. I couldn't name it. Didn't try to. I just stood there with my hand on the door frame for a moment and breathed.

Then I let go and walked away.

Some rooms you needed to earn your way back into.

Tonight was not that night.

I heard her before I saw her.

"ENZO."

Velda.

I turned fast.

She crossed the room without slowing down and the hug hit me before I could prepare for it. Immediate. Suffocating. Her hands patted my back twice, the same way they had when I was a child with scraped knees and bloody lips.

"I missed you," she said.

"Velda. I cannot breathe."

"Oh sorry—"

She stepped back and looked at me.

Just looked.

Velda had always been able to say too much with one look.

I kept my face neutral.

She wasn’t fooled. She never was.

"You look tired," she said softly.

"I'm fine."

"Enzo—"

"I'm fine Velda."

A long moment.

Then she smiled. Small. Knowing. The smile of a woman who had been watching me since before I knew how to hide things properly and never once stopped seeing through me.

"Welcome home," she said quietly.

And walked away.

stood alone in the penthouse while New York hummed outside the windows.

Two years later, I was finally back.