Hellbound With You

CHAPTER 2: New York

Lorenzo Moretti POV

I don't do unnecessary trips.

Never have. Never will.

My office in Palermo smelled like old wood and espresso and the kind of quiet that costs money. Below the window the city was already alive — vendors setting up, scooters cutting through narrow streets, someone's grandmother yelling at someone's grandfather about something that had probably been unresolved since 1987. Palermo never really slept. It just changed shifts.

I had been here since five this morning.

The files on my desk were not going to read themselves.

Alessandro knocked three times and walked in before I answered. Twenty eight years and he still hadn't learned that knocking was supposed to mean waiting. I had stopped correcting him,but not when I am angry though.

"Hey brother."

I didn't look up. "Hey."

He dropped into the chair across from me like he lived here. Lawyers. They made themselves comfortable everywhere like the whole world was their courtroom. He probably practiced it.

I kept my eyes on the file in front of me.

"You're going to America, Enzo."

My breathing hitched.

Just for a second. One second where the words landed somewhere they weren't supposed to and something old and ugly shifted in my chest.

Then I looked up.

"No," I said. "I'm not."

"Enzo—"

"Alessandro."

He exhaled. That specific exhale he had been perfecting since we were nine years old. The one that meant — you are being an i***t and I love you too much to say it directly so instead I will breathe at you until you figure it out yourself.

It always worked eventually.

"Two years," he said, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees. "Uncle Ric has been gone two years. That stadium is sitting in New York with your name on the deed collecting dust and lawyer fees that I am personally, genuinely, exhaustedly tired of processing." He paused. "The investors called again this week."

"Tell them to wait."

"I've been telling them to wait for two years Enzo. Even my patience has a limit .

"Find someone else to handle it."

"He left it to YOU." His voice dropped the lawyer polish for just a moment. Just enough. "Not me. Not mama. You. You know why."

I knew why.

Uncle Ric used to wait outside the harbor courts at midnight. Every time. Never complained about the hour, never asked why I was sneaking out, never told my father. He would just lean against his car with his arms crossed and watch me play until I was done and then drive me home in silence.

One night I asked him why he never said anything.

He looked at me sideways and said — because you're good, Enzo. And nobody should ever talk while something good is happening.

The day I chose the business over basketball I was nineteen. He shook my hand like I was a man and said — one day you'll have both. I promise you both.

Stubborn old man.

Kept his promise from the grave.

"I have somewhere to be tonight," I said.

Alessandro stood slowly. Straightened his jacket. Looked at me the way he always did when he had one more thing to say and was deciding whether to say it.

He said it.

"America isn't her, Enzo." Quiet. Careful. The way you approach something that might still bite. "It never was. She's just a woman who made a choice in a city. The city didn't do anything to you."

The city.

No. The city didn't do anything.

She did.

Melissa.

I didn't say her name out loud. I hadn't in two years. But I thought it sometimes in the space between sleeping and waking when my guard was down and old things crawled back in.

Her laugh first. That was always the first thing. Then her voice. Then the specific expression on her face the last time I saw her — not guilty, not even sorry. Just done. Like I was a chapter she had finished and was ready to close.

I had trusted her.

That was the part people didn't understand when they looked at me now and saw someone cold and controlled and impossible to reach. They thought I was born this way. I wasn't.

I was made this way,or rather I made myself this way.

"Goodbye Alessandro," I said.

He left.

The office settled back into its peaceful silence. Palermo hummed below. Someone's scooter backfired three floors down and a dog barked twice and then everything went still again.

I sat there for a long time.

Thinking about a harbor court at midnight.

Thinking about an old man who showed up every single time.

Thinking about a stadium in New York with my name on it that I had been too much of a coward to face.

I picked up my phone.

Put it down.

Picked it up again.

"Book me a flight to New York," I told my assistant. "Thursday. First class." I paused. "Clear my schedule for a month."

Silence on the other end.

"A whole month, Mr. Moretti?"

"Did I stutter?"

"No sir. Right away."

I hung up.

Leaned back.

Looked at the ceiling.

America.

Fine.

But I was going on my terms. My timeline. My rules.

The city could have me for a month.

It wasn't getting anything else.

Not this time.