Small. Safe. Paid for three months in advance, with an agreement that Willow could pay him back from the coffee shop profits because he knew her pride mattered.
“You deserve a place of your own,” he said. “A place where you can lock the door and know you’re safe.”
Willow accepted.
And for the first time since her father died, she had a home that belonged to her.
When Willow told Patricia and Celeste she was moving out, Patricia called her ungrateful.
Willow finally spoke the truth.
“You did nothing for me except humiliate me. You turned me into a maid in my own house. You let your daughter torture me. You tried to take everything my father left me.”
Patricia screamed for her to get out.
“With pleasure,” Willow said.
On moving day, Giovanni arrived with Matteo and his men. Willow’s entire life fit into four boxes.
“They kept the rest,” Willow said softly. “Furniture. Decorations. Everything from my dad.”
Giovanni pulled her close.
“Not from scratch,” he said. “Not with me.”
Patricia and Celeste watched from the window, furious and afraid.
But Patricia was not finished.
She bribed a secretary to let Celeste into Giovanni’s office. Celeste tried to tell him Willow was manipulative, that she played victim, that her father had spoiled her.
Giovanni listened just long enough to make her afraid.
“I saw you humiliating her publicly at the gala,” he said. “And now you invade my office to poison my opinion of her?”
Celeste stammered.
“Do you really think I’d believe you over her?”
Then he told her to get out and never come back.
That should have been the end.
It wasn’t.
Patricia went further.
She gave Willow’s location to Constantine, one of Giovanni’s enemies.
That betrayal nearly got Willow killed.
The kidnapping shattered the fragile peace Willow had built. Giovanni found her and brought her back, alive but terrified, and then he went to the Hayes mansion before dawn.
Patricia opened the door in her robe and went pale.
Giovanni walked in without asking.
“You gave the information to Constantine.”
Patricia tried to deny it.
“Don’t lie to me,” he said. “I have proof. The call was traced from your phone to one of Constantine’s men. You sold Willow’s location to the enemy. She almost died.”
Patricia trembled.
“I just wanted her to stay away from you. She doesn’t deserve you.”
Giovanni’s fury was so intense he had to clench his fists to keep the promise he had made to Willow.
“She deserves everything,” he said. “And you don’t even deserve to breathe the same air as her.”
He told Patricia that Willow had asked him not to hurt her, so he wouldn’t.
This time.
But if Patricia contacted Willow again, spoke her name, or even thought about hurting her, he would come back—and it would not be a conversation.
Then he saw Celeste on the stairs.
“You too,” he said. “Willow doesn’t exist for you anymore. Forget her or suffer the consequences.”
Celeste nodded without a word.
Giovanni returned to Willow’s apartment, where she was awake, wrapped in a blanket, eyes red from crying.
“You went to her,” Willow said.
“I did. But I didn’t hurt her. A promise is a promise.”
She thanked him for respecting what she asked.
“It was hard,” he admitted. “But you’re more important than my revenge.”
The terror faded slowly over the next months.
Giovanni came to the coffee shop every day, drinking the cappuccino Willow made just for him. He stayed through quiet afternoons. He had dinner with her almost every night, sometimes in expensive restaurants, sometimes with takeout in her apartment.
He introduced her to the people in his world. They treated her with respect because they saw what she meant to him.
She introduced him to the regulars at Hayes Coffee and Books. He treated them kindly because they mattered to Willow.
Rosie, once suspicious, became his friend too. She saw the way he looked at Willow—as if she had become the center of his world.
