Chapter 5

• Chapter Five
• Julian POV
• One good thing about this house?
• The space.
• Acres of it. High ceilings, endless hallways, enough distance between me and Madison to pretend we don’t live in the same timeline, let alone the same ten-bedroom estate.
• But the downside?
• Also, the space.
• Because when she laughs, no, more like cackles, from somewhere deep in the echo chamber she calls Camelot (a two-story closet, not a kingdom), it reverberates through every marble surface like a haunted echo of choices I regret.
• “I told her I wanted the platinum thread, not the silver. Is everyone stupid?!”
• The sound bounces down the hallway, riding the polished floors, she oh-so-gently reminded me had just been buffed. Like she got on her hands and knees and did it herself instead of charging it to one of my AmEx Centurions while sipping on something infused with dragon fruit and entitlement.
• I roll my eyes and slip away.
• To my office.
• The one place in this palace of performance where Madison won’t follow.
• She knows better.
• This room isn’t curated for the ’gram. There’s no soft lighting or flattering angles. Just heavy wood, dark leather, steel shelves, and silence. Blessed, bourbon-soaked silence. (Did I mention my extensive bourbon collection? Yes, well, it’s in here too.)
• I pour a generous, stress on the word GENEROUS, two fingers of a 25-year-old single-barrel, and settle into the leather chair by the window.
• The glass is cool.
• The liquid burns just enough.
• Outside, the sun is losing its daily battle with the horizon. The sky’s turning that wild kind of magenta and gold that painters live for.
• I can admit it, sunsets here are beautiful.
• But I’d trade it all in a second for that rooftop in the Bronx.
• Same sky. Shit ton more smog. But definitely, more heart.
• An alert pings on my phone.
• Yankees vs. Mariners. First pitch in 3 minutes.
• I smirk.
• One more thing this mansion can’t strip from me.
• Time to cheer on my favorite team.
• Our favorite team.
• Even if she’s not sitting beside me anymore, legs in my lap, screaming at the ump like she was drawing a paycheck from the team or had money on the game.
• I click the remote. The TV hums to life.
• And for just a moment…
• The noise fades.
• The past quiets.
• And it’s just me, the bourbon, and baseball.
• ***
• Serena POV
• Sundays are sacred.
• No matter how chaotic the week has been, no matter how loud the city gets, no matter how many ghosts try to sneak back in through magazine covers and ramen-infused memories, Sunday is for Staten Island.
• Or as my dad calls it: Statnisland.
• One word. No patience for syllables.
• It’s been our thing for the last ten years.
• Every Sunday, I haul my ass onto the ferry or the express bus and head out to the little corner of New York most people forget exists. To a 700 square foot apartment that smells like garlic, tomato, and something that could legally be classified as a sedative.
• We’re not Italian. Not even a little.
• But Lidia is.
• Balls-deep Italian, and I mean that quite literally because my dad fell hard for her the second he moved there.
• He met her the same day he moved into the building. She was yelling at a neighbor over misusing the laundry room and offered him a plate of baked ziti while mid-rant. It was over before it began.
• He says she reminded him life wasn’t over despite losing my mother.
• That there was still sauce to be made and love to be had.
• Sorry. Gravy.
• She corrected me once, gently but firmly, ladle in hand like it was a gavel.
• “It’s gravy, sweetheart. Sauce is what you put on a pizza. This? This is holy.”
• She wasn’t wrong.
• Rich. Comforting. Deep enough to baptize a sinner.
• I remember the day I introduced him to them. I figured my dad would skin him alive if he had meatballs in his mouth, so I chose a Sunday. I was nervous. God, I was nervous. But within ten minutes, he was in love.
• With the food.
• With Lidia.
• With my dad.
• With the tradition.
• She slapped his hand away when he tried to dip bread before the pasta hit the table, and he called her Nonna by the second visit. She liked that. Never corrected him.
• We’d go every Sunday.
• Eat until we were near comatose.
• Fight over the last meatball and sausage.
• Watch some terrible made-for-TV movie while curled up in mismatched blankets on their sunken couch.
• I used to poke him when he started to doze off, whispering “Don’t you dare fall asleep on me, Cross,” while he mumbled something about “just resting my eyes.”
• It was home.
• Messy, loud, gravy-stained home.
• And now?
• Now I go alone.
• They never ask about him.
• Never say his name.
• But every week, they look behind me when I walk through the door.
• Hope flickering in their eyes like maybe, just maybe, this is the Sunday he’ll be standing next to me again.
• And every week, when he’s not…when it’s just me with my wine and the bags under my eyes, they still smile. Still kiss my cheek.
• Still squeeze my hand a little longer than necessary.
• Like they’re trying to hold the pieces of me together without saying a word.
• And every time, every damn time, my heart breaks a little more.
• But I sit down.
• I eat.
• I laugh.
• Because even broken hearts need Sunday gravy.
• Julian POV
• Sundays are brutal.
• Madison left early this morning, Louboutin heels clicking across marble, voice floating through the halls like a sermon on branding and atonement. Off to play saint for her parents’ church crowd, smiling like she hasn’t done half the shit I’ve watched her beg for with my hand around her throat while I fuck her senseless from behind.
• She does this every week. Pretends to be the virgin next door, completely ignoring the fact that I probably mindlessly fucked her against a wall twelve hours ago.
• Only this time, it wasn’t mindless.
• Not for me.
• Last night, her hands gripped that tufted ottoman like it owed her something, her voice breaking on my name in a pitch rehearsed but hollow.
• But while her mouth said Julian,
• My body heard Serena.
• The only woman whose name I’ve ever climaxed to.
• The only woman who made sex feel like something deeper, something dangerous. Like if I let go, she’d swallow me whole. And trust me, she did. No one could take my cock in her mouth like Serena could.
• And maybe that’s exactly what I wanted.
• Like I said… Sundays are fucking brutal.
• Because I shouldn’t be in this icebox of a mansion.
• I should be on a ferry to Staten Island.
• Arguing with Serena about whose turn it is to bring dessert.
• Listening to her dad rant about the Knicks like it’s gospel.
• Pretending my meatballs are a contender against Lidia’s gravy just to get a rise out of her.
• I should be there.
• But I’m not.
• So, I do what I’ve done every Sunday for the last five years.
• I cook.
• I roll up my sleeves.
• Pull out the cast iron pot Serena bought from some secondhand store in Brooklyn, one of the few things I kept, hidden in the back of the pantry like a relic. Along with her Crock Pot, which I never use.
• I crush garlic like I’m crushing regrets.
• Chop onions through blurry eyes.
• Let the tomatoes simmer until the house smells like a home that doesn’t exist anymore.
• It’s not Lidia’s.
• It never will be.
• But it reminds me of before.
• Before the black cards.
• Before the boardrooms.
• Before I became someone who needed a fucking golf simulator to prove I’d made it.
• Back when I was just Julian.
• And she loved me for that.
• Not for the watch.
• Not for the car.
• Not for the company.
• Just for me.
• I stir the pot.
• And somewhere between the sausage and the basil, I feel myself come undone.
• Not from lust.
• Not from loss.
• But from memory.
• Because even with a trillion-dollar empire… I’d trade it all to hear her laugh one more time while she called my meatballs adorable, and told me I’d never win.
• And the worst part?
• She was right.
• I already lost.