Chapter 4 Chapter 004

Tito’s POV

The knock on my door was soft enough to be polite, but firm enough to say this is not a suggestion. I surfaced from a restless sleep and blinked at the pale wash of morning across the ceiling. For a second I didn’t know where I was. The sheets were too smooth. The room too big. Then the chandelier caught a shard of sunlight and threw it across the wall, and it all rushed back—the villa, the marble, the way money changes the sound of a house. I thought last night was a dream.

“Tito?” Mum’s voice floated in. “Sweetheart, get ready. Breakfast is on, and… he’s downstairs. He wants to meet you.”

“He”. The word sounded strange.

“I’m up,” I called, though my throat felt tight. “Give me ten minutes.”

The shower hissed to life and fogged the mirror while I scrubbed the exhaustion from my body. I stared at my reflection—hair twisted into a messy knot, glasses a little crooked from too many times being knocked off, the bruise at my cheek almost gone now but not forgotten. I tried to smooth the nerves off my face and found there were too many to catch.

As I dressed, my mind ran in small panicked circles. I reminded myself to be civil for Mum, to keep my voice level, to remember she was happy—glowing, even. I also reminded myself that people don’t hand strangers new lives for free. That no man appears out of an alley like a deus ex machina, and suddenly becomes your new dad.

The staircase swallowed the sound of my steps as I went down. The dining room was all glossy wood. Sunlight spilled across a table long enough to host a small country. A silver coffee service steamed beside a basket of bread I couldn’t pronounce. Two place settings gleamed at the far end, and my mum sat at one of them, hands wound together like she was trying to wring her nerves out of her fingers.

She smiled when she saw me, relief loosening her shoulders. “There you are.”

And then I saw the man at the head of the table.

He sat like the chair had been built around him—straight back, shoulders easy but impossible to ignore. The charcoal suit didn’t ask for attention; it took it. His shirt was white as a dare, cuffs precise, a watch that looked like it could buy our old building catching the light. He wore glasses now—thin, rimless, clinical—and they somehow made his gaze colder. There was a whisper of ink at his wrist that vanished when he lifted the coffee cup. He didn’t rush, didn’t fill the room with words or movement.

My feet stopped moving. My stomach went very still.

“This has to be a joke,” I heard myself say.

His eyes lifted to mine, and everything else dropped away. The same eyes that had found me in that alley like a searchlight; the same quiet that had cut through my panic at the hospital. I could feel the weight of that night in the space between us, the violence, the siren-gloss of headlights. He didn’t look surprised to see me. If anything, he looked like this was always how it was going to be.

“It’s nice to see you again, Tito,” he said, his voice smooth, low, and terribly sure. “Your mother has told me a lot about you.”

My mother turned, confusion knitting her brows. “Again?” She glanced between us, searching my face. “You two know each other?”

Anger flashed hot and fast under my skin. “Know each other?” I said, staring at him because I wanted the word to sting. “He’s the man from that night, Mum. The one who pulled up in a black car, beat those men half to death, drove us to the hospital, paid our bills… and disappeared without a name.”

“Tito,” Mum hissed, mortified, giving me the look that meant mind your tone. Her fingers twitched toward my wrist and stopped, like she wasn’t sure she had the right to reach for me anymore.

I waited for him to deny it—to smooth it away, to say I was mistaken, to laugh like I’d misunderstood everything.

He didn’t.

“She’s right,” he said instead, eyes never leaving mine. “That was me.”

Mum’s hand flew to her mouth. “You… saved us?” relief and awe and a trembling devotion braided together.

He didn’t look at her when he answered. “After your discharge, I kept watch for a while.” The words were spare, factual, as if he were reading out a lab result. “When the time was right, I spoke to you. I recommended a program. Arranged a counselor. Facilitated a couple of practicalities. I’ve been interested in your welfare since.”

“Interested in your welfare”?. He could have said monitored, studied, managed. He chose the polite word and still made me feel caged.

“You kept watch?” The heat rose to my face so fast I tasted blood. “Do you hear how that sounds? You were watching us like we were a project. You didn’t introduce yourself, you didn’t ask permission, you just… coordinated our lives from the shadows and then invited us to live in your house?”

My voice carried farther than I meant it. A maid in the doorway went very still, then disappeared.

“Tito,” Mum whispered, cheeks flushing. But when she turned to him her eyes were bright, that tender, terrifying shine back in them. “He’s not a stranger who watched us like animals. He’s the reason I’m sober. He’s the one who showed me where to go, who to call. He believed in me when I couldn’t.” She swallowed, voice breaking. “If he hadn’t stepped in… I don’t know where I’d be.”

My heart squeezed until it hurt. “You don’t even know him,” I said, but it landed weaker than I wanted.

“I know enough,” she said, and in the look she gave him I saw something I didn’t recognize on her face. Not the old desperation. Not the old anger. But hope. Gratitude. A kind of reverence I had never earned, no matter how many nights I carried her home.

He set his cup down without a sound. “People don’t need to know me to benefit from my decisions,” he said. Not in a cruel or arrogant way, just absolute.

“What decisions?” I shot back. “To move us like chess pieces? To decide I shouldn’t know who was pulling the strings? Why didn’t you tell her it was you that night? Why hide it? Why this?” I flung a hand at the room…the shine, the space, the life that didn’t belong to us. “What do you want?”

For the first time, there was a flash of uncertainty across his face. A faint narrowing of his eyes, as if he’d expected a different question.

“What I want,” he said evenly, “is for your mother not to die. What I want is for you to finish school without collapsing under the weight of three jobs and a grief you didn’t cause. What I want, Tito, is order.”

The word slid down my spine and left a chill.

“It isn’t your job to decide that for us,” I said, because if I didn’t say it, I’d choke on it.

He didn’t blink. “No,” he agreed. “It’s my job to make it possible.”

Mum made a small sound, like the air had left her. She reached for his sleeve, then thought better of it and folded her hands in her lap. She looked at me, pleading. “He’s… he’s good, Tito. I know how it sounds, but I’m telling you with my whole heart: he saved my life.” Her cheeks flushed a soft, ridiculous pink and she actually smiled, shy as a girl. “He’s… an answer. Don’t ruin this because you’re scared.”

“Of course I’m scared,” I snapped, tears burning my eyes. “I’ve been scared for five years! I’m scared of waking up and finding you gone again. I’m scared of trusting anything that looks like a miracle because miracles always come with strings.” I looked back at him and my voice went low. “And he keeps his strings hidden.”

The room went very quiet.

For a long beat no one moved. Then Mum gathered herself, smoothed her skirt the way she did when she was flustered, and leaned toward him. “I’m sorry,” she whispered, and before I could stop her, she tilted her face toward his in a grateful, tentative kiss.

He didn’t take it.

He shifted a fraction, and her lips landed on his cheek instead. He inclined his head as if accepting a formality. His gaze stayed on me the whole time, in a steady and assessing way, giving nothing back.

The humiliation on my mother’s face was quick, then gone; she masked it with another small smile like she hadn’t expected anything else. Somehow that stung worse.

My chair scraped loud against the floor as I stood. “This is insane.” My hands were shaking. “All of it.”

“Tito,” Mum said, panic sparking in her eyes. “Please…”

“I need air.” It came out strangled. “I need… anything but this.”