DOMENICO

I woke up slowly.

Not the way I usually did—alert, already moving, already counting exits—but drifting, heavy, suspended in that quiet space between sleep and awareness where the body knows before the mind does.

Warmth first.

A weight across my thigh. A soft rise and fall against my chest.

Then the smell.

Her detergent. Something clean and faintly floral. Not mine. Never mine.

My eyes opened.

The ceiling above me was unfamiliar—plain white, faint crack near the corner, a shadow from the curtain rod cutting across it at an angle I didn’t recognize. It took a second for the pieces to line up, for memory to settle.

Reina’s apartment....