Being married to a drug mafia don was… well, something.

It wasn’t the sleek, cinematic danger people romanticize. It was waking up at 3 a.m. to the sound of hushed arguments two floors below. It was pretending not to notice the new bullet hole in the garage wall. It was learning, with an uncomfortable amount of ease, which phone calls to answer and which to let ring until they fell silent.

It was also the way he’d come home after disappearing for days—tired, jaw clenched, smelling like gunpowder and expensive cologne—and place his forehead against mine like I was the only thing anchoring him to the world.

“You’re safe,” he would say. “With me, you’re always safe.”

And yet safety was the last thing you ever truly felt.

There were rules, of course. Don’t ask questions. Don’t leave town without telling him. Don’t look in the locked drawer of his study. Don’t talk to strangers who ask too many questions. Don’t, don’t, don’t.

But the biggest rule was the one you broke first: Don’t ever leave the mansion without him

You didn’t want to leave him. You weren’t

You just wanted to breathe

So you slipped out the side entrance—the one the staff used, the one he never thought you’d so much as glance at—heart hammering, breath tight, like the walls themselves might shout your name.

The air outside felt colder than it should. Maybe because it was the first time in a long time you’d felt it without him hovering somewhere nearby. Maybe because freedom, real or imagined, has a way of chilling you to the bone.

You didn’t go far. Just down the stone steps, across the gravel path, to the edge of the gardens where the roses grew wild and untrimmed, their thorns left sharp, their blooms thick with scent. You stood there with your arms wrapped around yourself, breathing in the night like someone who’d nearly drowned.

You counted those breaths.

One. Two. Three.

On the fourth, a twig snapped behind you.

You didn’t turn at first. You knew that sound too well—the soft, deliberate crack of someone who moves through shadows as naturally as through rooms. A chill slid down your spine, followed by the weight of a gaze you’d never been able to ignore.

When you finally looked back, he was there.

Not angry. Not yet. Anger was a luxury he rarely allowed himself with you.

He stood at the base of the steps, hands at his sides, chest rising and falling with slow, controlled breaths. His tie was loosened, his shirt sleeves rolled to the elbows—the look he wore when he came home from the kind of nights you pretended not to imagine.

“Where were you going?” he asked softly.

Not accusing. Just… disappointed. And somehow that was worse.

“I wasn’t leaving,” you said, shaking your head. “I just needed air.”

His eyes flicked to the open door behind you, then to the dark path beyond the roses. When they returned to yours, something fragile flickered across his expression—fear, almost.

Fear of losing you.

He stepped closer, his shoes crunching over gravel, each sound measured. “You know what the world is like out there. You know what they’d do if they got their hands on you.”

Your pulse fluttered. You hated that he wasn’t wrong.

“I just wanted to breathe,” you whispered.

He reached you then, his fingertips brushing your wrist before curling around it—not tight, but firm enough to remind you of the reality you lived in.

“You breathe,” he murmured, lowering his forehead to yours, “and I’ll protect you. But you don’t walk out of that door alone. Not in this life.”

His thumb stroked your skin, gentle in a way that contradicted every violent truth you knew about him.

“Come back inside.”

And despite everything—the fear, the rules, the cage disguised as devotion—you let him lead you back through the doorway.

Because breathing was one thing.

Leaving him was another entirely.

And that was the only thing you’d never do