Her Puppy Chose the Mafia Boss… And Exposed a Hidden Truth

Chapter 6

“Tommaso.” I was surprised by how steady my voice was. “Is. He. Here.”

He looked at the door to the corner office for a long moment. Then he stepped aside.

Dante was standing at the window, hands in his pockets, looking at the city. He didn’t turn around. “You shouldn’t have come.”

“I know.” I closed the door behind me. “But Milo’s been sitting by the door for two weeks, and I’m done being treated like a stranger who doesn’t get an explanation.”

Silence. Then, very quietly: “You’re not a stranger.”

“Then look at me.”

He turned. And I saw it — the thing I’d been afraid of since the night he’d told me about Argus. He looked like a man saying goodbye.

“I can’t do this,” he said.

“Do what? Walk your dog? Bring a ball to a park? Laugh?” My voice cracked. “You made me believe I could have this, Dante. You made me believe I could be in someone’s life. And now you’re—”

“Because I know how this ends.” His voice was careful, controlled, the way it had been at the wedding when he’d talked about the fire. “Everyone I have ever loved, I have lost. My mother. Argus.” A pause. “My father — not to death, but to something colder. I don’t know how to be loved and keep it. I never learned.”

“That’s not how love works—”

“It’s how love has worked for me. And I won’t—” He stopped. Swallowed. “I won’t do that to you, Ruby. I won’t love you and then watch you be taken away. I can’t survive it twice.”

“You don’t get to decide that for me.” I was crying now, and I hated it. “You don’t get to decide that I’m the thing you’ll lose, when you’re the thing I’ve found. Milo knew. The first night, in the rain, Milo knew exactly who you were. And I should have trusted him.”

“He’s a dog.”

“He’s the best judge of character I’ve ever met.” I took a step back. “And he chose you. So did I. And if you’re going to throw that away because you’re scared of a future you can’t see — then you were never the man I thought you were.”

I walked out. I made it to the elevator before I heard him call my name, and I pressed the button, and I didn’t look back.

Three days later, Milo got sick.

It happened fast. One afternoon he was fine — tearing through the park with the neighbor’s dog, eating dinner like a starving thing — and by midnight he was on my bathroom floor, his whole body trembling, unable to keep anything down, eyes too bright and too scared.

The emergency vet took one look and said the words I’d been praying I’d never hear: “He’s got a blockage. We need to operate. Tonight.”

I heard the number. I heard it twice, because the first time I thought I’d misheard. My savings, my entire camera fund, the money I’d set aside for a new lens — it wasn’t enough. Not even close.

I stood in the bright fluorescent lobby of a Manhattan animal hospital at one in the morning, holding the wall like it was the only thing keeping me upright, and I did the one thing I’d promised myself I wouldn’t do.

I called him.

He answered on the second ring. His voice was thick with sleep, and then it wasn’t. “Ruby. What’s wrong?”

“Please,” I said, and my voice broke completely. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry to call you. I didn’t know who else—” I couldn’t finish. I pressed my hand over my mouth.

“Where are you?”

“The animal hospital. On—” I gave him the address, choking on it. “He needs surgery. And I can’t— I don’t have—”

“Stay there.” His voice had changed. It was the voice he used at the office, the one that made rooms go quiet. “Don’t move. I’m coming.”

He was there in twenty minutes. I don’t know how he did it — I don’t know what he broke to get from his apartment to that hospital in twenty minutes at one-thirty in the morning. But he walked in wearing a coat over what looked like pajamas, and he came straight to me, and he took my face in both hands and made me look at him.

“Hey,” he said. “Hey. I’ve got it. I’ve got him.”

“The money—”