Chapter Six: “Building a New World”

There's a strange thing about change.

You don't notice it happening at first. You don't feel the walls shift, the ground tremble beneath your feet. It's only when you look back, when you've been walking for a while, that you realize you've crossed an invisible line. That the world you used to know is gone, replaced by something... different.

That was how it felt, living in the house with Johnson.

At first, I stayed out of his way—spent my days lost in books or staring out the window, wondering if the world beyond the gates even remembered me. The silence between us wasn't comfortable, but it wasn't suffocating either. It was… peaceful.

But peace is an illusion when you're used to chaos.

I wasn't used to quiet moments with him. I wasn't used to the way his presence settled around me, how the air between us grew thicker with every passing day. The more I stayed, the more I saw it—this other side of him, the part of him that wasn't the Mafia Boss, the man who didn't want to kill, the man who only wanted to survive.

One evening, after a long day of trying (and failing) to make a meal that didn't taste like cardboard, I found him standing at the edge of the garden, looking out over the horizon. His back was straight, his shoulders tense. But his eyes—his eyes were focused, distant. As if he were searching for something in the twilight that he couldn't find.

I hesitated before I walked up to him, my fingers nervously clutching the hem of my shirt. The cool night air felt different here—alive, filled with the scent of blooming flowers and the faintest trace of danger.

"Are you okay?" I asked, my voice barely rising above the soft rustling of the leaves.

Johnson turned, his gaze meeting mine with an intensity that made me stop dead in my tracks. He didn't answer immediately. Instead, his lips pressed into a thin line, and for a moment, I thought he might walk away, retreat back into that shell he always carried around.

But he didn't.

"I don't know what to do anymore," he said quietly, his voice raw with something I hadn't expected. "I don't know how to stop being the person I used to be."

I took a small step closer, my heart aching at the vulnerability in his words. "You're not the person you used to be," I said softly, feeling the weight of my own truth in those words. "And you don't have to be him anymore."

For a moment, he didn't say anything. He just stood there, his eyes locked on mine, as if weighing my words, trying to decide if they were true. He reached out, his hand brushing my cheek—so gently, it might have been a dream.

"I don't know how to be anything else," he confessed, his voice barely above a whisper. "All I know is how to destroy. How to build fear. How to make people afraid of me."

I took another step closer, then another, until I was standing right in front of him. His breath was shallow, his chest rising and falling with each silent beat.

"Then you'll learn," I said firmly. "You can learn to build something else. Something that isn't made from fear."

His eyes searched mine, like he was looking for something—something he hadn't seen in years. Maybe hope. Maybe the belief that change was possible. Maybe something as simple as trust.

For the first time, I saw a glimmer of it in his eyes. A spark of something real. Something that wasn't just darkness.

"You're crazy," he murmured, his lips twitching in the beginning of a smile. "You know that, right?"

I smiled back, my heart light for the first time in weeks. "Crazy enough to believe in you."

And just like that, something shifted. The air between us grew warmer. The distance between our hearts shrank. It wasn't perfect. It wasn't easy. But for the first time, I believed in the future we could build.

Together.

Two weeks later, we did something I never thought I'd do.

I went with him to one of his business meetings.

I wasn't there to observe his power or witness his world. No, I was there to show him that he didn't need to be the monster he thought he had to be. He didn't need to be the man everyone feared. And I think, somewhere in that dark room, he believed me.

I wasn't sure how this new life was going to unfold, but I knew one thing:

This wasn't just about me saving him anymore. This was about both of us finding a way out of the shadows.

And as he walked out of that room—his back straighter than I had ever seen it, his eyes clear for the first time in years—I realized something.

We were both building something new.