“Here you go, ladies!” Summer rejoined us, bearing our requested beverages.
With how much time I spent with Summer, it was strange that this was only my second encounter with my husband’s sister. So, toying with the stem of my wineglass, I asked her, “Do you live in Chicago?”
Her eyes remained fixed on the ice surface where players skated through their warm-up routine. “No, not anymore. I moved to Indianapolis a little less than two years ago.”
“Oh, what made you move there?”
Gemma sucked in a hissing breath through her teeth, her free hand gripping her glass of cola so tightly I feared it might shatter. On her other side, Summer groaned, and I caught sight of her cringing.
Why did it feel like I’d stepped on a landmine with that innocent question?
“Uh . . .” I shifted uncomfortably in my chair. “Am I missing something?”
“There were a lot of reasons,” Gemma began, “but the catalyst was Allegra’s murder.”
My stomach bottomed out, and I battled against the nausea that followed. Shacked up with Enzo in our little McMansion bubble, I’d put on my blinders, effectively blocking out the rest of the world. But the reality was that my position within his life was a result of my father having done the unthinkable. He’d killed an innocent woman, almost killed her unborn child, and that had caused a ripple effect across this family.
Voice weak, I whispered, “I’m so sorry.”
Summer reached across Gemma to grab my hand and gave it a firm squeeze. “You’ve suffered just as much as any of us because of that day.”
Gemma chimed in, “The silver lining is that I had been looking for a way out for a long time, and with everyone reeling in the aftermath of that situation, it didn’t take much to convince Gio to let me leave.”
My brows drew down as I tried to recall meeting someone with that name. When I came up empty, I asked, “Who’s Gio?”
“The rightful don,” Summer supplied. “Matteo’s only standing in for his older brother.”
There was athirdBellini man? One even more powerful than the two I’d met so far?
It became more apparent by the minute that, during my few months married to Enzo, I’d barely scratched the tip of the iceberg when it came to my new “family.”
“Anyway,” Gemma said, cracking a rare smile. “If I hadn’t moved to Indy, I would have never met Sasha.”
“Sasha. Is that a girlfriend of yours?”
Shaking her head, she laughed. “Don’t get me started on Russians and their weird nicknames, but Sasha is my husband.” With a hand, she gestured toward the ice surface. “The big blond guy playing goalie for the Speed.”
It suddenly clicked why the Bellini Real Estate holiday party was taking place at a Chicago Crush hockey game against the Indy Speed.
Almost like he knew we were talking about him, Sasha turned in our direction, tapped both sides of his helmet and then his heart, before pointing directly at Gemma. The woman at my side blushed, pressing her fingertips to her mouth and blowing him a kiss in return.
Okay, Enzo’s sister and her husband were adorable. Their love for each other was palpable, and witnessing it gave me the warm and fuzzies.
“I don’t know much about hockey,” I confessed. “All my knowledge on the sport can be traced back to romance novels, thanks to Summer.”
Summer winked. “You areverywelcome.”
A blush crept up my neck just thinking about some of the spicier scenes contained within those books.
“Honestly, I’m still trying to figure it out myself.” Gemma set my mind at ease. “But if you like hockey romance, you’d like my friend Dakota. She’s married to one of Sasha’s teammates and is an author who caught her big break switching to hockey.”
“Wait, what?” Summer screeched. In a flash, she reached into her bag and produced an e-reader. “Tell me her full name. I need to look up her books.”
“She actually writes under a pen name. D.D. Morgan.”
Summer’s eyes went comically large, and her mouth dropped open. “No fucking way!”
Gemma peeked at me before turning her gaze back to Summer. “You’ve read her before?”
