Page 16 of Read This Before the Villain falls in Love with You

I drop onto the cool marble rim beside her, letting my aching calves rest against the stone. Matteo usually watches me like I might pull a hidden blade from my collar, and Enzo looks through me like I'm a ledger entry with a minus sign in front of it. Sofia just scoots her paperback aside to make room, her brown eyes tracking my dusty sneakers with mild curiosity, as if I'm merely an eccentric new roommate who insists on alphabetizing the spice rack.

I point a finger back toward the greenery. "For the record, the fence has a gap near the old shed. Six inches, maybe seven. Not enough for a person, but enough that whoever built it should be fired."

"I'll tell Adrian you said so." A sly grin spreads across her face as she leans closer. "He will pace around the courtyard for three hours inspecting every individual leaf."

"Go right ahead," I tell her, resting my elbow on my knee. "Tell him the guards here leave holes a child could climb through. I have seen elementary schools locked down better than this place."

Sofia hides a grin behind her fingers. "He takes his job very seriously. He wrote an entire rulebook just about the front gates."

"I bet half of it tells the men how to glare at the mailman," I snort back, chin tilted up.

Sofia bursts into real, breathless laughter that catches her by surprise. "You're funnier than they told me."

I narrow my eyes at her. "Who's 'they'?"

"Everyone." Sofia tracks a bee buzzing over the rosebushes. "Matteo warned the table that you cursed him out the second you woke up. Nonna told the kitchen you eat everything on your plate, which means she loves you. Enzo thinks you are a riot." She tilts her head, studying my face. "And Luca says nothing at all. Which means he is thinking about you way too much to talk about it out loud."

A sudden, sharp flutter hits the bottom of my stomach, but I keep my expression flat. Instead of answering, I look down and catch a loose strand of cream yarn unraveling at my wrist, winding the thread tightly around my index finger until the tip turns white.

"Your brother only speaks in cold glares and threats," I point out. I pick a piece of lint off my sleeve.

Sofia rests her chin on her palms. "That is just how he is. You should have seen him after our parents were killed. He was twenty years old. He barely said ten words for a year, unless he was barking an order. Adrian had to guess what he wanted at dinner like Luca was a quiet king who only nodded."

"I do not know if that is sad or funny," I admit, rubbing my forehead with a dry sigh.

Her mouth twitches into a quiet smile. "Around here, everything is a little bit of both. You learn to make jokes so you do not lose your mind."

"Welcome to the Moretti household." Sofia nudges my ankle with the toe of her shoe. "Nobody knows whether to hire a therapist or an arms dealer."

We sit for a moment, the fountain trickling behind us, and I realize this is the first quiet I've had in days that doesn't feel like a held breath. Sofia picks at the hem of her skirt, and then, without any real warning, asks the question I should have seen coming.

"Do you have a boyfriend? Back in London?"

"No." I stare straight ahead at the hedges.

"Girlfriend?" Her brow arches inquisitively.

"Also no." I wave a hand at the empty garden. "I run a company, my assistant calls me ten times an hour over missing pens, and my mother treats my love life like a mystery novel she needs to solve. That is all I have room for."

Sofia wrinkles her nose at the thought. "That sounds lonely and exhausting."

"It is called getting things done," I counter, finger tapping my temple. "Dating takes too much energy and too much talking. I do not have the time. I barely have time to sleep, and look at me now…I got shoved in a car and flown to Italy, so clearly I am not great at making life choices anyway."

"You need a simple hobby," she teases, leaning back into the warm sunshine. "Like making clay pots. Or planting flowers. Something where you can shut your brain off for an hour."

"My hobby is screaming at rich men until they stop doing dumb things," I shoot back without missing a beat.

Sofia grins at that, wide and unguarded, and for a second she looks even younger than twenty-one, like a kid who's finally found someone willing to make jokes about the thing everyone else in the house treats like a crime scene.

I bump my shoulder into hers. "You can laugh. I was the one stuffed in the back of the car. If I can make fun of it, you can smile."

Sofia thumbs the edges of her book. "I know, but still. Nobody ever talks to us like normal people. Everyone is scared to death of Luca, or they want something from our name. You just treat all of us like regular idiots. It is nice for a change."

"I treat everyone the exact same way." I shrug and rest my palms on the stone ledge. "It cuts out the small talk."

She laughs again, and it's genuinely one of the better sounds I've heard since I woke up in this house, and I decide, somewhat against my better judgment, that I like her. Which is inconvenient, because liking people in this family was not on my itinerary.

We banter for another twenty minutes about nothing important. We debate London weather versus Italian heat, why British tea culture is objectively superior, and Sofia's stubborn theory that strong espresso solves more problems than licensed therapy. Eventually she stands up and smooths her skirt, announcing she has somewhere urgent to be. The vivid blush creeping up her neck reveals everything.