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Prologue
Thanksgiving day was supposed to be a family affair with lots of laughter and happiness, but it wasn’t…at least, not this year. Instead of happiness, all Emelia felt was heartache and longing. She wanted to see him smile at her…wanted to see him laugh at something she said, but she saw nothing but his anger and turmoil when he looked at her. She was alone in a crowded room because of her love for Dante, her brother—or so everyone thought. She hated that she was the only one of the seven siblings to know the truth about their family, and it destroyed her to keep it secret.
Emelia managed to hide her heartache until she’d snuck into the sunroom and away from the family. Then, the tears flowed from her eyes as she made her way to one of the sofas her mother liked to keep in the bright room.
Her mind was full of Dante. There was an air of isolation about his tall figure that kept him just out of her reach. She wanted to run her hands through his black hair, which was silky straight and always gleamed in the light. His handsome face was bronzed from his love of the outdoors, and his smile would light up his face when she caught him off guard. However, it would soon dim when he realized it was her.
As Emelia tried to mop her tears up, she heard the creak of the door opening. She didn’t want to deal with anyone but, if she had someone to talk to, she wouldn’t feel so upset. It wouldn’t change anything though, because her heart would still be broken over Dante.
“Hey, it’s okay,” Sylvia, her brother Eric’s girlfriend, said as she entered, and sat beside her. “What has you so upset? Or should I ask whom?”
Emelia looked up and sighed as she moved back into a corner of the sofa when realization hit, and she froze. “You know? How?”
Sylvia shook her head. “Guessed.”
“And doesn’t it bother you that two siblings are in love with the other and not in a sibling way?” Emelia asked while tears continued to run down her face.
Emelia often wondered how she’d gotten to this place. The only answer that she ever received was that it was her own fault for kissing him.
“I don’t know what to think to be honest. I’ve seen you and Dante together and it’s obvious that you’re both hurting.”
Emelia nodded. “If Dante would listen, then we wouldn’t need to hurt.” Her Dante was damn stubborn.
Sylvia frowned. “What do you mean?”
“It doesn’t matter,” Emelia hiccupped, and wiped at her tears, which wouldn’t stop flowing.
Reaching forward, Sylvia tried to sooth Emelia as she rubbed her arm. “It obviously does.”
Emelia grabbed Sylvia’s wrist as she wrestled with her decision. On one hand, she desperately needed to talk…to tell someone, but on the other, it was hard to let go of the secret for fear of what it would do to her family. “You can’t tell anyone, not even Eric.”
As soon as the words left her mouth, Emelia knew she shouldn’t have asked Sylvia to keep something from Eric, especially since Sylvia looked uneasy. Emelia just wished she knew the right thing to do without causing so much chaos.
“I don’t want to start keeping secrets from Eric. It would hurt him deeply if he knew I was holding something back that concerned you and Dante.”
Emelia snapped her eyes to Sylvia and could see it clearly written on her face...no... “He knows?” she whispered, and hoped she was wrong.
“Yes.”
“Oh, God! He hasn’t said anything to me. What did he say?” She could feel her throat closing, and it was getting harder to breathe.
“Calm down, Emelia. He hasn’t said anything because he doesn’t know what to say. He loves you both and feels torn.”
Emelia wanted to curl up and hide for the rest of her life. She wished that Eric had talked to her. Perhaps she wouldn’t feel so torn up inside if he had, but maybe, it would have made things worse. “What a mess.”
Emelia dropped her head back against the sofa, turned to face Sylvia, and held her gaze. “It all started with a kiss,” Emelia admitted. “There was a party, here at the house, for my twenty-first birthday. Dante had always been mysterious and never around as I was growing up. I didn’t really think much of it, and he wasn’t really a part of the family. In fact, he missed a lot of family holidays when I was younger. He was the unknown brother, but then, just before my eighteenth birthday, I overheard something that I shouldn’t have. A week later, Dante showed up, and it was like I was meeting him for the first time. I fell in love with him and didn’t know what to do.”
She sighed and stared out the window as the tears pricked her eyes. “My young heart knew who and what it wanted, but I was stupid. I thought if I went for it, showed him how I felt, he’d fall in love with me. I thought,” she felt a lump in her throat as the memory burned painfully bright in her mind, “that everything would be happily ever after, which is why, on my twenty-fi
rst birthday, I kissed him. My heart had pounded so hard in my chest as we kissed. He was shocked at first, but then he’d returned my kiss. It went on for a while, and I felt his need…I thought that was the start of something beautiful, but then he shoved me away.
“I’d never seen him so furious in my life before that night.” She swiped at the tears…his rejection still hurt, even after all these years. “After that, things changed for me…for him…for the whole family. There will never be a chance of going back to before it happened. I’m not even sure I’d want to if given the opportunity.”
