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Via Carotawas a long shot. It was the same restaurant my parents had taken us to every week for as far back as I could remember. It was the only place I could think to look for them where I could see them all together from a distance.
I glanced at my watch. “Fifteen more minutes and then we’ll leave. Deal?”
It was a stupid plan anyway. What were the chances—
Two black SUVs pulled into the restaurant parking lot, and a big guy in a nice suit stepped out from the front passenger seat of each car and opened the rear passenger door.
I was holding my breath. It came out in a whoosh as my father stood up, brushing an errant piece of fluff from his jacket’s sleeve. For one brief moment, I saw the gray in his hair, along with the lines etched across his face, that hadn’t been there before. Then they disappeared, and all I could see were his warm gray eyes, the strong, confident line of his jaw, the wide chest I’d cuddled against for more hours than I could count. All that I had seen in him as a child.
“Greta,” I whispered, though it came out as an unintelligible croak.
I wanted to launch myself across the street and into my father’s arms. My father. He wasalive, right in front of me. Tears stung my eyes, and the lump at the back of my throat made it hard to swallow.
Leo stepped out of the second SUV, and my eyes gobbled up the sight of him until Dominic made his way next to my father. He looked different, but so much the same, and yet, I’d never seen him smile like that. He lookedhappy.
A blonde woman got out of the car next, standing between my father and Dominic. She was pretty—that’s what struck me first. And then my father smiled at her. It lit his whole face up, just like it did when he used to smile at me, eyes warm, face aglow with affection.
Something inside my chest broke. I could feel it, like a sharp, clean snap where my heart should have been.
The last thing I saw was Dante standing next to Leo.
I clenched my hands into fists so hard my nails were digging into the palms of my hands.
They were all smiling—even Dante. It didn’t look at all like something was missing from their lives.
“I need to leave,” I whispered to Greta past the lump in my throat.
“But…” She waved in the direction of my family, but hot tears trickled down my cheeks, and she nodded. “You got it, hon. Let’s go.”
She turned back the way we’d come, and I tried to follow her, but I couldn’t make my feet move. The people who had been my whole world were right there, so close, I would have sworn I could smell the sandalwood top notes of Dominic’s cologne.
But I wasn’t part of their world anymore. They’d moved on. They’d forgotten about me. They’d replaced me.
The blonde, I knew who she was. I recognized her from the wedding announcement I’d found in the paper. Fallon Douglas; now Fallon Luca, Dom’s wife. Sister-in-law to Dante and Leo, and daughter-in-law to my father. Daughter-in-law, but there had been more than polite affection in the way he’d smiled at her. He cared for her. He… loved her? Like his own daughter? Like he had once loved me?
I forced my legs to move, putting one foot in front of the other. Away from here. Away from the place I should never have returned to. I felt like a ghost, returned after so many years dead to find the wounds my absence had caused were long-healed.
People brushed past me, but I kept going. I had no destination in mind. Maybe back to California? I should never have come.
“Raven, talk to me, hon,” Greta said, grabbing hold of my forearm to slow my steps.
“How long?” I gasped.
“How long… What?”
“How long do you think it took them to get over me? Or...” I slammed my lips shut.
There was another possibility I hadn’t considered.
I stopped in the middle of the sidewalk, then immediately regretted it when the herd of human bodies behind me kept moving. I sidestepped as quickly as I could onto the narrow strip of green space next to the sidewalk.
“They had to have known, Greta.”
“Known that you were here?” She looked back like she expected to see the dark heads of my father and brothers amid the crowd of bodies.
I shook my head. “They had to know I was alive.”
With every passing second, it made more sense, no matter how much the little girl I’d been screamed in objection. But even if I thought Vito capable of kidnapping—which I didn’t—my father would have found me. He had the resources to tear the whole country apart, searching for his missing daughter. But he hadn’t found me because he hadn’t searched for me… because I was never missing.
