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“I very much doubt there is one.”
“And if there were, she would probably be a masochist,” she says airily.
“Meaning?”
“You’re disconnected. Pain gives you pleasure, you always expect the worst, so you sabotage anything that gets slightly close to breaching your boundaries.”
“You don’t know me, Lucia,” I say through gritted teeth.
“You barely know yourself. Speaking of, I know what day it is on Friday.” she says smugly.
“Don’t even fucking think about it.”
“It’s not every day that it’s your birthday.”
“I don’t want any hint of a celebration.”
“Sure, sure.”
“I mean it,” I reply, but she has already walked back into the house.
Four days later, I groan inwardly before I enter the heavily adorned room with balloons and a huge birthday banner.
“Which one of you wants to die first? I told you nothing fancy,” I hiss out the side of my mouth to Dominic and Damon.
“Lucia insisted,” Damon says, shrugging.
“It’s a couple of hours. Stop being such astronzoabout it.”
“Who is invited?”
“All the Capo’s, and half a dozen others. Being a made man has perks, nobody wants to piss you off,” Dominic says smirking.
“The Rossi’s have already arrived, and Angela is waiting at the top table.”
“Great,” I say darkly.
“I don’t know who looks more miserable, you or her. She looks like somebody has told her she’s spending the weekend in Alcatraz. What’s going on with you two? I thought you would have at least kissed the broad by now.”
“I’m not doing anything until I put a ring on it. I want everything done above board, its business, not pleasure.”
I smooth the silk of my suit before walking into the room. This is meant to be a ‘surprise party,’ but Damon and Dominic know better than to let me walk into that. I am not a man who likes surprises of any kind; they are seldomly good and often bad. When I walk into the room, there is a flurry of applause and ovation amongst a sea of familiar faces—Lucia at the front, already bombed by the looks of it, surrounded by my men. Angela is at the top table, looking somber but in intense conversation with her mama. When I see Sophia’s green eyes looking up at me, everybody else seems to fade into obscurity.
I thought about not coming. I had the excuses ready in my head. Migraine. Period. Bubonic plague. Yet when it came down to it, I realized how much I wanted to see him again. Surely, it wasn’t normal to feel this attached to a perfect stranger. The need to steal another look at him overtook every rational thought.
The way he dropped my wrist with such repulsion had looped in my head over and over. The thought of seeing him made me feel almost giddy inside. Standing amongst the crowd, my breath hitched violently when he walked into the room to boundless applause. I felt a surge of jealousy when he was enveloped in an embrace by another woman, my eyes sliding to Angela but she looked despondent and once again close to tears. Her mama was beside her, and she was smiling benignly. I could see the air between them was fraught with tension.
Pietro greets me, jolting me out of my thoughts but I barely register what he is saying until mama nudges me and I look up at him.
“Teroso,” he says with a low whistle, looking at my outfit appreciatively.
Usually, I prefer to stay low-key with either black or pastel colors but tonight I want to benoticed. I am wearing a red bodycon dress with Louboutin red heels and rose red lipstick to match. Mama had side-eyed me when I walked out the house but didn’t say anything. She must have thought I was doing this for Pietro’s arousal and attention.
How wrong she is.
“Grazi,” I say, bowing my head slightly though when I peer up, my eyes lock on to steely gray ones. My head barely comes up to Rocco’s broad chest, but the distance between my mouth and his is minimal at this angle.
“Greet Don Rocco,” Mama hisses at me.
