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“But everything else,” I say.
“If you’re going to do this, you’d have to besureit would work. You’d have to know you’ll be together and have a family.”
“Even then, could Rosa forgive me?”
Dario always gives me the truth. Other men might try to figure out what I want to hear, but never my brother.
He stares at me bleakly. “I don’t know. Maybe not.”
I swallow, taking his response as calmly as I can.
He’s been around Rosa for her entire life, the best uncle a girl could ask for. He knows her as well as I do. In some ways, he knows her better because he could be her friend during her testy teenage years, and I was always her dad first.
“I can’t imagine that,” I say, voice dull. “Rosa hating me. Us not being able to laugh together. Her not wanting to see me.”
She would already hate me if she knew the truth.
“I’ll have to fight it.”
“It?”
“This.” I almost thump my chest. “The feeling. The attraction. I have to ignore it and not let it rule me.”
“Can you do that? I’ve never seen you like this.”
It’s true. Not with Angelica. I don’t answer his question.
Soon, the club starts to fill up. I send a messenger with a reply for Fyodor, telling him I’ll need time to consider his request. If I seriously thought he wanted peace, I’d meet him immediately, but only a bad leader rushes in.
When I get home, Edoardo approaches me. “Boss.”
“What’s wrong?”
Edoardo sighs. “Not sure if this is my place, but the girls haven’t spoken to each other since breakfast.”
My chest suddenly cramps. Am I having a heart attack? That’s dramatic. Far too dramatic for a man like me, a boss, a Don. As I stare at Edoardo, I honestly consider it.
“Do you know why?” I ask.
“No,” Edoardo says, looking at me oddly.
I nod, walk past him, and head up the stairs to Rosa’s room. When I knock on the door, and she tells me to come in, I swallow, knowing this could be the last moment I exist in a world where she doesn’t hate me.
She’s sitting up in bed, reading a book. When she sees me, she smiles. She’s concerned—the mood is all over her—but shesmiles.
“Is everything okay between you and Emma?”
Rosa rolls her eyes. “Eddie, right?”
“You haven’t spoken since breakfast.”
“She wanted to know about Matt.”
Matt. Matvei. A man who almost did the unthinkable to my daughter—a man I’ve never been able to find.
“About the phone blocker,” she says. “I couldn’t bear to think about it, but then I felt so guilty. She’s only here because of me. She only saw what she saw because of me. She’s only in danger because of me. I can’t look at her. It eats me up.”
“Oh, Rosa.”
