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"Or what’s left of it," I scoff.
"Didn’t take you for a defeatist." He frowns.
"Tell that to the casting agents who’re looking for the next perfect face."
"Maybe the scars will add character, give you a depth the others don’t have. Help you stand apart in the sea of symmetrical visages," Knight offers.
"Man here’s an optimist, but in this case, I have to agree with him." Cade drums his fingers on his chest. "In any case, is a scar on your face going to stop you from pursuing a career in Hollywood?"
"Hell, no," I growl.
"That’s what I thought." Cade’s lips twitch.
"It’s not going to be easy, but nothing can stop me from going after what I want." And that includes finding a way to get back at the Mafia princess.
6
Four years later
Solene
"The weather is hotter than Naples." I place my hands in my lap.
Massimo glances up from his perusal of his phone. "I’ll take your word for it." He goes back to texting.
O-k-a-y, when you have to resort to talking about the weather things are dire. But how else am I to open a conversation with someone I don’t know at all? Someone who’s much older than me. Someone who I met only a few days ago. Someone I’m engaged to and am going to marry very soon.
"It’s so nice of you to organize this dinner with my sister and her fiancé," I offer. Yep, not only am I engaged, but Olivia, too, now has a fiancé, and this is supposed to be a get to know each other dinner, which Massimo took the initiative to plan.
"Nice?" Massimo tilts his head, without taking his gaze off that infernal phone. "Trust me when I say that was far from my intention in organizing this dinner."
"Oh." I hunch my shoulders. What do I say to that? What does he mean by saying his intentions were not what they seemed to be on the surface? I glance away, then back at him. "Palermo is much more beautiful than Naples," I murmur.
OMG, how pathetic. Now you’re comparing the two cities. Of course, Palermo's a more scenic space; it’s smaller than my hometown but has a lot more money. It’s why crime is rife there and why my family was able to hold sway for so long. I drum my fingers on the table.
"I haven’t seen much of the city. Do you think you’ll have time to show me around?"
Massimo finally glances up at me. "I’m sorry, I’ve been a shit fiancé, haven't I?"
I blink, then look away. "It’s fine, I know you must be busy with matters of the Cosa Nostra."
Yep, Massimo belongs to the clan who were once bitter rivals of my father's, which is how this engagement came about. I knew I’d be a bargaining piece, but I couldn’t have predicted my wedding arrangement would carry this much significance.
He widens his stance. "I’m sorry you didn’t get to have a say in who you’re going to marry."
"Neither did you." I wince. I didn’t mean to say that. I mean, that’s what crossed my mind the moment I noticed Massimo didn’t seem particularly happy at our engagement, but I should have learned by now that one does not go around voicing everything one thinks. You’d think after the pains my family took to drill that into me over the years, I’d have learned my lesson, but nope, the link between my brain and my mouth is often tremulous. It means, I tend to speak my mind at the most inopportune moment, like now.
"What makes you say that?" he asks slowly.
The fact that you couldn’t stop looking at my sister, for one.Yeah, at my engagement, my sister Olivia burst in to congratulate me. My sister defied my mother to leave home to become an actress. That was when my father was alive, and he believed in her. But after my father passed away, my brother and mother ensured I submitted to the role of a Mafia princess. They made sure I didn’t spend any extended periods of time with my sister, even when she visited. They wanted to use me in an arranged marriage to further Diego’s ambitions within the organized crime syndicate network.
They impressed upon me how much they were depending on me to come through for them, since my sister couldn’t be counted on. I was high-spirited, but when it came down to it, the need to make my family happy weighed heavily on me, which is why I agreed to this engagement. I hoped my fiancé might come to love me over a period of time, but that hope flew out the window when Olivia walked into my engagement party.
I saw how Massimo couldn’t take his gaze off of her, how he followed her out of the room when she left, much to everyone’s chagrin. My family were upset by what he did, but I didn’t care. How could I, when not a day goes by that I don’t remember Declan, when I don’t regret what I did to him? I hoped his memory would fade with time, but his face is still the last thing I see before I fall asleep, and his name is my first thought every morning.
"I’m sorry; I didn’t mean that," I murmur.
Massimo’s eyebrows draw down, then he leans forward and says, "You’re an obedient girl; you care for your family. It’s why you agreed to their demands."
