AllFreeNovel
Share Us
And waited.
I sighed. “You shouldn’t be seen with us in public,” I said.
She raised a single eyebrow and started tapping her foot.
Telling me—without words—she would not stay behind, no matter what arguments I uttered.
I should’ve known appealing to her sense of decency was a lost cause.
I sighed and shook my head.
Sophie was a rebel.
A fighter.
She played by her own rules.
I didn’t envy her father because keeping her out of harm’s way was probably a full-time job.
And with that mouth on her, it wouldn’t only be outside threats he’d need to protect her from.
But also, I didn’t even want to know what hare-brained action she would take if I left her behind.
So aside from chaining her to a bed, the safest thing would be to take her with us.
“Let’s get changed. Meet up in five minutes.”
My brothers nodded and disappeared up the marble staircase.
When I took Sophie’s hand, her stomach rumbled.
I narrowed my gaze. I’d forgotten to feed her. I’d had a sandwich in the command room with Cristo and Alessandro before we left, but I’d forgotten to feed Sophie.
And she didn’t say a word.
Fuck.
I wrapped my arm around her waist and led her across the entry hall, but instead of leading her upstairs and getting changed, I pulled her into the kitchen and onto one of the old barstools my father had bought for my mother—from a random cafe they’d visited in Rome—even though he despised the red vinyl upholstery and constantly complained about the springs piercing his ass.
That’s how much my father had loved my mother.
A morally black man who fell head over heels for a young Italian-American woman.
“Sit down.”
She sat without questioning me or demanding to know why we weren’t changing.
I filled a pot with water and put it on the stove while searching the freezer for a container of my mother’s famous bolognese sauce.
The one thing she learned how to cook because she knew it was my father’s favorite.
And sure enough, I found one and put it into another pot.
I salted the water for the pasta with more salt than I thought I needed—the secret recipe for delicious Italian pasta, then stirred the frozen block of bolognese.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
“Feeding you.”
