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I know Gianna is the singular figure in the front row without having to see her face. She’s sitting stick-straight in the pew, dressed in black, her thick hair pulled back at the front with a diamond hair comb that glitters in the low light of the church, looking at the coffin. I pause a third of the way down the aisle, hesitant to see her, to speak to her.
It’s been three years. When I left, she was a fifteen-year-old girl with an inappropriate crush on me, nothing more than a child. Now, I know she’ll be something else. And the Family will ask for her to be something else tome, specifically.
I’ve told myself, again and again, that I’m horrified by the idea. That eighteen or not, she’s too young, too innocent—and above all else, legally my stepsister, even if she was raised all her life with my presence as nothing but a footnote. There’s no feeling between us, no connection, but it feels wrong all the same.
I force myself to keep walking, one foot in front of the other, until I’m three pews away from her. I stop and clear my throat, waiting for the moment when she turns her head to look at me.
“Gianna?” I keep my voice soft, soothing, wanting to comfort her in some small way if I can. This is a loss for us both, but I think it runs even deeper for her.
For a moment, she doesn’t turn. Her shoulders stiffen when she hears my voice—and then she turns her head. Her blue eyes meet mine for the first time in three years, beautiful, even saddened and red-rimmed, and I’m unprepared for the way she makes me feel the moment she looks at me.
She looks older. More grown-up than I’d imagined. And I’m struck with a realization that I’ve never had before.
She’s absolutely beautiful.
Gianna
Iwake up in the morning still feeling numb.
I’ve felt this way for two days now. I’ve cried and cried, but the entire time, I’ve felt hollow, detached, like I’m crying over something that isn’t real. It all still feels like a horrible nightmare—finding my father’s body, the minutes I spent collapsed on the floor next to him, begging for him to come back, to wake up.
Thinking about the reality of all of this doesn’t just mean letting myself truly realize that my father is gone. It means thinking about what happens now, and that’s too frightening to comprehend, at least at this present moment. My father protected me from everything, but now I don’t know how much protection I have. Someone will want his position. It might be Lorenzo who takes it. I have no idea—and I have no idea what that means for me.
I know I don’t want to marry Lorenzo, a man three times my age, without a single thing to recommend him, in my opinion, in either looks or personality. I don’t know if I want to marry anyone who might be chosen for me. I thought I had time to put that off, tonotthink about it. And now—
Standing in front of my closet, looking at the hastily purchased black dress for today, I still feel like it’s all been a horrible dream. I know how the rest of the day will play out—the service at the church, the burial at the cemetery, the gathering here later where everyone will tell me how sorry they are for my loss, and the men of the Family will gather in my father’s now-pristine study and make decisions for me about what my life will be after this. All of the agency, all of the freedom that my father tried to give me, will be stripped away and replaced with whatever choices they make for me.
But it doesn’t feelreal.
I slip into the knee-length black dress, sitting down at my vanity to try to do something with my makeup that will make me look less like a ghost that’s been sobbing for two days. Nothing I do really helps—and in the end, I decide it doesn’t matter. I don’t care what anyone else thinks of how I look today.
Except—
I sink my teeth into my lower lip as Alessio flickers back into my thoughts.Three years. I barely remember him. He left when I was still too young to remember, and didn’t come back until I was a teenager. By then, all I knew of him was that he was a handsome man who all but ignored me, even though I wanted him to do exactly the opposite. He kept his distance, remaining polite when we interacted and barely speaking to me unless necessary, even on the rare occasion that we all ate a meal together. According to the law, he’s my stepbrother, but it’s impossible for me to think of him like that. I don’tknowhim, and we certainly weren’t raised together.
It’s not as if I’ve been pining after him all these years. I put him out of my head after he left, and the crush faded. But now—
I can’t help the small jolt of excitement that leaps in my chest, cutting through the numbness a little, at the thought of seeing him again. I can’t help that it makes me want to add a little more color to my cheeks and pick a flattering shade of lipstick. I want him to look at me and see that I’ve grown up. That whatever he thought of me back then, I’m different now. I know that likely won’tmeananything to him—that if he shows up at all, it will be to pay his respects and then go back to wherever it is that he stays now…not in Chicago, I don’t think.
But all the same, I can’t help hoping that I will see him. And I hold on to that small hope, because I need whatever I can if I’m going to make it through the day.
—
I end up getting to the church too early. I slip inside, breathing in the familiar, comforting scents around me, and go to sit in the front pew. My stomach clenches on nothing when I see the coffin, nausea filling me even though I haven’t managed to eat anything today. I feel my teeth cutting into my lip again as I blink back tears. I don’t know how I have any left—but they’re already welling up, looking at the wood and brass box that somehow contains my father. I’m dreading the moment they open it up, the moment when I have to see his face and know for certain that none of this is the nightmare that I keep trying to tell myself it still could be.
I’m not sure how long I sit there alone. I’m lost in thought, trying to think of better memories and happier days, and I don’t hear the footsteps coming down the aisle behind me. I don’t hear anything at all, until a voice floats towards me—a voice I recognize.
“Gianna?”
I know it’s Alessio before I turn to look. I remember his voice, that faint accent learned from my father, the formal way he speaks to me. But his voice is softer and more soothing than I’ve ever heard it turned in my direction before. Something in my chest aches, hearing it, and I blink back more tears before I slowly turn to look at him, steeling myself for whatever it is that I might feel when I see him again.
It’s an effort not to let him see what I’m thinking—at least, I hope he doesn’t. I’m struck by him all over again the moment I see him there—tall and handsome, short dark hair swept away from his face, piercing green eyes looking at me with a softness that I don’t think I’ve ever noticed in them before. He’s dressed immaculately in a tailored suit, all black, his gaze and bearing somber, and he waits for me to speak before he says anything else. He just looks at me, and my mouth goes dry.
“Alessio.” The way I breathe his name isn’t exactly appropriate—not for the day, or where we are, orwhowe are to each other. But my heart flips in my chest, my pulse picks up in my veins, and I feel that hopeless crush all over again, just like I did when I was fifteen.
He’s sophisticated, and elegant, and beautiful. He’s always made me want things that I shouldn’t. And it seems like three years hasn’t changed a thing.
I get up, slowly, my entire body stiff from having sat in the pew staring at my father’s coffin for so long. Alessio doesn’t move, as still as a hunter in the woods trying not to scare off prey, and I wonder what it is that has him so guarded, besides the fact of having been gone for so long. I walk towards him, stopping just a short distance away, and he almost looks as if he’s had to try not to flinch away from me.
