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With that, I opened the door and disappeared into the alley.
I'm not sure what made me say that, but as I walked away, I had the feeling that I had just made a promise.
An important one.
And I never broke a promise.
two
Emilia
There is a reasonI don’t date made men.
My parents were loud people. They lived loudly. They loved loud. They fought--their arguments were so loud, they'd bring down the rafters in a frenzied mixture of Italian and English, punctuated by pointed fingers and waving hands. But they loved me loudest of all, and the silence in the wakes of their deaths was still sometimes deafening to me.
They even died loud. A gunshot and a drift of cordite. A squeal of brakes and metal tearing through a guardrail. Gone within a month of each other. My father had been shot to death outside a night club in South Boston. A random act of violence, the police said, but I sometimes wondered how much Lorenzo had paid the cops to label it as a drug deal gone wrong. One month later, my mother was gone, too, her car accident ruled as an unfortunate combination of speed and deteriorating road conditions.
I lay curled on my side, cocooned in the cool sheets of my four-poster bed. Lorenzo had it custom made for me, carved fromBrazilian rosewood and draped in emerald silk. He spared no expense for his little bird in her gilded cage. My fingers traced patterns over the bedspread’s delicate needlework, following the curves and whorls absently. Lorenzo never talked about my parents’ deaths. We never talked about them at all, not since the day he showed up at the group home I'd been placed in with all the necessary paperwork in hand. I was seven years old.
Since then, I've taken great pains to live a quiet life. Life in the Italian Mafia is loud, even in the upper echelon of the organization where I'd grown up, and the few years I spent as a Moretti princess were always loud, often exhausting, and rarely pleasant. But here, now, the chaos was peripheral to my life in my bookshop, my haven of worn tomes and leather bindings.
Or at least it was, until today.
My lips were still tingling. I rubbed a hand across my mouth and stared up at my bedroom ceiling. The day was fading into dusk outside the window. I didn't remember climbing the stairs to my room. In fact, I barely remembered walking home at all.
The Irishman had kissed me.
I couldn't stop thinking about him, couldn't stop the little thrill that zinged down my spine at the memory of his lips on mine. The unruly auburn curls flopped over his forehead, bemusement and wariness waring in those dark green eyes of his. Gaelic words inked across knuckles roughened from violence and fights. A full mouth ghosting against mine. Dark lashes against freckled cheekbones. Warm breath. Teeth nipping at my bottom lip.
He tasted like sin and trouble.
I wanted more.
"Emilia!" A knock rattled my door, startling me from my thoughts. "What are you doing? Lorenzo is going to lose his shit if we're late for dinner, and Dom is already being a dick."
I rolled off the bed and padded across the carpet, throwing open the door. My cousin Sofia stood on the other side. "Dom is always a dick,” I said. “Tell me something I don't know."
Sofia grinned. Her dark brown curls were pulled up in a high ponytail, accentuating her perfect cheekbones and stunning hazel eyes. It was a Russo trait, our dark, curly hair and strong Roman jawlines. She cast me an appraising glance and narrowed her eyes. "What the hell happened to you?"
"What do you mean?" I glanced down at my clothes. I was still wearing my skirt and blouse from work, not unusual. They weren't even that wrinkled.
"You're flushed," she said, slipping into the room and closing the door behind her. "Have you been thinking of Angel again?"
"Ew. Not him. Never him."
My cheeks burned hotter as I struggled for a response. I couldn't tell her the truth. She was family, and family came before all else.
Even a pair of sea-glass eyes and a soul-searing kiss.
Sofia perched on the edge of my bed, her eyes gleaming with curiosity. "Then who? You only get that dreamy look when you've been thinking about a man. Don't tell me little miss wallflower has a secret admirer?"
If only it were that simple. I twisted my hands in my lap, searching for the right words.
"Oh no, you're not getting off that easily." Sofia nudged my knee with her own. "Spill, Emilia. I won't breathe a word to anyone else. We're partners in crime, you and I."
Partners in crime. If she only knew. I sighed and brushed back my curls, trying to tame them into something presentable as I hunted through my closet. Lorenzo liked us to dress for dinner. "It's nothing. I need to get ready."
Sofia frowned, studying me for a long moment, but she relented with a sigh of her own. She batted my hands out of theway and chose a dress from my closet, a rich amber that would bring out my eyes. "Fine, but don't think this is over. I'll get the truth from you eventually."
