“So what’d Romeo propose?” I ask. We don’t want the Campanelles coming after us. We fought them before and won, but not without significant losses to both sides. We don’t want to have to fight them again.
Tavi sits heavily beside me, his lips turning downward in a scowl. Before this conversation, I’d have told him that marriage was good for him. Eased his tight-ass ways a little, made him actually fucking smile every once in a while. But now… he looks older. As Underboss, he shoulders heavy responsibilities with Romeo.
He looks up to me with haunted eyes and shakes his head. “He’s promised Rosa, Santo.”
I don’t process the words at first, like he’s spoken a foreign language that I don’t comprehend.
Promised… Rosa?
I blink. A cold chill skates down my spine.
No.
No.
“Rosa?” I ask, my voice choked. I try to hold my emotions back, so I don’t betray feelings I have no business even having.
I knew this could happen. I knew that Rosa, after the death of her husband, was considered eligible to be married. And in our world, the Rossi women are commodities.
They’re treated with respect and protected at all costs, but all of us have known from the very beginning that they were never meant to stay here, that they weren’t going to stay with us forever. We knew it was only a matter of time before they were given away in marriage to someone else.
I stand and somehow make it to the sideboard. I pour myself a glass of wine, but my hand trembles.
None of them know how I feel about her. If they did, I’d be a dead man walking.
I try to hide the way the wine sloshes on the table, and pour more than I need in my glass. I grab a bar towel and swipe at the dark red liquid. I watch the wine stain the white towel. I’ve cleaned blood the same way, watching it seep into the terry cloth.
I swallow hard.
Tavi’s phone rings, an obnoxious girly ringtone.
I give him a quizzical look. The wine’s already dimmed my initial rage at the news, but my knuckles on the stem are still white.
“What the fuck is that?”
He rolls his eyes. “Elise gave me all these damn ringtones,” he says and shakes his head. He snorts. “Wait until you hear yours.” He hits a button. “Hello?”
Ah, it’s not a phone call. FaceTime from Elise.
Her face takes up the whole screen. “Oh, hi, honey!” she croons as she blows him a kiss. “Is that Santo back there?”
She squints, and I wave, then lean back on the arm of the couch and take another sip of wine.
Rosa.
Rosa.
My mind can’t help but spin this around, to try to decipher meaning in the black hole of this intel.
I’m not paying attention to the FaceTime call until I hear my name again.
“Santo?”
I look to see Elise isn’t home like I assumed, but in her store in Copley, the same one I helped her prepare for retail.
I hate retail. I only helped with the store because Rosa likes pretty things, and I knew because she’s friends with Elise she’d end up there as well.
And Rosa is safer in America.
“What’s up? How’re you feeling?”
All the Rossi women are like sisters to me.
That’s a lie. All but one.
“I’m good,” she says, and she does look like she’s glowing. She holds the phone back so I can see her hugely swollen belly. That makes me smile.
“You sure there’s only one bambino in there? You can’t trust a guy like Tavi…”
Tavi play-punches me, but it still hurts. I duck and laugh, rubbing my arm, when I suddenly freeze.
Elise isn’t alone.
I swallow.
Rosa’s bent over a display of leather handbags, arranging them artfully. She turns and looks over her shoulder at the phone when she hears my voice.
“Oh, hey, Santo,” she says casually. Not a hint of anything more than familial friendship.
I’ve been a member of this family since I was ten years old, and she greets me like I’m the guy that pumps her fucking gas.
“Hey,” I say, an icy tone in my own voice. “How’s business?”
Elise speaks up, answering my question.
“Oh, Santo, it’s booming. Thank you. I think the marketing guy you found has really helped our exposure. You know how competitive it is in Boston, but he’s put us on the map!” She beams. “And Rosa’s got the Midas touch, you know.”
I swallow hard. “Yeah?” My voice is a little husky. I hope I mask it. I can feel Tavi’s razor-sharp gaze on me. “How so?”
“Someone comes in for one little handbag, and the next thing you know, they talk to Rosa, and they walk out with the entire collection.”
I smile. “Well done, Rosa. How do you do that?”
Fuck, but I like the feel of her name on my lips. It feels like velvet and chocolate, soft and seductive. I think of her when I see the rose tats on my arms.