Prologue
Bambalina
I stare at the pistol in my hands. It feels cold and unnatural, packed with bullets, and shaking with the adrenalin coursing through my arms.
Truthfully, it isn’t the gun that makes me nervous, it’s the power it gives me. I could swing it around, point it at any of the people standing behind, waiting for me to take my first shot, and take a life. Just like that.
I lift my gaze to the paper target beyond, momentarily losing my grip.
The gun slips and clatters to the ground. I leap out of its path, terrified.
“It’s not going to bite you,” Sera laughs. My sister curls an arm around me, chivvying me back to the spot where I’m to take my shot.
Tess’s voice cuts through the fogginess in my head.
“Pretend it’s that guy from school who stole your homework and got you accused of plagiarism,” she suggests.
The memory makes my lip curl but I don’t feel strongly enough about Taylor to point a gun at him and shoot.
“Or better yet,” she adds, “pretend it’s your new stepbrother. We all know how displeased you are about that situation.”
Bitterness swells in me at the mention of my stepbrother. It’s not enough that my beloved Papa has remarried. Our new stepbrother has to behave like I don’t even exist. Cold, distant, disinterested. I square my shoulders and raise the gun with sudden clarity. Then I pull the trigger.
The impact of the bullet leaving it’s barrel almost knocks me over.
But it gets him. Right in the heart.
I’m stunned, and back to shaking like a leaf.
“I did it!” I laugh. “Did you see that? I murdered that cardboard Di Santo!”
“You did great!” Trilby comes at me, her arms outstretched, and I beam at Sera over her shoulder. But it isn’t Sera I see.
Leaning a shoulder on the doorframe, one leg crossed casually over the other, an impressed look on his tragically handsome face, is Nicolò Di Santo. Our stepbrother.
My heart nosedives into the base of my stomach and I feel sick.
Hi gaze coasts over everyone but me and his smile is devastating.
“I’m glad I could be of service,” he drawls, then opens the door and leaves.
“You go on in,” I say to Sera as we walk through the doors to the diner. There’s a restroom to my left and I need… space. “I just have to, um…”
Sera nods. “Sure. See you inside.”
I tap some cold water onto my cheeks and press a cool hand to my forehead. The humiliation of Nicolò witnessing my shot still burns, but this is something else—I feel like I’m coming down with the flu.
After drying my hands, I take a deep breath and walk out into the main dining area.
It’s late afternoon, early-fall, and the sunlight has already dipped behind the Boston skyline.
The diner hums with noise—west coast rap from the juke box, the clatter of dishes from a kitchen to the left, and energetic chatter from a dark booth in the far corner.
The sound of my sisters’ laughter draws me toward it.
Seeing the seating pattern, however, pulls a silent curse up my throat. Everyone is already seated—obviously—and there’s just one space left.
Next to him.
Nicolò sits at the end of the booth, his posture effortlessly relaxed.
He’s resting against the vinyl seat, one arm laid across the back, his knees parted wide enough to fit a woman’s thighs between them.
His black shirt is rolled at the sleeves, and he’s tasting his coffee like it cost more than this entire diner.
Sera spots me before I can consider running. “Hey, Bambi, over here! We ordered you a shake.”
Everyone turns and I feel his lashes lift, coasting his gaze over my skin like a flame.
I slide in beside him, careful not to brush my bare leg against his pants. “It’s Lina,” I correct, my cheeks an actual furnace. “Not Bambi. Lina.”
Sera’s brows hike and she flushes a little, but I’m still too mortified to feel guilty about highlighting the growing distance between her and me since she moved to Boston.
“And I don’t like ‘shakes’ anymore. Sparkling water is fine.”
“I’ll have the shake,” Tess says, grabbing the pink drink and slurping through the straw like she subsists on carbs.
“I’m sorry,” Sera says. “I thought you—”
I dart her a look. “You thought wrong.” Then I catch myself. I sound unreasonably mean and she doesn’t deserve it, not after everything she’s been through. And I still don’t buy that she’s as happy as she looks. “I’ve grown up a lot since you left,” I mutter.
Tess shoots me a sideways look and her gaze dips to my breasts, which haven’t changed that much in the last year but are more pronounced right now thanks to the tight tee I’m wearing under my jacket. “Yeah, we can see that,” she says, the straw wedged between her teeth.
Then she yelps and narrows her eyes at Trilby who must have kicked her beneath the table.
Sera pushes a menu toward me. “You, um, might not want the pancakes we ordered for you then. If you choose something quick, we can change the order.”
I peer down at it but can’t seem to focus. The vinyl seat to my right is warming my thigh. Nicolò di Santo radiates heat.
I shake my head, sensing the waitress making her way over.
“Can I change my order?” I ask. She doesn’t try to disguise the slight eyeroll. “Instead of pancakes, I’d like the protein smoothie.”
She nods, takes the menu from my hands a little too hastily, then pauses to rest her gaze on the man to my right.
“Anything else for you, sir?”
I glance disbelievingly at Nicolò. Is she really that obvious? Treating me like a mere inconvenience then bestowing all her waitressing wiles on my stepbrother?
I watch him slowly lift a hand and wave her off. He doesn’t even look at her.
When I turn to catch her expression, the waitress is already heading back to the bar. Now, not only am I embarrassed for myself, I’m embarrassed for her.
Andreas’ voice cuts through the awkwardness. “So, Drake texted me after we left.”
“How much do we owe him?” Trilby asks, wincing.
Andreas smirks like the concept of owing anybody anything is so far beneath him it may as well be on another planet. “He said—and I quote—‘Your family is a public safety hazard.’”
Cristiano lifts his coffee. “He’s not wrong.”
“Oh, come on,” Tess baulks. “We were very well-behaved. It’s not our fault the ceiling panels were loose and the targets a bit too floaty.”
“It didn’t stop Bambi—sorry, Lina—hitting her target,” Andreas points out, grinning.
I stiffen.
“She didn’t just hit her target,” Nicolò says, casually. “She wiped it out.”
I jerk my head up. His expression is dry and unemotive.
“Yeah. Technically, you’re dead, Nicolò,” Tess chuckles.
The table bursts out laughing. Even Benito smirks.
“It wasn’t you,” I whisper, suddenly short of breath. “I didn’t hit you.”
All other noise recedes until the only thing to touch my ears is the beat of my pulse. He leans in a fraction and his lips move slowly.
“Didn’t you?”
My cheeks tighten as I stare at him, unable to look away.
“I didn’t really imagine the target was you.” It’s a lie and he knows it.
“No?” Nicolò tilts his head slightly, his tone so calm it makes my spine stiffen. “Then why haven’t you stop blushing since you realized I was there?”
I never understood the term ‘wanting the ground to open up and swallow me’ until now.
“I didn’t know you’d be here today,” I hiss. “You were supposed to be in a whole different state, doing... whatever it is you do.”
“Sorry to disappoint,” he murmurs, then releases my gaze to take another sip of his coffee.
“You didn’t disappoint,” I snap, before I can stop myself.
He turns back to me slowly, his eyebrows lifted a touch.
Heat floods my face. “I just meant—I wasn’t expecting—”
“Relax,” he says smoothly. “It was a damn good shot.”
Across the table, Andreas raises his glass. “To Bambalina’s lethal aim.”
I swallow and sink a little lower in the booth.
“You did good,” Sera says, with a reassuring smile.
The food arrives and the noise level around the table drops to a pleasant rumble.
I’m mortified to see that everyone has ordered pancakes—except me.
I opted for the smoothie because pancakes felt like a childish choice, especially in the presence of a four grown mafia men and three older sisters. But now, I’m feeling like an idiot.
Tess’s pancakes are loaded with banana, whipped butter and syrup; Sera and Trilby are sharing a pile of blueberry dollar pancakes; Andreas has servings upon servings of bacon with maple syrup; while Cristiano and Benito each have pancakes with eggs.
I dare not glance sideways to see what Nicolò has.
I sip my green smoothie, wishing I hadn’t changed my order. Because Serafina does still know me well. She knows my favorite pancakes will always be pecan filled and maple-drenched. And right now, my mouth is watering at the thought of them, and my head is filled with regret.
I can’t help but watch as pieces of pancake are eaten with gusto. But I straighten my spine, push back my shoulders and affect a look of maturity, all the while feeling silly for denying what I actually wanted for the sake of optics.
As another slug of smoothie slides tastelessly down my throat, I question why I’m behaving this way. Is it because I’m still embarrassed about Nicolò catching me mid-homicide? No. This goes back further.
It was weeks ago I decided I no longer wanted to be called ‘Bambi.’ And it was earlier than that I felt the need to be taken more seriously.
If I really think hard, I can pinpoint the exact moment I started to become a different person. It was the day Papa announced he’d married Antonia Di Santo.
That day.
The day I lost my father.
The day I acquired the replacement mother I never wanted.
The day I inherited a stepbrother whose gaze could freeze a hot spring.
The following day, my sisters left. Sera to Boston, Trilby to the Di Santo residence, Tess to Benito’s house. Suddenly, I was alone in a house with my papa and his new love—the new apple of his eye, the new center of his world.
None of my sisters have had to live with the stark reality that Papa has moved on. Only me. And I’m not even eighteen yet.
If the last few years have taught me anything, it’s that age is just a number. I don’t feel seventeen. I feel older. Losing a mama at ten, a papa at seventeen and three sisters in between can make a girl grow up pretty fast.
I just need everyone else to catch up. My new name and the smoothie are just the beginning. I coast my gaze across the rapidly emptying plates. I do love pancakes, though…
A surge of heat flares over my upper leg, then my shoulder, and before I can turn my head, his voice slides into my ears.
“I can’t believe you don’t like pancakes.”
I glance down at his plate. Pecan-filled pancakes, topped with toasted nuts, powdered sugar and maple syrup. I swallow, a little too loudly.
“See?” he murmurs. “You’re drooling.”
I jerk backward in shock and put a hand over my mouth. “I’m not drooling,” I mutter through my fingers.
He takes his knife and fork, slices up a small square of pancakes, adds a few pecans to the top then lifts it, one brow slightly raised.
He wants to feed me?
My cheeks heat as I dart my gaze around the table. I can’t let him feed me. He’s my new brother. That would be so inappropriate, and weird, and awkward and yet… my mouth is watering.
He watches me patiently.
When I’m sure no one is looking, I give him the smallest of nods and lower my hand to my lap.
My lips part, tentatively at first, but when I inhale a slight breeze of sugar, I lean in, taking the pancakes into my mouth.
They taste delicious, and just before my lids fall shut I catch a glimpse of his expression. His eyes have widened a touch, revealing a glimmer that wasn’t there before. A flicker of fire in a sea of ice.
I sit back against the seat, hard, diverting my gaze as I chew the pancakes.
When I finally summon the courage to flick a glance his way, he’s finished the rest of his plate, thrown a fifty into the center of the table and is rising to his feet.
“You’re leaving?” Trilby asks.
“Yeah,” Nicolò responds, dryly. “I need to be back in New York tonight.”
I frown. I thought everyone was staying at Sera and Andreas’ house this evening and heading back to the city first thing.
Cristiano nods. “No problem. I’ll call you as soon as we’re home.”
In his haste to leave, Nicolò bumps against my thighs and I realize I have to step out of the booth to make way for him, cursing my clumsiness as I clamber off the bench. He says farewell to everyone, but doesn’t look at me once as he leaves.
And as I watch his back disappear through the exit and out into the lot, I’m brought straight back down to earth with a bump.
Nicolò Di Santo, my stepbrother, doesn’t give a shit about me.
He gave me a bit of pancake to prove I wanted it, not to be generous or considerate.
And he’s leaving because he has better places to be than hanging with his partners and the little sister.
Another flush rises up my collarbone and a scowl returns to my face. As I watch my sisters laughing between themselves and drawing adoring looks from each of their men, I find myself wishing the same foolish wish I try to bury every day.
That, one day, I’ll be worthy of that kind of love.