Chapter 5
Lucy
Four years later
“Well, well, the prodigal son drags himself out of bed at last.”
I look over the top of my book at a shirtless Damiano as he emerges onto the sunny terrace.
His dark curls are messy from sleep, and it strikes me—not for the first time—that my eighteen-year-old brother looks more like a man every day.
Tall and muscular, with a tan burnishing his skin, and dark stubble on his jaw.
My stomach does that stupid flip it’s been doing for the past six years whenever I look at him. I hate it. I love it. I can’t help it.
Striding toward me with a smile on his lips, Damiano tosses aside my book, puts an arm under my knees and another around my back, and scoops me out of the chair and into his arms.
“Hey, I was reading,” I chide him, wrapping my arms around his neck. His skin is warm beneath my fingers, and I have to resist the urge to trace the defined muscles of his shoulders.
“You can read later. I need you.” Damiano sits down with me in his lap, settling my thighs across his and wrapping his strong arms around me. He presses a kiss to my temple and takes a deep, relaxing breath, and I feel some of the tension leave his body as mine melts into his.
This is dangerous. Being this close to him. Breathing in his scent. Feeling the steady thump of his heart against my side. This is the highlight of my day.
I nestle into his warmth, trying to enjoy the moment despite the hot lump of worry that’s been sitting in my chest all day. “Where were you last night?”
“Nowhere in particular,” he deflects with a charming smile.
My eyes narrow. Damiano was somewhere else, and so was the gun he keeps in his bedroom drawer. It wasn’t there when I checked his room.
Over the past few years, Damiano has received special treatment from Mom, but especially from Dad.
Not only is he praised for his cleverness and good looks, but he’s told things.
Secrets. Carefully guarded family knowledge.
I’ve lingered outside doors and listened furtively to conversations.
I know what kind of family we really are, yet no one’s admitted it out loud to me.
The frightening part is watching Damiano being pulled deeper into Dad’s world while I can only watch from the sidelines.
Damiano idly plays with one of my curls as he gazes around the expansive garden. The flowers are in full bloom. The hedges are manicured into razor-sharp lines. The white gravel paths are raked into pristine uniformity. A fuzzy bee tumbles past on its way to another flower.
He smiles, enjoying the perfect weather. “Do you remember what you told me would make you happy while we were living at Milbray? A garden full of bees and flowers. Sunshine and soda. A sunny and peaceful afternoon.”
He gazes with satisfaction at the fragrant and colorful patio, my sweating glass of cold lemonade, and the paperback book I was reading.
“You remember that?” I ask, warmth spreading through my chest.
He turns to me with a small frown, and our faces are very close together. Close enough that I can see every single one of his velvety lashes. “Of course I do. I remember everything that’s important to you.”
A hot spark races through my body, and I fall deeper into his brown eyes. My lips part involuntarily, and the craving that accompanies Damiano’s touches and loving words becomes an ache.
I’m not allowed to admire my brother’s handsome face. It’s dangerous for me to want him to be my first kiss. My first everything.
If Mom and Dad find out I’m not really Damiano’s sister, they’d throw me out of this house without a second thought. Despite what my brother insists, they don’t love me. They never have. Only Damiano loves me, and if anyone finds out we’re not blood related, I’ll never see him again.
My beautiful, rich, ruthless parents will see to that.
“You’re so good to me,” I whisper, and put my head down on his chest. As I stroke the warm skin there, he makes a contented noise that does things to my insides. I smooth my hand up his chest and squeeze his shoulders, which feel like ropes of steel beneath my fingers.
He’s so tense. More than usual.
“Do you remember the day we arrived in this house?” I ask, trying to ground myself in memory rather than the dangerous present.
He tilts his head so his chest is resting against my brow. “Like it was yesterday. We’d never seen a house as grand as this one. Your hand was trembling in mine as we crossed the threshold.”
I felt as though we were walking into the lion’s den. And maybe we were. “Frank picked us up from the group home, not Mom and Dad.” Frank is Dad’s driver, though we both know he’s so much more than that. “It made me feel like we were parcels to be delivered, not people.”
Damiano’s arms tighten around me slightly. He doesn’t like being reminded of how we were treated that day.
I trace one of the prominent veins on his forearm. “Frank had a gun holstered under his arm. I saw it when he reached for our bags.”
Damiano hesitates. “Did he? I didn’t notice.”
My brother doesn’t lie to me. He just gets evasive. Maybe he didn’t notice the gun that day because he was focused on me, making sure I was okay. But he’s noticed it since. He knows what Frank really is.
Drivers don’t carry weapons.
Bodyguards do.
Enforcers do.
I let my fingers trail down his forearm, feeling the strength there. “You and Dad didn’t come home until after three in the morning last night. What kind of father-son stuff happens at three in the morning?”
Damiano doesn’t answer. When I raise my head to look at him, he rests his fist against his temple and smiles at me. “You look beautiful today.”
The single hot spark racing through my body explodes into dozens more. Heat floods my cheeks, and I have to look away before he sees too much in my eyes.
“Your famous charm doesn’t work on me,” I lie.
He reaches for my lemonade and swallows a mouthful. I watch his throat working, mesmerized despite myself. “What charm? I’m telling the truth.”
“Damiano.”
He quirks a brow as he takes another sip. “Yes, sis?”
The word “sis” grates on me more every day. I’m not his sister. We both know it, but we have to keep pretending.
I take a breath and ask the question I’ve been building up to for weeks. “Are we in the mafia?”
He chokes a little on the lemonade and puts the glass down. His expression shifts from surprise, to calculation, and then careful neutrality. “What makes you ask that?”
There he goes, evading me again.
“Your expression. Your secrets. The gun in your drawer that sometimes isn’t there.
Frank and the other men who come to the house at odd hours.
The way people look at Dad, and at you, with fearful respect.
” I lower my voice, even though we’re alone.
“Do you really think you can keep things from me? You and I were adopted because Dad wants a son to pass the family business on to, but it’s not a normal family business, is it? ”
Damiano’s jaw tightens. For a moment, I think he might actually tell me the truth.
Then his expression softens and becomes almost pleading.
“I don’t want you to spend your time worrying about why we were adopted.
What we have now is so much better than what might have been.
If we’d been separated at the hospital, or if we were adopted by different families… ”
In his eyes, I see an echo of the terrifying nightmares that still wake him up almost nightly. The ones where he screams my name because I’m dying in the fire instead of Lily.
I wrap his hand in both of mine and squeeze it. “I’m so grateful for what you did for us. Don’t ever think I’m not.”
Damiano takes a deep breath and lets it out slowly. His expression is pained and haunted. “I don’t know what I’d do without you. If anything happened to you…”
“Nothing’s going to happen to me.”
“You don’t know that. This world—” He cuts himself off, his jaw clenching.
This world. The world he’s being pulled into that I’m not allowed to be part of.
“There you go again. Why must you two always be so dramatic?”
The prissy voice shatters the peaceful afternoon. A slender, dark-haired girl strolls across the patio carrying several shopping bags emblazoned with designer names. The fruits of our sister’s morning shopping spree.
Ariana is dressed like a New York socialite in a tiny slip dress, heels, and a short bouclé jacket with large gold buttons. Her makeup is perfect, and her hair is glossy and smooth. She looks like she stepped out of a magazine.
Ever since the day we arrived in this house, Ariana has resented our presence. Me because she mistakenly feared I’d take her place as Daddy’s little princess. Damiano because he’s a constant reminder that she’s not enough for Mom and Dad—because they wanted a son.
She looks with distaste at me sitting in Damiano’s lap. His hand is draped over my thigh while he plays with my hair. My hand is resting on his bare chest, fingers splayed over his heart.
We must look like lovers, not siblings.
She shakes her head in disgust. “You two…”
“Us two what?” Damiano asks, a hard edge to his voice. His hand on my thigh tightens possessively.
She smiles mockingly at him. “Such a normal brother and sister. So normal how you’re always plastered half naked against each other. Freud would have a field day with you two.”
I glower at Ariana. She can stick her needles into me whenever she likes, but not in front of Damiano. He feels the weight of responsibility for me on his shoulders, and it devastates him when someone hurts me.
“Jealous we don’t love you half as much as we love each other?” he asks, his fingers caressing my thigh in slow circles that make my breath catch.
It takes all my self-control not to part my lips and take a ragged breath or shift in his lap and press closer.
“Not in a million years,” she says with a laugh, and walks toward the house. “Freaks.”