Chapter One #2
It shouldn’t surprise me that this family doesn’t need prescriptions to access medication like normal people would.
There is nothing normal about this family.
I nod and climb to my feet, instructing Matteo and Luca to help carry Antonio to his room.
My mother takes me to where they keep their supplies, and I am surprised by how well stocked Leonardo’s medical supplies are.
I find an IV catheter and everything else I need and head up to Antonio’s room. I insert the IV first, using it to push the painkillers and antibiotics into his system. Then I hook up the IV drip line and adjust the flow.
Leonardo sticks around until the meds take effect and Antonio falls asleep.
“Come with me, cara,” Leonardo urges, pulling me out of the room.
“I know I've put you in a difficult position today.
but I am pleased that I could depend on you to save my son's life.
" And keep the family's secret. But that last part is not said out loud. It doesn’t need to be.
What I just did could land me in trouble, and I could lose my medical license, but I would never turn my back on family.
“I’ll stay the night so I can monitor him,” I say instead and watch as worry leaves his face.
Leonardo squeezes my hands and kisses both my cheeks before leaving me to tend to my patient.
I walk back into the room and check on Antonio before walking to the recliner.
I bite down a yawn as exhaustion floods in.
I’ve been running on pure adrenaline, and I feel it drain out of me as exhaustion takes over.
I curl up on the recliner and close my eyes.
It’ll only be for a few minutes, I tell myself as the world fades to black.
I dream of him...
I’m almost twenty, and the summer sun is brutal.
The Rossi estate pool glitters like liquid sapphire, and I’m stretched out on one of the loungers, pretending to read a textbook while secretly watching Antonio over the top of my sunglasses.
He’s doing laps, cutting through the water with the efficiency of someone who treats exercise like a job requirement—which, for a man in his position, it probably is.
At twenty-nine, he’s all coiled power and controlled strength, every stroke precise and purposeful.
Luca is sprawled on the lounger next to mine, earbuds in, eyes closed, completely oblivious to my inner turmoil.
My twin has never been particularly observant about matters of the heart—his or anyone else’s.
If he knew I spent half my time at the Rossi estate sneaking glances at Antonio, he’d probably laugh himself sick. Or worse, he’d tell him.
Gabriella is curled up at the foot of my lounger, flipping through a fashion magazine and occasionally pointing out outfits she thinks would look good on me.
At fourteen, she’s already developing strong opinions about style that I’ll never share.
“You’d look amazing in this,” she says, tapping a photo of a model in a slinky red dress. “Way better than her.”
“I’m going to be a surgeon, Gabby. I’ll be wearing scrubs.”
“Boring.” She wrinkles her nose and goes back to her magazine, and I go back to pretending I’m not watching her brother.
Antonio finishes his laps and hauls himself out of the pool, water sluicing down his tattooed shoulders in a way that makes my stomach flip.
He’s always been beautiful—I’ve known that since I was old enough to notice such things—but lately, looking at him feels different.
Dangerous. Like staring directly into the sun.
He grabs a towel from the chair near the deep end and scrubs it through his dark hair before slinging it around his neck and walking toward us.
Every step is unhurried, confident. He moves like a man who knows exactly who he is and what he’s capable of.
I’ve seen grown men flinch when Antonio Rossi enters a room, but to me, he’s always just been…
Antonio. Part of the family. As constant as the estate itself.
That’s the problem, isn’t it? I’m part of the family too.
I have been since before I was born, since Mama came to work here and Antonia Rossi—God rest her soul—declared that the Conti children would be raised alongside her own.
I grew up in this house. I learned to swim in this pool.
I took my first steps in that garden, or so Mama likes to tell anyone who’ll listen.
Antonio watched me take those steps. He was nearly twelve years old, and I was a baby.
The thought makes my cheeks burn with something that might be embarrassment or might be despair.
“What are you reading, little star?” He drops onto the lounger on my other side, close enough that I can smell chlorine and something else—something warm and masculine that makes my heart stutter.
Little star. He’s called me that for years, ever since I was twelve and he caught me sneaking out to the gardens at midnight to watch a meteor shower.
He’d found me lying in the grass, neck craned toward the sky, and instead of dragging me back inside like any reasonable adult would have, he’d laid down beside me and watched too.
“You’re like a little star yourself,” he’d said, his voice soft in the darkness. “Small but bright.”
I’d treasured those words for six years. But now, at eighteen, the “little” part stings more than ever.
“Biochemistry,” I manage, grateful my sunglasses hide where my eyes really want to look—at the droplets of water still clinging to his chest, at the way his swim trunks sit low on his hips. “I’m getting a head start before classes begin.”
“Always the overachiever.” He grins, and God, that smile should be illegal.
It transforms his face from dangerously handsome to devastatingly so, crinkling the corners of his hazel eyes and revealing a dimple I want to press my thumb into.
“You know you don’t have to study every second, right?
It’s summer. Your last summer before you leave us for California. You’re allowed to have fun.”
“This is fun for me.”
“Liar.” He reaches over and plucks the textbook from my hands, ignoring my noise of protest as he flips through the pages. His fingers are long and elegant, at odds with the calluses I know mark his palms. “Carbon bonds and molecular structures are not fun, dottoressa.”
The Italian word rolls off his tongue like honey, and I feel heat bloom across my cheeks that has nothing to do with the sun.
He’s been calling me that ever since I announced I wanted to be a surgeon—teasing, affectionate, the same way he teases Gabriella about her fashion magazines or Lorenzo about his computers or Luca about his terrible taste in music.
That’s all I am to him. Another younger sibling to look after. Another kid who grew up underfoot.
“Give it back,” I say, reaching for the book, but he holds it just out of range, a playful smirk on his face.
“Come get it.”
I know I shouldn’t. I know that leaning across the space between our loungers will bring me closer to him than is wise, closer than my thundering heart can handle. But I’ve never been able to back down from a challenge—especially not one issued by Antonio Rossi.
I lunge for the book, and he laughs, pulling it further away, and suddenly I’m half-sprawled across his lounger, one hand braced on his shoulder for balance.
The contact sends electricity sparking through my nerve endings.
His skin is cool from the pool but warming rapidly under my palm, and I can feel the steady beat of his heart beneath my fingertips.
His laughter dies.
For one breathless moment, he just looks at me.
Really looks, his hazel eyes searching my face with an expression I can’t quite read.
My heart hammers against my ribs so hard I’m certain he must hear it.
The world narrows to this single point of contact—my hand on his shoulder, his eyes on mine, the inches of charged air between us.
Does he see me? Finally, after all these years, does he see that I’m not a child anymore?
But then something shifts in his expression. A wall comes down behind his eyes, and he blinks, and the moment shatters like glass.
“Here.” He presses the textbook into my hands, his voice strange. Distant. He’s already standing, already moving away from me. “Don’t study too hard, little star. You’ll give yourself a headache.”
He ruffles my hair as he passes—the same way he’s ruffled it since I was five years old—and heads toward the house without looking back.
I stare after him, the textbook clutched to my chest like armor, and feel something crack inside me.
I love him.
The realization washes over me like a wave, stealing the breath from my lungs. I love Antonio Rossi. Not the childhood crush I’ve been telling myself it is, not the harmless infatuation that I’ll outgrow eventually. This is real and deep and terrifying, and it will never, ever be returned.
Because he will never see me as anything other than little Emilia. Luca’s twin sister. Silvia’s daughter. The little girl who grew up in this house, for God’s sake. I’m family to him—have been since the day I was born—and family isn’t something you fall in love with.
“You okay?” Luca has removed one earbud and is squinting at me. “You look weird.”
“I’m fine.” The lie tastes like ash on my tongue. “Just hot.”
“There’s a pool right there.”
“I don’t feel like swimming.”
He shrugs and puts his earbud back in, dismissing my mood with the ease of someone who’s known me his whole life and learned not to push. Gabriella has abandoned her magazine to wade in the shallow end, and through the glass doors, I can see Antonio disappearing into the house.
I’m leaving for California in three weeks. Medical school, across the country, where I won’t have to see him every day and pretend my heart isn’t splintering. Where I won’t have to watch him date women—real women, grown women, women he actually sees—and smile like it doesn’t destroy me.