Chapter One #2
Leonardo hadn’t shown up—it was, after all, the anniversary of his wife’s death.
Still, the Rossi brothers had done their best to make up for his absence, as they always did, but it hadn’t been enough.
I sigh as I stare at the painting, my mind drifting back to that day and how I noticed the birthday girl missing from her own party.
I set out to find her and hand over my gift.
I had a date planned for that evening and was in a hurry to leave, but the moment I saw Gabriella crying on that bench in the atrium, all plans to leave vanished.
Leonardo built the butterfly atrium for his first wife, Antonia.
It was one of the many gifts he’d given her in the nearly two decades they shared as a married couple.
To find Gabriella seated alone in the one place her mother loved most broke my heart completely.
Knowing she blamed herself for her mother’s death and the pain her father suffered made me want to comfort her, but I wasn’t sure there was anything I could do to make her feel better.
So I dropped to a crouch in front of her and wiped the tears from her cheeks.
That afternoon, we sat in the atrium, just the two of us, sharing funny stories of her brothers’ childish antics.
It felt good to see her laugh. When I mentioned her mother, she was silent for a while before asking me to tell her more, so I shared every story I could remember about Antonia Rossi.
We spent hours chatting and laughing. We missed the party, and I missed my date, but I realized I didn’t care one bit about that.
Seeing her smile—that’s what mattered to me.
Something shifted inside of me that afternoon, a spark that threatened to show me Gabriella Rossi as more than just my best friend’s little sister, but I pushed it back down.
I hear someone behind me, and I turn to see some guy in an oversized jersey staring at Gabby’s paintings. I don’t want anyone near me or these paintings, so I stare him down.
“Leave.”
He’s gone before I can blink, scrambling out of sight and leaving me to face Gabriella’s past alone.
With the distraction gone, I turn to the fourth painting, which is a progression—Gabriella running across a field in a pink sundress.
At one end of the field is her family: Leonardo, her four brothers, Silvia, and a fifth figure, who I assume must be me.
Gabriella is running away from her family, and as she reaches the far end of the field, she turns into a bird and flies away.
I stare at the painting longer than the others, the implications clear.
She’s fleeing from her family, and I can’t stop the sting that settles in my chest. For two years, I’ve forced our relationship on to her and onto myself.
Finally, she accepted it and lumped me together with the rest of her family—a family she clearly wants to flee from, if the painting is anything to go by. So why the fuck does it sting?
Is this how she feels?
I imagine her father putting her at arm’s length would hurt her, but I never thought all the love she’s received from the people trying to make up for his shortcomings would make her feel…stifled.
Christ, is she really planning on leaving us? Where would she go? And with whom? Is she in love with someone else? A man who would help her run and hide someplace where even a family as powerful as the Rossis would never track her?
Fuuuck!
In a rare show of frustration, I run a hand through my hair, nervous, as I never am, to look at the last painting. Do I even want to see it? Maybe if I walk away, I can play dumb and mute and pretend I don’t know that the woman I am in love with wants nothing to do with her family—with me.
And yet, I can’t stop my eyes from locking on the final painting.
Another progressive that picks up where the last left off.
This time, the bird is flying down into a meadow, and then turns back into Gabriella in the pink sundress, who runs into the arms of a faceless man. It ends with them kissing.
For a solid minute, with my blood roaring in my ears, I stare at the final image. The arms wrapped around Gabriella scream familiarity and intimacy. I feel my veins turn to ice, my brain go foggy, and jealousy unlike anything I’ve felt before storms through me with a vengeance, shattering my world.
Kill.
The need to find this faceless man and destroy him is irrational, but it’s strong. It’s downright madness, but the voice is clear as day in my head.
Kill him.
I don’t know how long I stand there, looking through the paintings—a timepiece.
A reflection of the past and the future—while trying and failing to calm my raging blood.
I barely acknowledge the Rossis when they finally stop by the paintings and compliment Gabriella on her work, all oblivious to their meaning but… how could they know?
Half of these paintings are memories that only Gabriella and I share.
Moments that seem to have vanished from the mind of the rest, well…
except for the silent figure that steps next to me and, as quietly as I did, looks through each painting.
Minutes tick by as Leonardo and I stand in silence, surrounded by the low chatter around us as the weight of Gabriella’s thoughts hits us both dead in the heart.
“I failed her.”
My eyes don’t move from the paintings to comfort the man or assure him that he did his best. I’m not one for lying, not even to the man married to my mother.
Leonardo is not a cruel man—not that his business partners would agree with that statement—but when it comes to his family, he’s never shy of showing his care. He’s different with Gabriella.
“It’s because of me that my own daughter wants to escape,” he says, voice heavy with pain. “I did this to her. Antonia would be so disappointed in me. So heartbroken that I allowed our daughter to feel like she doesn’t belong in her own home, with her family.”
“She’s not gone yet,” I offer quietly.
“No, she’s not, but my little girl is practically out the door already.
It’s going to take a lot to ask her to come back.
” There is anger in Leonardo’s voice, and self-blame.
More emotion than I’ve ever seen him express outside of the day he laid his first wife to rest. “I let my grief blind me to the needs of my little girl. Matteo tried to make me see, to make up for my shortcomings, but I…goddamnit!”
“She’s not gone yet,” I mutter—as much to myself as to him—as I sense the man sink deeper into a depressive state he’s worked so many years to dig himself out of. “It’s not too late to make up for the lost time.”
“I don’t know if I deserve it.”
“It’s not for you. You’re not doing this just for you,” I say, tearing my eyes away from the paintings and finally seeking her out.
She’s standing by her brothers, chuckling at something they’re saying.
She must feel my gaze because she looks up and those gorgeous eyes lock on mine.
The smile freezes on her lips and something crosses her face, but it’s quickly gone before I can get a better read on it.
When she finally looks away and turns back to her brothers, I realize that it’s not just Leonardo who needs to put in the work.
“I’ll help,” I say before I can think it through my words, but there’s no turning back.
“I’ll help change her direction. Get her to run toward us instead of away. ”
“And how do you plan on doing that?”
I turn to the paintings and stare at the faceless man, jealousy burning through me. Maybe I don’t need to find him and get rid of him. Instead, I will become the man she runs to.