2. Eva
2
EVA
“ M aybe I should get a job.” I mumbled the bitter comment for my ears only, but I wasn’t alone at the bar like I thought I was.
“You?” Franco asked, laughing once. The family’s highest-ranking capo joined me at the bar as I helped myself to a drink. He leaned over to get a water out of the fridge, opting to stay sober instead of giving himself a night off from all the security matters of our lives.
Security was always a priority, especially with the Constellas waging war—or preparing to—against the Giovanni Family and that damn Devil’s Brothers MC.
Tonight was supposed to be a chance for all of us to relax and celebrate, to be happy for Tessa and Romeo while Dante and Nina hosted their engagement party here at the mansion.
“Why the hell would you be job hunting?” Franco asked, as if I couldn’t have said anything crazier.
“Because it would give me something to do.” I arched my brows at him. “Why else does anyone get a job?”
He smirked. “Well, for those who aren’t born into the lap of wealth like you, people need money.”
“I realize that,” I replied dryly. “Of course I know that.” I never asked to be born into this family. I never asked for my parents to be killed when I was a young child, to be raised by Dante Constella and taught propriety and entitlement. I didn’t blame my uncle for spoiling me, but we all knew I was revered and respected as something like royalty.
Mafia princess. The term was starting to grate on my nerves more and more now. When I was younger, Romeo could get away with teasing me about the moniker that our peers gave me, that I was the icy Mafia princess, haughty and superior.
No one other than my uncle and cousin—maybe Franco here, too—knew that it was all a fa?ade I hid behind, a mask to protect who I really was deep down.
The only problem was that I no longer could be certain I knew who I was anymore.
I was still Dante’s niece, but with Nina engaged to him and expecting his baby, I wasn’t as important to nag after him and make sure he wasn’t working too hard.
I was still Romeo’s cousin, but with Tessa celebrating her engagement to him tonight, I wouldn’t be as involved in his life anymore, either.
“Then why would you need a job?” Franco asked. “For fuck’s sake. Don’t I have enough issues to deal with? If you get it in your head to go find a career, that’ll be a whole extra crew that I’ll need to staff to follow you and vet out the security at wherever you go.”
“I’m not saying I need a job.” He was right. I didn’t need money. “But it wouldn’t be so bad to have a…”
He put his water bottle to his mouth, waiting for my reply as he drank.
“A purpose.”
As he lowered the bottle, he pointed at me with a finger not wrapped around the plastic. “Aha. I knew it.”
“Knew what?” Nothing pissed me off more than someone presuming to know me. Franco did. He’d been in a high position for Dante and Romeo for so long that he was well aware of everything about my life, and that of my uncle and cousin. I’d spent so long and practiced for years to hide myself that I became instantly aggravated when anyone supposed they saw the real me.
“It’s getting to you, too,” He nodded, looking off to the side with less of a smug expression. “Them getting married.”
“No one’s getting married yet ,” I argued. He made it sound like we were attending back-to-back weddings.
He shrugged. “With them getting engaged. Nina and Dante expecting. Now, Romeo and Tessa.” He shook his head. “They both met their other half and boom, all of a sudden, they’re all in domestic bliss.”
I pressed my lips together and ran my tongue along the inner seam, keeping my words locked in. He’d hit the nail on the head there. Every word was true. While I should’ve felt some consolation in the fact that Franco could commiserate with what I was saying, it didn’t make me feel any better.
“I’ve wondered why you’ve been extra aloof lately.” He leaned his forearms on the bar like I’d stooped to do. The room was empty, but a member of the house’s wait staff who was hired for the engagement party slipped in to get a beer bottle from this private room.
“I’m not extra aloof,” I protested.
“Oh, cut the shit, Eva.” Franco was one of the few men who could talk to me like this and get away with it. Dante and Romeo were the only others.
“It’s just you and me talking in here,” he said. “If it helps, I’ve been feeling the same.”
I furrowed my brow, wishing that weren’t true. If Franco was experiencing the same dejection that I was dealing with, I’d hate for him to suffer. “Like what?”
He shrugged and let out a gusty sigh. “Like feeling sorry for myself that I don’t have anyone.”
I nodded when he glanced at me, confirming what he said. “Yeah. I hate that I am, but I’ve been feeling jealous of Dante and Romeo.” I held up my hand and cleared my throat. “Don’t get me wrong. I like Nina and Tessa.”
He grunted. “Not at first.”
“But once I got to know them, I did.” I wouldn’t apologize for being overprotective of them. When Nina showed up in the house, she seemed to be a gold-digger out to use my uncle Dante as a sugar daddy. Only once I saw how they tried to hide their attraction for each other did I realize they had a true connection.
“But I wish I had someone like that. Someone for myself.”
He set his water down and hung his head lower. “And now you’re thinking, in typical independent, Mafia-princess fashion, that maybe you don’t need someone to spend your life with but something to spend your life on?”
Dammit. He was too damn good at reading me. “Maybe.”
He stood, stretching his back. “That’s like what Dante did before. And you can’t deny that he’s happier now. He was married to work. Then he met Nina, and now look at him.”
Again, he was correct. My uncle had always been busy as the boss of the family. Romeo, too, and he was so damn serious. Both men were infinitely happier now since meeting their partners.
That just makes me feel worse. Thanks.
“You don’t know what it’s like, though. You’ve got your job, your purpose and mission.” I frowned at him. “And I’m not even allowed to have a job because of the security issues it’d create.”
He rolled his eyes. “Oh, don’t give me that shit. I was teasing. Mostly. You and I both know you can and will do whatever the hell you want. You won’t get far in convincing anyone that you’re stuck or confined with the power and money you have in this family.”
“But I am stuck and confined in finding someone because of the power and money I have in this family.” I turned toward him and crossed my arms, defensive like usual. “Try to tell me that’s not true.”
“Fine. It is.” He stepped away from the bar and put his arm around my shoulders, steering me out of the room to join the rest of them waiting to go into the ballroom for the party. “Most of the assholes in our world wouldn’t be good enough for you. And every one of them would want to use you for leverage.”
I nodded as I walked out with him.
“I don’t know that you can claim I’m any better off for having my job and mission.” He instantly scanned the room where everyone else was waiting, always on edge and quick to check for threats.
“Because it wears on you? Being on all the time?”
“No. That’s just who I am. I mean knowing how different it can be to have someone to spend your life with. I think about her.”
Chloe? Still? I didn’t have to ask who he was referencing.
“It’s been…”
“Ten years,” he replied without missing a beat. “And I wonder every fucking day why she left.”
I patted his hand that draped over my shoulder. I noticed that Franco didn’t talk about it much with Dante and Romeo, but he was vulnerable with me, telling me that he missed his former flame.
That sounded like an even worse fate. To have love and lose it, versus never having it at all?
Again, maybe I should just get a job. It would be helpful to distract myself, to be preoccupied and not dwell on being single for seemingly forever.
But what the hell would I do?
Any job that I got would be a pity offering, someone giving me a position just because I was a Constella and Dante wielded so much power.
It’s all a lost cause. I’m a lost cause.
I let that sentiment sink in as I mingled and made my way through the engagement party. Like with all other events hosted at the mansion, the ballroom was decorated to show off the elegance of the architecture without being too much. All the guests drank and chatted. Romeo and Tessa smiled at everyone who’d come to wish them well, and more than a few also spoke with Nina who was just about to clear the end of her second trimester.
Happy, peppy couples, all around. And then there’s me.
Bitterness seeped through me, worsening my frustration that I didn’t know how to climb out of this funky gloom and despair.
“What, no ice sculpture fountains full of champagne?”
I turned, pausing in walking away from a table near one of the bars where the servers loaded up their trays with flutes of the drink. The man who’d spoken likely had done so to talk to himself. Even if it wasn’t a gruff line of snark, scoffing that complaint and mocking the party, he’d said it low and quiet, as though he didn’t count on anyone overhearing.
As though he didn’t anticipate that I’d be passing by and stop at the complaint about anything my family offered.
“The beverages aren’t to your liking?” I sassed as I spun to face him.
While his white button-down was simple, the rest of him wasn’t. His jeans— jeans! —were so worn and weathered they had to be the only comfortable garment anyone had on in this ballroom. His boots were covered with a faint trace of dust, and his hair, while slightly too long, wasn’t styled at all.
Who invited this cowboy here?
I’d never seen him before, but now that I faced him directly, getting the full burn of his glare, I wondered if he’d entered the back of the house earlier and we’d just happened to pass by each other in that room, when I was talking to Franco.
This engagement party wasn’t a full-on black tie affair, but a little care for decorum was required. And this guy either didn’t care or didn’t know. Strangers wouldn’t be permitted. Franco’s security forces would weed out any trespassers. Which begged the question of who the hell invited this underdressed, rugged, sexy-as-hell?—
Hold up.
I shook my head, annoyed with how quickly my mind derailed under his smirking glare. I was not going to notice how attractive this rebel was. Not now. No how.
“My beverage is fine.” He proved it in tipping back the beer bottle. “But the uppity pretension in this place is not.”
Uppity? “Then maybe you’re in the wrong place?” I set my hand on my hip. I’d be damned if some low-class idiot said my family was uppity. For many generations, the Constellas had sacrificed so much to promise our future would be prosperous and thriving. This nobody didn’t know what he was talking about. We weren’t pretentious. Or uppity. Or?—
Oh, my God. Why do I even care what this guy thinks?
“Let me guess,” he deadpanned. “Wrong place at the wrong time?”
I crossed my arms, immediately bristling at his challenging, droll tone. Something about him set me on edge and made me want to argue—more than I already usually did. This man, who clearly couldn’t belong, just rubbed me the wrong way.
“Something tells me there will never be a right time for you to belong here.”
He rolled his eyes and set his empty beer bottle down on the table. “Great. Another stuck-up bitch who can look at me like I’m something the cat dragged in. This party is a blast.”
Stuck-up bitch? His first mistake was in assuming I was like any other woman here. And his second was his guess that his words would make an impact on my night. I knew my worth, and he never would. I was an intelligent, confident woman, and no plebeian like him would wound me with his inferior opinions. But it sure as hell didn’t mean I had to put up with it.
“Get out.”
He huffed. “Yeah, right.”
“I don’t know how you get in here, but you clearly weren’t invited if you intend to attack the Constella name.”
“Oh.” Slight surprise lit up his striking blue eyes. I hated that they were so gorgeous, so alluring and drawing me in. Especially when his tone was so mocking. “You’re one of the Constellas?”
Who was this man? How could he not know where he was or who he was speaking to? As I furrowed my brow, trying to puzzle out how a stranger could get this far into the mansion, Romeo approached.
“There you are,” he said, holding his arm out to place it around my side.
“Another ‘family’ member?” the stranger guessed, placing a sarcastic emphasis on that one word.
“Yes.” Romeo nodded. “Liam, meet my cousin, Eva.”
He looked up me and down, taking a good, long look of me in my short dress. “Hmm.” He didn’t extend his hand to shake mine, a deliberate insult, no doubt, with how we’d already exchanged words.
Romeo frowned a bit but didn’t lose his stride. “Eva, this is Liam Gray. Tess’s friend.”
I’d be damned if I offered my hand to him. As far as introductions went, this one rated sub-zero in temperature and a high exponent of hostility. Since I had his full attention, I let him feel the pressure of my stare as I took him in. Every lean, muscled, and rugged inch of his tall frame.
Handsome asshole.
I held my head up higher, letting him see how far I was out of his league.
“Eva,” Romeo prompted, squeezing my shoulder. “Help me welcome Liam,” he said through clenched teeth.
“Welcome him?” I asked.
This was just a party. He’d be going as soon as it was over.
One glance up at my cousin suggested otherwise. The tense expression he gave me also implied that he disliked how rudely I was behaving.
“Tess has offered for him to stay with us for a while. To visit.”
Fuck it all. So much for thinking he wouldn’t be here for more than one night as a guest who didn’t belong.
Romeo squeezed his fingers on my shoulder a little more.
Keeping my lips tight together, I refrained from scowling or giving any sign that the indifference I was showing was false. I looked Liam dead in his gorgeous blue eyes that were dancing with mischief and held out my hand.
“Nice to meet you,” I lied. Judgmental asshole.
“Likewise,” he said, likely lying through his teeth with a smirk on his lips. He took my hand, stunning me with the zing of awareness at his calloused hand touching me with what should’ve been a simple gesture of greeting.
It felt like anything but. It felt like… a dare. A challenge. And I wasn’t sure whether I’d want to back down from whoever the hell Liam Gray was.