Where Reckless Hearts Whisper (Dark Hearts #4)

Prologue

Bambalina

I stare at the pistol in my hands. It feels cold and unnatural, loaded with bullets, and shaking, thanks to 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 fire 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, mischievously, “pretend it’s your new stepbrother. We all know how displeased you are about that situation.”

Bitterness blooms in me at the mention of my stepbrother, and his image fills my vision.

Cold, distant, disinterested. Treacherously handsome, yet achingly elusive.

He’s hardly said two words to me since our parents married.

It’s not enough that my beloved Papa has moved on with his new wife.

Now, my new stepbrother has to behave like I don’t even exist.

I square my shoulders and raise the gun with sudden clarity. Then I pull the trigger.

The impact of the bullet leaving its 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 against 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.

His gaze coasts over everyone but me, his smile is devastating.

“I’m glad I could be of service,” he drawls, then he smoothly pushes himself off the frame, opens the heavy, steel door and leaves.

I tap cold water onto my cheeks and press a cool hand to my forehead. The humiliation of Nicolò witnessing my shot 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 diner. The place 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, 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.

“Hey, Bambi, over here!” Sera calls. “We ordered you a strawberry 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 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 the thought from my head, sensing the waitress making her way over.

“Instead of pancakes, I’d like the protein smoothie,” I say.

She nods, then rakes her gaze over my stepbrother before returning the kitchen.

“So, Drake texted me after we left,” Andreas says.

“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.

“Yeah. Technically, you’re dead, Nicolò,” Tess chuckles.

The table bursts out laughing. Even Benito smirks.

“It wasn’t you,” I say breathlessly, unable to look Nicolò in the eye. “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.”

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.

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 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 cool 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. Suddenly, I was alone in a house with my papa and his new wife—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.

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 back 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 stepbrother. 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.

Part of me wonders if I just imagined it. Did Nicolò really just feed me some of his pancakes? My lips are still tingling from where his fork grazed them, so I know it was real.

For a second or two, I felt like I was the only woman in the room.

His eyes on me made everything else disappear.

For a moment I wondered if, contrary to what his behaviour up to this point has conveyed, my stepbrother perhaps likes me.

But that fantasy was dashed when he left the diner without so much as a glance.

My heart limps back to the place where everything seems to be slipping through my fingers. And, 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 make every day.

That, one day, I’ll be deemed worthy of that kind of love.