Chapter 4 Leonardo
Leonardo
The crowd’s a monster. I breathe in its sweat and smoke and wait for it to swallow me whole. There’s a cigarette hanging off my lip, half forgotten, and I thumb it loose, blowing a plume of smoke to watch it die in the stale, damp air.
Next to me, Dom leans back, arms crossed. His eyes are on the entrance, all cool and sharp like he can will the Price family to just appear. The guy doesn’t even look nervous. It pisses me off sometimes. The old man’s gotten to him; he thinks it’s a done deal. And me? I’m not so sure.
“You really think they’ll show?” I crack my knuckles, one by one.
He doesn’t look at me, just keeps watching the door. “They’ll show.”
I shrug. “Bet you a hundred bucks they don’t.”
“Leo,” he says, and I can hear the patience in his voice, like he’s talking to a kid who still believes in Santa. “They’ll show.”
I bark a laugh and flick the cigarette at his feet. “Then you owe me,” I say, but my heart’s not in it. If the Prices actually do this, if they really walk into the middle of Rosetti territory, I want to see it. I want to see how these princesses handle being on my turf.
The fight’s going, the ring’s a swarm of bodies. Bets and blood, shouting and swearing. I love this shit. I love it in my veins. I love it under my skin.
I push off the wall and shove my way through the crowd, aiming for the ring. Heat and noise rise off them, voices crash together, a hundred people yelling for blood.
Cigarette smoke and sweat and hot, stale air. The acrid bite of cheap beer and burnt popcorn. It’s thick enough to choke on, and it feels like home.
I slap hands with Matteo, who’s hovering by the edge of the mob, that smug grin pasted on his face. “Thought you had a date,” he says, eyes bright. “Standing her up already?”
“Not yet,” I yell back.
The air vibrates with another roar. Matt laughs, grabs my shirt as I move to ruffle his head. “Not so fast. Watch the hair.”
“Go fuck yourself,” I tell him, but I’m grinning. I push past him, nod at Rafe. He’s got his eyes on the fight, jaw clenched. His left hook looks about ready to snap someone in half.
“Better hope that guy doesn’t get knocked out,” I say.
Rafe just shakes his head, eyes cold. “Better hope Dad doesn’t knock you out for bringing the Price women here. He told you to take them to Il Lusso.”
I flip him off, then make my way to the edge of the ring. It’s perfect. The noise, the chaos, the pulse of the place.
There’s a fighter on the ground, clutching his side. Another one looming over him, wild eyes, fists wrapped and bloodied. A final kick to the ribs, and the crowd’s a wall of sound, crashing over me.
The dude on the ground stays down. I see the exact moment he decides to take the dive, see the shift as his side loses, and I love it.
Losing means fights. Losing means blood.
And sure enough, people start shoving, yelling at each other, fists out, fists up.
It’s mayhem. It’s a goddamn riot. I feel it in my bones.
But then—
But then I see them.
They stand out like fucking angels. Too clean, too soft.
Richard Price and his daughters. I grin wide, so wide it hurts.
The older one is all elegant curves and ice-princess spine, and I immediately want to throw her against the nearest wall and drag that expensive dress up her creamy thighs and make her moan.
Maybe the old man wasn’t so crazy after all.
I make my way through the thick of the crowd, shoving bodies out of the way.
He really brought them. He really brought his girls to this hellhole.
I’ve only met him once. He's tall, his face all hard angles, expensive and sculpted. It’s hilarious how out of place he looks, like he’s here to buy the place, not watch a fight.
The girls are young. Too young. The littler one has that scared rabbit look, eyes wide and ready to bolt. She’s probably not more than nineteen, but in that Disney princess get-up, she looks about twelve. I kind of want to walk up to her and see if she runs.
I focus in on the older one instead.
She’s holding her chin up, acting like this is all beneath her. Ice-blue dress that hugs her torso, flares out around her knees. She looks so goddamn elegant, it’s almost funny. Even here, in the middle of chaos, she makes it look like she belongs. I don’t get it. But I want to.
I push through the last of the crowd, making it to them. Richard looks down at me, sizing me up with those cold eyes.
“Mr. Rosetti, I assume?” he says, with this polite sneer.
“Which one?” I grin, let it hang there, see how they react. The younger one shifts, and I can see her panicking. The older one doesn’t move. She holds my gaze.
“This is Eleanor,” he says, gesturing to the girl in the blue dress. She nods, polite and perfect. "And Juliet." The Disney princess.
“Leonardo,” I say. I lean closer to the older sister, eyes on her. She doesn’t flinch, doesn’t look away. Just stands there, cool and collected. Exactly the kind of spoiled brat I hate inside the kind of body I love. I want to see what she does next. “Heard you were looking for me.”
Richard’s lips thin, displeased.
The older one? Eleanor? She surprises me. She doesn’t wait for her father to answer, doesn’t let him play it for her. “We didn’t expect such an... energetic location,” she says, eyes steady on mine.
“You didn’t?” I jerk my thumb at the ring, can’t help the wide grin on my face or the tightening in my pants.
She shakes her head, but there’s something there, something sharp. “Quite the opposite.”
I almost laugh, look at Richard instead. “Well, what’s life without a little adventure?”
He inclines his head, icy and cool. I hate him already. “You will give the girls a tour?”
“Just Eleanor,” I say. I want to see how she handles this. I want to see what she’s made of.
He gives me a long look, like he’s already calculated a thousand different outcomes and all of them end with him winning. He thinks this is a done deal. But Eleanor? Eleanor looks at me with those ice-blue eyes, and I can’t tell. I can’t read her.
I pull her through the mob, lead her toward the ring. I can see the next fighters getting ready, wrapping hands and checking each other’s moves. I can see the shoving, the shouting, the ugly underbelly of this place. But I can’t see what she sees.
She’s walking next to me, stubborn and determined, not quite managing to match my stride but refusing to fall behind.
Her heels are ridiculous for this place, but she doesn’t even flinch when we pass a thug with a broken nose and a ring girl in a bikini top and Doc Martens.
Either she doesn’t notice, or she really doesn’t care.
I stop and watch her for a second, trying to figure her out, but her face is perfectly calm.
“Little fancy for a place like this,” I say, nodding at the dress.
I half-expect her to bite back, start giving me shit about the venue and how I should have warned her, how she’s never set foot in such a disreputable place.
I’m poking this princess and waiting to see her bruise.
I’m daring her to show me she’s as delicate as she looks.
She surprises me again with a confident shrug. “I like to dress well.”
I narrow my eyes. This isn’t what I expected.
Not even close. I thought she’d fold, thought I’d have to drag her through the hellhole that is the Rosetti fighting ring.
Instead, she’s moving through the chaos like she’s got nothing to lose.
I thought she’d show a crack, even just a tiny one, but she’s holding up like this is a goddamn tea party.
“And if you get blood on your pretty frock?” I ask.
She turns her gaze on me, eyes the exact color of her ice-blue gown. “Then I’ll send you the dry-cleaning bill.”
I huff out a laugh. “Is that why you want to marry me? For my family’s cash?”
She turns her gaze away from me, bored, watching the fight instead. “I have plenty of money.”
I crack my knuckles. “Why then? Did your old man say you had to?”
“He’s very pragmatic,” she says, cool as ice, a flicker of something under the surface.
I take a step closer, test the way she holds herself. “So? What’s a princess like you want with a thug like me?”
She twists her ring, a quick, almost invisible motion. Then she looks me in the eye. “This is a business transaction, Mr. Rosetti. I’m interested in your family’s power.”
I bark a laugh, loud and sharp. I can see her wince, even though she hides it. “A business transaction,” I say, mocking her cold tone. I hate it. I hate her act, hate that she thinks she can fool me. I start to turn away.
But I don’t.
I see something raw and real flash in her eyes, just a second, but it’s there.
I don’t think she knows I’ve seen it. I don’t think she meant to let me.
She’s holding herself like she’s the queen of this place, and I almost want to call her on it.
It’s a goddamn show, but part of me wants to find out if there’s more.
Part of me wants to see if I can break through that tough, elegant shell.
She’s smart, sharper than I gave her credit for. I can see now that I was wrong. She doesn’t scare, doesn’t flinch, and even when I try to walk away, I know she’s not going to let me off that easy. She wants this too bad.
“You think I’m lying?” she asks, head tilted, challenging. She’s testing me again, seeing if I’ll call her out. She’s daring me to prove her wrong. She’s colder than I thought she’d be, more stubborn, probably more like Richard than she’d ever admit.
It should make me walk away. It should make me leave her here the way I want to, the way I need to.
But that flicker is stuck in my head, and I turn to her instead.
“I know you’re lying,” I say, watching her face, watching for that crack again.
She doesn’t even blink. “I don’t deal with liars. ” My voice is hard, final.
She’s watching me, unreadable. I hate it. I hate that she’s got me thinking twice when she’s supposed to be easy to figure out.
The crowd’s like a roar in my ears, a tidal wave of shouts and jeers. I don’t look at her when I leave.
She’s a princess and a liar, and she blew it.
I get back to Dom, who’s still waiting like a statue.
“How’d it go?” he asks, too calm.
It's on the tip of my tongue to call the whole thing off, but then I glimpse her through the crowd, smiling as she watches the fight, an expression of pure joy instead of the calculated mask she showed me, and I don’t answer. Instead, I watch her.