Chapter 15
EMILY
Iconsidered myself a reasonably intelligent person. Sensible, even. A woman with a good head on her shoulders and, unfortunately, truly catastrophic taste in men.
That theory felt particularly well supported as I stepped off a private plane with my suitcase in hand and found a black sedan waiting below, a uniformed driver already standing by the open door.
“Impressive the first time, isn’t it?” Olivero murmured near my ear.
I glanced at him and smiled despite the nerves trying to stage a full mutiny in my stomach.
Over the past few weeks, the more time I had spent in Pietro’s apartment, the more familiar I became with Olivero and the strange, ridiculous dynamic between the two of them.
It made me laugh far more often than I probably should have.
“One step back, Oli,” Pietro said from behind us, his voice edged. “And stop pestering my girlfriend.”
Girlfriend.
That one word was enough to make my palms dampen all over again.
Olivero put a hand to his chest. “We commoners must support one another.”
Pietro’s eyes narrowed, and just like that he seemed to stand a little straighter, the shift in him subtle but unmistakable. It was the first time I had seen that side of him this clearly. Not just confidence. Authority.
“You are hardly a commoner, Oliverio Moretti,” he said dryly. “Son of the capo’s head enforcer.”
Olivero only shrugged.
I looked at him again, trying and failing to fully adjust to the fact that the man acting like a chaotic golden retriever in expensive shoes came from a bloodline that probably terrified half the country.
I stepped down slowly, but my mind was already somewhere far ahead of my body.
I was on my way to the home of the Chicago mafia leader.
Suddenly the carefully chosen presents in my suitcase felt laughably underwhelming. What exactly was I supposed to bring people who probably owned private islands and antique weapons?
“Breathe,” Pietro murmured as he slid into the back seat beside me while Olivero took the front next to the driver.
“I’m breathing,” I said. Then, more honestly and mostly to myself, “Sort of.”
His mouth twitched. “You’re doing very well so far.”
“Am I?”
“Yes. You haven’t tried to throw yourself out of the moving car yet. That’s encouraging.”
I turned to look at him. “Your standards for success feel suspiciously low.”
“I’m trying to make this achievable for you.”
He reached across the seat and took my hand, his thumb brushing once over my knuckles. “Emily, my family is going to adore you.”
“That is not reassuring enough.”
“All right.” He tilted his head, pretending to reconsider. “If it helps, you’re the one person in this car least likely to commit a felony before lunch, so you’re already ahead on points.”
Olivero turned halfway in his seat. “Speak for yourself.”
“Eyes on the road, Olivero,” Pietro said without looking at him.
“I’m not driving.”
“Then face forward in silence.”
I laughed then, and some of the tightness in my chest loosened.
Good. That seemed to be all Pietro had really wanted.
He pressed a kiss to my temple and lowered his voice. “You don’t have to impress them.”
I looked at him.
“You only have to be yourself,” he said. “I’m bringing you home, not presenting a merger proposal.”
“That was almost romantic until you said merger proposal.”
“I’m versatile.”
The car rolled through tall iron gates a few minutes later and onto a drive so long that I thought we might still be approaching the house by nightfall.
Trees lined both sides in dense green walls, and then at last the house came into view through them, enormous and elegant and beautiful and faintly terrifying.
I stared.
“God,” I said. “You’re rich rich.”
Pietro looked out the window as if checking whether the estate had changed shape since he last saw it. “I thought we had already established that with the plane and everything.”
The car slowed at last beneath the portico of the front entrance, gravel whispering under the tires before the driver came to a smooth stop. For one second, nobody moved.
Then Pietro reached for the door.
“Ready?” he asked.
No, not even remotely, but there was something so steady in the way he looked at me that I found myself nodding anyway.
The front doors had already opened by the time we stepped out, and the first thing I noticed was not the size of the house, though it was immense, nor the low murmur of staff moving somewhere deeper inside, nor even the simple, expensive elegance of the stone and dark wood and warm light spilling across the entrance hall.
It was the way everything was arranged around a center I could not yet see but could already feel.
The staff moved with the practiced ease that only came from deeply understood hierarchy, and yet none of it felt frantic or performative.
It was seamless. Power made domestic. Authority settled so fully into the bones of a house that it no longer needed to raise its voice.
I knew what this was.
I had spent two years writing about it.
The trick, I had written, was that it never felt like control from the inside.
I was standing in the living version of my own argument. And the most alarming thing, the thing that made my chest tighten in a way that had nothing to do with fear and everything to do with honesty, was that I understood it completely, and I was still walking toward the door.
Pietro’s hand brushed lightly against the small of my back, guiding rather than pushing, and I realized he had already started toward the staircase leading up to the entrance proper.
He moved only a little more slowly than a man his age might have been expected to, but I noticed it all the same, and without thinking I matched him.
I only realized I had done it when I glanced up and found a woman with wild red curls and bright green eyes standing in the doorway, watching us with an expression so warm it made my throat tighten.
Lily.
She was more beautiful than Pietro had ever said, though not in the polished, intimidating way I had expected from the wife of a man like Alessandro Benetti.
There was softness in her, but not weakness.
Warmth, and the unmistakable strength of someone who had survived enough she no longer needed to prove it.
And she saw that tiny adjustment.
I knew it instantly from the way her face changed. As if some private worry had been answered before it had ever been spoken aloud.
“Emily,” she said, and even my name sounded kind.
Then she crossed the threshold and wrapped me in a hug before I could decide what to do with myself.
It was not tentative. Not formal. Just immediate and sincere and exactly what I hadn’t realized I needed.
“Oh, sweetheart, it is so good to finally meet you.”
I laughed a little helplessly into the shock of it. “It’s really good to meet you too.”
When she pulled back, her hands stayed briefly on my arms, looking me over with the fond, searching curiosity of someone already a little bit inclined to love me because Pietro did.
Then a man stepped into view behind her and I understood very clearly why people feared him.
Alessandro Benetti didn’t need to be loud.
He had the kind of presence that seemed to bend the room around it without effort, dark and composed and very obviously dangerous even standing still in his own front doorway.
But there was also something else there, something that only became visible when his gaze slid briefly to Lily and warmed by a degree most people would probably miss.
This, I thought, was the center of it.
Not just him. Them. The axis the whole house turned on.
“Emily,” he said, his voice deep and even. “Welcome.”
“Mr. Benetti,” I began, immediately feeling twelve years old and underdressed despite the amount of effort I had put into not looking like a complete disaster.
He held up one hand, and for one awful second I thought I had already committed some unforgivable breach of etiquette.
Then the corner of his mouth moved.
“Please,” he said. “Call me Sandro. My position may require a certain degree of gruffness, but I promise not to direct too much of it at you unless absolutely necessary.”
That startled a laugh out of me.
“Thank you,” I said, a little more easily. “That’s generous.”
“I am known for it.”
Pietro let out a soft sound beside me that might have been a sigh or a warning. It was hard to tell.
Before anyone could say anything else, a blur of dark curls and determination came hurtling into the hall.
“Is that her?”
Victoria.
She couldn’t have been more of a force of nature in human form, all bright eyes and impatient energy and the kind of confidence that came from being loved and entirely unafraid of the world as a result.
She skidded to a stop in front of me, looked me up and down with brutal scrutiny, then nodded once like a tiny queen approving a diplomatic envoy.
“You’re pretty,” she announced.
“Vicky,” Pietro said.
“What?” She glanced back at him. “She is.”
Then she looked at me again. “Do you want to see my doll collection? I have one from Japan and one from Paris and one that Dad says is creepy but he’s wrong.”
I blinked.
Lily closed her eyes briefly in a way that suggested this was not unusual.
“Victoria—” Sandro began.
But I was already smiling.
“I would love to.”
“Excellent,” she said, and took my hand with shocking confidence. “Come on.”
I barely had time to glance back before she was towing me toward the staircase.
Behind me, I heard Pietro say, “You are not kidnapping her.”
Victoria didn’t even turn around. “I’m borrowing.”
“She gets that from him,” Lily murmured, and though I didn’t look back I knew exactly which him she meant.
Victoria’s room was exactly what I should have expected and more.
Beautiful, chaotic, and curated with the absolute certainty of a child who had never once doubted the world would make room for her tastes.
The dolls were displayed with solemn importance, and she introduced them all by name, backstory, and a ranking system I only half understood.