Chapter 1
Ainsley – fourteen / Renzo – twenty-seven
The first time I met Renzo Iannelli was the day Noah died.
I hadn’t known Noah was dead at the time. All I knew was that my brother was missing. He didn’t come home, didn’t go to his second job of the day, and didn’t answer his phone or check in on social media.
Renzo Iannelli—though I didn’t know it was him—approached me, slouched as I was against a corridor wall at the busy police station with my arms wrapped tight around my growling stomach.
“Are you lost, piccola?”
Such a simple question. Almost kind, delivered in a bass, nearly apathetic voice that seemed to mute the surrounding conversations and the nonstop ringing phones.
It was so rich and deep that it reminded me of creamy chocolate on a hot day.
Dreamy, but the man himself…he made my teenage brain fire in all directions.
I didn’t even realize guys like that existed outside of movies.
He had to be in his mid-twenties, towering over me by a good head and a half, every inch of his face defined and strong.
His jaw was all hard angles with prominent cheekbones.
Thick eyebrows framed cold emerald eyes, gleaming with different shades of green.
Man, I wished mine were that color instead of wet dirt.
His suit looked crisper and finer than the ones my dad used to wear, giving him that over-the-top refined image, broken only by the tattoos covering his hands, from his knuckles to the tips of his sleeves.
A few also crawled up his neck over his dress shirt collar.
A gaudy gold ring decorated one of his hands, with diamonds encrusted around the band, and a large but delicate pendant hung from a thick gold chain around his neck.
Whoever this guy was, his look practically screamed, “Wealthy and perilous, pay attention.”
“You shouldn’t wander off in a place like this.” He spoke without even glancing at me.
I eyed both ends of the corridor. Neither wait line had moved up. “Doesn’t look so dangerous.”
“Danger always lurks where you least expect it.”
As if to emphasize the dangers of starvation, my stomach picked that moment to growl as comically loud as a cartoon character’s burp. I squeezed my stomach, my face flaming, eyes wide and glued to the grout lines between the tile at my feet.
“Eat.” My good-looking stranger held out a sandwich in front of me.
Steak, cheese, cooked onions, peppers—the smells made my mouth water.
Plus, I recognized the logo on the wrapper.
I loved that Italian deli place. Mom and Dad used to take me there every Friday after school.
Noah and I kept up the tradition but only once a month.
I licked my lips, hesitating. Taking food from a random stranger always seemed like the start of a really bad kidnapping story.
But…we were in a police station. It’s not like he could do much of anything to me here, with all these cops, right?
“Why?”
“If you starve, it’ll be your choice, not mine.”
Those words shouldn’t have reassured me as much as they did, but I believed him. He wasn’t trying to charm me, even a little. I actually got the impression that if I refused, he would just take the sandwich back. No harm, no foul. My stomach was going to go on strike if that happened.
I didn’t get the time to thank him before the door across the hall creaked open.
“Iannelli. You’re up,” someone called.
My stranger shoved off the wall with the kind of grace only people who were completely confident in themselves had.
I watched him disappear into that office, the door slamming in his wake.
He didn’t glance back. He’d already forgotten I was there, as if talking to me and feeding me had been nothing more than ridding his shoe of a bothersome pebble.
I unwrapped the edge of my sandwich and took a bite. The flavors burst in my mouth, rich and creamy and just so fudging fantastic. Best distraction ever. At least it was, until raised voices came from the office that attractive, rich guy went into.
Minutes into their fight, the office door opened again, and Mr. God’s Gift to Mankind walked out as if nothing was wrong.
He’d just been in a yelling fit with cops, and he looked as cool as a cucumber.
Well, if cucumbers were dark and broody and fed random people.
He didn’t look at me though, not once, not even a glance as he left.
Not that he had before, but I couldn’t help feeling oddly disappointed not to receive his attention when he’d made a little bit of a difference in my day.
The voices in the office picked up once more, this time a little less muffled. The door hadn’t completely shut.
Now I was a smart girl, a straight-A student and all, but that meant very little when it came to my curiosity.
People liked to say, “Curiosity killed the cat.” But my mother used to say, “Curiosity grows the brain.” I lived by those four words from the wisest woman I ever knew.
They were all the justification needed for me to be as curious as I wished.
I didn’t understand what I overheard. Something about a crime scene and following the prick’s orders. I did get a name, though—Martinez—which didn’t match the nameplate reading Chief Jack Bowman.
That was all I got before a cop I’d spoken to earlier and a woman in everyday wear with an ID badge dangling from her neck and a file in her hands found me loitering.
“Ainsley Burch, dear. Why don’t you come with us?”
Six words had never before frozen me in place. It was the soft way the woman said them. The same soft way people spoke to me right after my parents’ death. The same way people said their condolences while petting my shoulder at their funeral, as their pity glared back at me.
This woman didn’t have to say it for me to know Noah was gone. I just knew.
I slid down the nearest wall, zoning out everything else she said. With my ears ringing and tears slowly flowing down my face, I unwrapped the rest of the sandwich and ate.
The whole world crumbled around me, except for that sandwich.
It was my last moment of normalcy, my last moment from before.
It represented all my best memories bundled into every delicious bite.
Noah’s and my last camping trip to Yosemite.
The way Noah loved to tickle me to wake me up in the mornings before school.
Our trips to this same deli. When the last bite disappeared, a hollow emptiness grew in my chest, sucking up all the light. My after began.
I just didn’t know yet that it was all because of him.