The living room is warm and cluttered in the best way. Family photos cover every surface. There’s Nico as a teenager, before the scars, grinning with an arm around a younger Dominic. There’s Isabella and Antonio on their wedding day. There’s what looks like every school photo ever taken.
Dom and Tatiana are already on the couch. Tatiana is exactly as intimidatingly gorgeous as her photos online. Blond, willowy, the kind of woman who makes you wonder if you should’ve skipped carbs for the past decade. Just the kind of woman you’d expect to find on a billionaire like Dom’s arm.
But when she catches my gaze, she smiles and it meets her eyes and then some. It literally lights up her whole face, and she pats the cushion beside her, accepting me immediately. “Come sit. Let the boys help with dinner.”
“We’re helping?” Dom sounds amused.
“You’re setting the table,” Isabella calls from the kitchen. “Both of you. Now.”
Nico catches my eye as he’s herded away withDom. His expression is so vulnerable. Makes my chest ache.
Once we’re alone, Tatiana leans in. “Welcome to the chaos.”
“Is it always like this?” I ask.
“Worse on holidays.” She pauses. “Thank you, by the way.”
I frown. “For what?”
“For making Nico human again. Well.” She tilts her head. “More human, anyway.”
I feel heat creep up my neck. “I don’t think I can take credit for that.”
“Take it anyway,” she says. “The man was basically a robot for years. Now he smiles occasionally. That’s practically a miracle.”
We make more small talk, chatting like old friends. I was a bit worried she was going to bring up the whole Nico-Dom blackmail thing, but she doesn’t seem to hold a grudge at all. Which is a relief.
The dinner itself is loud. Incredibly, wonderfully, loud.
Antonio argues with Dom about real estate prices. Isabella keeps piling more food onto my plate no matter how much I protest. Dom tells a story about Nico getting lost at a museum when he was six that makes him groan and cover his face with his hands.
“He was convinced he’d found a secret room,” Isabella laughs. “The security guards found him trying to open a maintenance closet.”
“I was six,” Nico mutters.
“You were adorable,” Isabella counters.
I watch him through all of it. The way his shoulders gradually relax. The way his laugh sounds different here, looser and younger somehow. The way he looks at his mother with such obviousaffection.
This is who he is underneath all the masks.
At some point, the conversation turns to the place I was dreading. The blackmail scandal.
I tense, expecting awkwardness, but Isabella addresses it head-on.
“We raised him better than that,” she says, not unkindly. “But people grow. He’s proven he’s grown.”
Antonio adds: “Can’t change the past. Only what comes next.”
Tatiana and Dom nod in agreement.
Nico’s hand finds mine under the table. Squeezes.
After dinner, while I’m helping Isabella with dessert, Antonio appears in the kitchen doorway. “Bree.”
I look up, plates in hand.
“Don’t let him fuck this up,” he says. Then, gruffer: “You’re good for him.”
