“I love you,” Heather said.
She leaned in and kissed him on the cheek. And then he sat up. “I feel cold.”
He lay back down, and then his breath left his body.
While holding Heather’s hand.
It was done. His father was gone.
And it wasn’t him who had been holding onto him, but his stepsister.
Who would inherit half of the estate that had been in their bloodline for hundreds of years. She had successfully supplanted him. In every way that mattered.
He had known it would be like this. From the beginning.
CHAPTER THREE
The beginning
She’d never seena boy who was so tall. Or so angry.
She’d never seen anyone like him. Not at any of the other houses her mom had cleaned in the past. But then, this place was unlike any they had ever been at.
No one had ever given them a house before. Especially not one so nice as the one they were living in now, down at the bottom of the garden of the vast estate.
And certainly no one had ever given Heather permission to use the pool.
Her mom’s new boss was lovely. One of the kindest people that Heather had ever met.
And this must be his son.
Romeo Accardi.
Giuseppe had spoken about him before. She knew his name; she had simply never seen him before. He had been away on an après ski vacation with his mother, and then had gone on to the Riviera with friends. She had wondered how in the world he kept up with his school.
“Romeo is quite like his mother. He always finds a way.”
It made sense, right then, as she looked up at him. She had never seen a boy that tall. A boy who was also a man. She couldn’t explain that thought; she could only feel it. She waited for him to smile. She smiled, her very best, most aggressive smile. He lowered his sunglasses, and fixed her with an insolent glare. “Does your mother know that her child is loose about the premises?”
She felt like she had been cut in two with his words. With the sheer dismissiveness of them, the coldness. But also his beauty. How could anyone so beautiful exist? And how could something so beautiful be so…forbidding?
He was nothing like his father.
“I… I have permission to swim.”
“It’s a good thing I’m leaving then.”
That was her first interaction with him.
It was a while before she had another.
Giuseppe had invited her to come into the house on the days when her mother was cleaning, and she often did. Perusing the library, or enjoying the food that the staff made for her from the kitchen. Yes, it was generous. Overly so, but she was also living in some sort of dream. Going from spending much of her day alone in an apartment in New York, walking to school and back by herself, to this.
“Have you thought about school?” Giuseppe asked.
“I’ve been enjoying the break,” she said honestly, looking down at the tangerine she was holding, the one she had just taken out of the kitchen, as he’d given her permission to do.
“I think that you should go to the same school that Romeo attends. It is the best school in the vicinity.”
