I met his eyes and swooned at his deep voice saying my name.“Yes?”
“You’ve been quiet,” he said.“Do you enjoy this place in the city?A girl like you wants more privacy around her home, right?”
The question was harmless on the surface.The table fell still—everyone waiting to hear how I would answer the man who might soon be my partner or my father’s rival.
I smiled just enough.“When it isn’t full of chaos.Privacy isn’t something our families get.”
A ripple of polite laughter circled the table.My father’s chuckle joined the others.Enrico’s did not.
He studied me instead, that unreadable half-smile lingering like a scar that refused to fade.
The wine was poured again; conversation resumed its careful hum.But I could still feel the invisible line drawn between us—thin as silk, tight as a garrote.
When I lifted my glass, his did too.Under the tablecloth, my hands were steady.My pulse was not.
Every smile was a strategy.Every breath, a calculation.And still I forgot how to breathe.
The last toast came like the closing of a deal.
Crystal lifted, laughter scattered, and for a few breathless seconds the room shimmered with the illusion of civility.Then the men rose, chairs scraping marble, servants moving in to clear the wreckage of diplomacy.
My father was called aside by one of his advisers.Their voices slipped into business cadence—numbers, shipments, contracts.I stood at the edge of the table, fingers brushing the rim of my glass, wishing my pulse would stop betraying me.Wasn’t this my cue to go?
A shadow moved across the candlelight.Enrico.
He crossed the remaining distance with the same quiet assurance that had filled the ballroom the night he first claimed me for a dance.
“You shouldn’t look so afraid,” he said, voice low enough for only me.“I’m only here to keep the peace.”
“You don’t keep peace.”
For a heartbeat, no one else existed—even the pulse in my throat lessened until there was only the weight of what he wasn’t saying.
“Mia.”
The sound of my father’s voice snapped the moment in half.Enrico stepped back as if the air between us had boundaries again.By the time my father turned toward us, Enrico’s mask was already in place—hands folded, polite, untouchable.
“Di Fiore,” my father said.“Until next time.”
“Until next time,” Enrico echoed.His eyes flicked to me once more, a glance so brief it could have been nothing.It wasn’t.
I’m in deep shit, but maybetomorrow, I’d stop pretending.
6
ENRICO
Rain started by the time I left the Moretti mansion.Marco drove.I let him.The city slid past in streaks.I should have been cataloging details—the guards at the gate, the cars parked too long on the corner—but my thoughts kept circling back to her.Mia Moretti.The only person in the room who hadn’t flinched.
She’d sat across from me wrapped in silver, calm as a saint and twice as dangerous.Every word, every glance, deliberate.When she said,You don’t keep peace.The truth of it slid under my skin like a blade.She’d meant it as an accusation.She wasn’t wrong.
Marco cleared his throat.“You got what you wanted?”
“Not yet.”
He didn’t ask again.He’d known me too long to mistake silence for calm.We’d become closer over the last two years… after he finally stopped holding a grudge that our father chose me to take over the family business.Although, Marco would have been well suited.To be honest, I’d bet my father chose me so he could prove that I’d fail.
“She’ll be yours eventually.I still don’t understand what’s so special about her.”
