“What can we do? Amante won’t let us take her to our house and Edison isn’t in any state to be helping us at this point. Too many of our previous allies have chosen to bury their heads into the sand, so we can’t exactly count on their backing even if we were to decide to keep Cini away from the estate,” Ranieri pointed out, ever the pragmatist.
It was too bad that I didn’t possess any such qualities.
Most people figured that, because I was so quiet, that I must be the most mature out of the bunch and boy were they dead wrong.
I only spoke when I had something I needed to say, and I needed to say this now or else I was afraid that Cini would fade away completely.
“She needs a break. Look at her. She needs sunshine and warmth—not that cold-ass mansion with people who aren’t looking out for her best interest.”
“Wecould,” Ranieri mused slowly, his expression changing a bit as he worked through the problem at hand. “Take her on a honeymoon of sorts.”
“A honeymoon? What makes you think Amante is going to let us take her out of the house that long?” Nico asked with a derisive snort.
“You would be surprised what he would do to keep up appearances. Alesso once told me that he got hairplugs and that’s why he disappeared for six months when we were younger.”
The car erupted into soft laughter at the memory.
That had been our best summer.
I could still remember us running around the massive estate, playing in the surrounding river and coming back each evening completely drenched and exhausted.
Cini had always tagged along, albeit secretly and we used to pretend not to see her pale blonde head peeking around massive trees at us.
Every memory I had of my childhood, Cini had been there. She was my treasure and despite the rough road to get to where we were, I wanted to cherish her.
It was an opinion I knew the other guys shared, though they usually didn’t voice it out of guilt toward our fallen comrade. Especially Ranieri whose past with Alesso was a bit different than ours… not that he had ever told us as such.
Nico and Elio had probably never realized it, but in all of my years of keeping quiet and observing things, I had noticed the difference in the way Ranieri and Alesso treated each other.
Of course, I never asked either of them about it. It wasn’t my business and I prided myself on minding my own damn business.
“So we convince him of a honeymoon. But how?” I asked, prodding the conversation along. It wasn’t truly what I wanted to do for her, but a vacation would most definitely do Cini some good.
Ranieri’s smile was downright evil as he began typing on his phone. “By making him think it’s his idea of course.”
Fourteen
Warm, white sand slid in between my toes as I stared excitedly out at the blue expanse of the ocean.
I could hardly believe I was standing here and I kept pinching myself thinking it was a dream.
When Alesso was alive, he’d brought me to the beaches near the Amante estate, but they were always cold and damp—not built for swimming or really enjoying anything other than a toasty bonfire.
But this? This was paradise.
I had never left the state, let alone the country before now and in the last twenty-four hours I had done both.
A hand slid into mine and I turned to find Nico smiling at me. He was dressed in a pair of swim trunks and an open white shirt—vacation modehe had called it this morning when I woke up in the beach house just behind us.
“Enjoying yourself?” he asked, saying the words out loud as a hot breeze tousled his curly, dark hair. It always shocked me how similar he and Elio looked despite only being cousins.
I nodded so hard it nearly made me dizzy and he flashed me a grin.
His dark gaze drifted to my lips. “It’s romantic, right?”
My toes curled in the sand as I reached out with my free hand and gripped his shirt.
I was allowed to kiss him whenever I wanted now, I realized with a jolt of surprise. Even if it had all been some crazy, fucked up way for my father to create a new heir… he was my husband. One of my mates.
