The kiss is hard. Demanding. Possessive. We've met maybe five times total. We've never been alone. And he's kissing me like I'm already his property, his tongue pushing into my mouth while his hand grips my hip hard enough to bruise.
My body goes rigid.
I can't breathe. Can't move. The champagne glass nearly slips from my fingers and I have to lock my knees to stay upright because suddenly I'm not here in the Plaza ballroom in a designer dress with three hundred witnesses.
I'm thirteen.
I'm in a basement that smells like mold and rust and something worse.
Hands are holding me down, too many. Someone laughs. Irish accent, sharp and cruel.
"She's a pretty little thing, isn't she? Shame we can't keep her."
No. No, no, no. Not now. Shove it down. Lock it away. I'm good at this. I've had nine years of practice.
Vittorio finally pulls back and the room is still cheering but all I can hear is my own heartbeat hammering in my ears. My hands are shaking. I force them still, force my smile wider, force my lungs to pull in air that tastes like smoke and fear, even though there's no smoke here.
He touched me. In front of everyone. Like he has the right to.
My chest is too tight. I need to move, to run. My brain is screaming at me to find the exits, two behind me, one to the left, service door near the kitchen. My body is coiled like a spring ready to bolt.
And that's when I see him.
Enzo.
He's across the room near the bar, whiskey glass in his hand that he's gripping so hard I'm surprised it doesn't shatter. His dark eyes are locked on me, and the rage in them is so raw it steals whatever breath I managed to get back.
He looks like he's two seconds away from crossing this ballroom and killing Vittorio with his bare hands.
And just like that, I can breathe again.
It's pathetic. It's fucked up. But seeing Enzo, seeing that fury in his eyes that'sfor me, because of what just happened tome, it pulls me out of my head. Grounds me. Reminds me I'm here, I'm twenty-two, I'm safe.
Or as safe as I ever am.
The fear doesn't disappear. It never does. But it gets smaller, quieter, shoved into the box in my chest where I keep all the things I don't want to feel.
Enzo's jaw is clenched so tight I can see the muscle jumping. His knuckles are white around the glass. He's wearing a black suit with the sleeves rolled up, showing the serpent tattoo winding up his forearm—the one I used to trace with my fingers when I was eighteen and stupid enough to think he might love me back.
His eyes drop to Vittorio's hand still on my waist, and something dark and possessive crosses his face.
Heat floods through me, unwanted and so fucking inconvenient. Even now. Even after everything. One look from Enzo Bianchi and my body forgets how to be normal.
I hate him for it.
I hate that he can still do this to me. That after a year of silence and four years of broken-hearted anger, all it takes is his eyes on me and I'm burning.
Then he turns away, drains his whiskey in one swallow, and the spell breaks.
Right. Because that's what you do, Enzo. You look away.
Music starts—some slow, romantic bullshit that makes me want to scream. Vittorio leans down, his breath hot against my ear, and I have to fight not to flinch.
"I'll be right back,tesoro. Need to speak with your brothers and my father."
Tesoro.Treasure. I'm definitely going to be sick.
"Of course," I say, because what the fuck else am I supposed to say?
