"Giuseppe Carpano is handling the wine personally."
"Good." Santo stretched his legs out, crossing them at the ankle. "That swill tasted like grape juice someone left in the sun too long."
I made a sound of agreement, but my mind was already drifting.
Gemma.
I couldn't stop thinking of her. The way she'd stood slightly apart from her parents at the funeral, watchful and isolated even in a crowd. The way she'd moved through the reception hall—careful steps, deliberate path, taking up as little space as possible.
What happened to her?
"You're thinking about her."
Marco's voice cut through my spiral. I looked up to find him watching me with that knowing expression I both appreciated and resented.
I didn't bother denying it. "I barely know her."
"And yet." Marco's grin widened. "You looked at her like she was the only person in the room. At our father's funeral, no less. The whole church could have been empty and you wouldn't have noticed."
Damn him and his observational skills.
"That's not—"
"Don't bother." He held up a hand. "I know what I saw. You couldn't string a sentence together when she talked to you. You, Dante Caruso, who negotiated a federal investigation down to nothing. Who talked the Gambettis out of a war over territory they'd been fighting for decades. Tongue-tied over a woman you'd barely met."
Heat crept up the back of my neck. I focused on my reflection in the mirror, on Giuseppe's careful adjustments, on anything except Marco's amused scrutiny.
"Not every political alliance has to be misery, you know. Sometimes people actually fit."
I thought about Gemma's honey-colored eyes. The five freckles on her nose. The tremor in her hand when she'd offered condolences.
I thought about the way she'd looked at Enzo Valenti like he was a monster, and the cold fury that had risen in my chest at the sight.
“Donatella liked her,” Santo said.
My ears pricked.
“What do you mean?”
Donatellawaswaitingatthe coffee shop around the corner from Russo's—a deliberate choice, I suspected, positioned to ambush me the moment the fitting ended.
I spotted her through the window before I walked in. She was bent over her phone, thumbs flying, but she looked up the instant I pushed through the door. Some sixth sense for her brothers that she'd had since childhood.
She'd already ordered for me. A cortado sat on the table beside her lavender monstrosity, steam still rising from the cup. The sight of it—the presumption, the knowledge of my habits, the care wrapped in defiance—made something twist in my chest.
I slid into the chair across from her without greeting.
"Before you say anything," she began, holding up one hand like she was stopping traffic, "I was being a good sister-in-law. Future sister-in-law. Whatever. The point is—"
"You met with her."
It wasn't a question.
Donatella's chin lifted. That stubborn Caruso jaw, the one we'd all inherited from our mother, set firm.
"I had coffee with her. There's a difference." She wrapped both hands around her lavender latte, met my eyes with an expression that dared me to challenge her. "She's about to marry into our family, Dante. She doesn't know anyone in Chicago. Her father treats her like furniture—like a decorative piece he's rearrangingto suit his purposes. I wasn't going to let her walk into Saturday feeling completely alone."
I opened my mouth to respond. To remind her about protocol, about the delicacy of alliances, about not making contact with the other family's assets without clearing it first.
