“Been holding that in for a long time?”
“Since he died.” She cleared her throat. “Vinny, you better not tell Ma either. You keep that shit close to your chest. I knowyou ratted me out to her when I broke that pendant her great-grandma gave her when she was a child. But you’d like Stan once you got past his nationality. He watches hockey with me even though he prefers soccer, and I reckon you’d get a kick out of watching the World Cup together. He drives me crazy but treats me better than a princess, and he’s even moving into the building with us so I can stay close to the fam.
“I miss you, Vinny, and hate you for leaving us. You were my favorite brother, but you knew that anyway, you jerk. I-I love you and wish you were there to fight it out with Lucas over who’d walk me down the aisle.”
When a hitch sounded in her voice, I knew she’d used up all her words so I broke in, “It’s an honor to meet both of you. Just know that I’d be asking you for her hand in marriage if you were alive, sir. I may be Sicilian and not Irish, but we’re both cut from the same traditional cloth.”
Her hand clung to my arm. “Stan?”
“Yes,duci?”
“Just don’t let me regret loving you. I know you’ll fuck up and you’ll piss me off—that’s a goddamn given—but… don’t break my trust and make me a liar to my da.”
“I swear I won’t.”
I approached her. Cautiously. Wary of her claws. But she let me tug her into a hug with a small sniffle. At first, her tension made my heart hurt. Slowly, gradually, she softened and nestled into my arms.
“Just stop being a jerk,” she fumed.
“It’s hard to change a habit of a lifetime, my dream girl?—”
“If I’m your dream girl, then you’ll try!”
“I will. But I’ll fuck up. Will you…”
“Will I what?”
“Now that you know the worst of me, will you stop loving me when I do?”
A breath gusted from her. “No.”
Unable to hide my relief, I slumped my shoulders.
She cupped my chin and stared straight into my eyes. “I won’t let you get away with the stunts you’ve pulled up until now. I think your cum had C-L-O in it or something because this whole ‘courtship’ of ours has to have been a psychotic episode.”
“Please don’t talk about my cum while I’m standing next to your dad’s grave,” I pleaded.
She steamrolled past my protest with a wicked curve to her lips. “Moving forward, if you want this to be?—”
“Per sempri,” I inserted because I could tell she hesitated over the right adverb.
“Per sempri,” she agreed with a frown. “Then you’ll stop manhandling my life.”
“All I want isper sempri.”
“Not like you ask for much, is it?” she grouched, but whatever she saw in my expression had her nodding.
Apparently, I’d said something right because she hustled me away from the gravesite to the car.
Yet more silence fell between us as we rode toward her brother’s building.
But her hand settled on my knee and she didn’t move it once.
Lucas wasn’t on shift—a fact we’d learned from their ma—so he let Kitty up with only a raised brow once he saw her face in the intercom.
That raised brow turned into a scowl when he noticed me standing beside her in front of his door. “What’s going on?”
“I need you to get me a meeting with Aidan Jr.”
