“I have to talk to you,” I say, keeping my voice down. ”There are things I need to say.”
“Vin.” She stares at the ground. “There’s nothing for us to talk about. You and your future wife have my best wishes, sincerely. If this is about the restaurant, I’ll pay you back when I have a chance. Other than that—”
“Princess…”
She stops and takes a slow deep breath. “You don’t get to do that.” Her voice is very quiet. “To you, I’m Sophie. Just Sophie. Not Sophia. Notla mia regina. Not princess. I am not your anything. I’m just Sophie.”
I take my hands out of my pockets and hold them up in an ‘I surrender’ position. “Fine, but I need you to listen for one God damn minute.”
“This isn’t about you. I have to—”
“SOPHIA.”
The word comes out louder than I intend it to, and every conversation nearby goes quiet. She stops and looks at me with a kind of exhausted reckoning, like she knew it would come to this eventually and has been waiting. I bow my head and exhale hard.
Matti and Tommy walk in, babies in their arms, and stop dead inthe doorway. The room is silent.
Matti eyes me. “Vin.”
The other partygoers make their way out of the room, leaving the four of us alone.
I look at my brothers, then at Sophie. Then back at my brothers. She starts to turn away and I grab her arm too hard and pull her back to me. “All three of you need to hear this.”
She stares at my hand on her arm, but I don’t let go, squeezing harder until she meets my gaze.
“I’m not marrying Ashlyn.” Sophie’s lips part softly with a sharp intake of breath and I can’t tear my eyes away from her mouth though my words are for my brothers. “I hate to do this when you would rather be home with your families, but when word gets back to the Irish—and it will, as soon as Ashlyn tells them I left her—we’re going to war.”
Out of the corner of my eye, I see Matti exhale hard. Tommy doesn’t move, just watches me with those flat, cataloguing eyes.
Sophie’s arm trembles under my hand, and I wait for someone to say something.
Tommy shifts the sleeping baby against his chest. He looks at me for a long moment then nods once. “Okay.”
28
SOPHIE
The second Matti and Tommy took over Vin’s full attention, I slipped out of the party, texting Siena and Giovanna my apologies on the way out.
The restaurant is bustling in the middle of dinner service when I walk in. The specials were never an issue; that’s just my go-to escape route in any social situation I need to leave. The truth is I don’t need to be here. Marco is running the show with practiced efficiency.
I nod to the chorus of “Hey, chef” as I pass through the kitchen and slide into my office as fast as I can, shutting the door behind me.
I’m not marrying Ashlyn.
What exactly does he expect me to do with that? I pace thelength of my tiny tornado of an office, mere steps from the desk to the shelving unit and back, and try to quiet the storm in my head.
I didn’t stay to hear any explanations as to why, if Vin even gave any. He’s not one to explain himself but then his brothers might have demanded a reason given the expectation that they leave their babies and wives to fight his way out of this contract.
Whether they asked or he answered, I’ll never know. I slipped out quietly without making it about me. But his words echo in a refrain in my head:
I’m not marrying Ashlyn.
“Stop,” I tell myself out loud and drop into my desk chair, spin it to face the wall and then spin it back again.
He’s not marrying her. Okay. So what? So what does that mean, exactly? It means he blew up an alliance. It means he’s going to war. It means that Tommy and Matti now have to deal with the fallout of a decision he made without consulting them, which means Siena and Giovanna are going to deal with it too.
It doesn’t mean anything about me. I want to be very clear with myself about that.
