Damiano doesn’t answer. When I raise my head to look at him, he rests his fist against his temple and smiles at me. “You look beautiful today.”
The single hot spark racing through my body explodes into dozens more. Heat floods my cheeks, and I have to look away before he sees too much in my eyes.
“Your famous charm doesn’t work on me,” I lie.
He reaches for my lemonade and swallows a mouthful. I watch his throat working, mesmerized despite myself. “What charm? I’m telling the truth.”
“Damiano.”
He quirks a brow as he takes another sip. “Yes, sis?”
The word “sis” grates on me more every day. I’m not his sister. We both know it, but we have to keep pretending.
I take a breath and ask the question I’ve been building up to for weeks. “Are we in the mafia?”
He chokes a little on the lemonade and puts the glass down. His expression shifts from surprise, to calculation, and then careful neutrality. “What makes you ask that?”
There he goes, evading me again.
“Your expression. Your secrets. The gun in your drawer that sometimes isn’t there. Frank and the other men who come to the house at odd hours. The way people look at Dad, and at you, with fearful respect.” I lower my voice, even though we’re alone. “Do you really think you can keep things from me? You and I were adopted because Dad wants a son to pass the family business on to, but it’s not a normal family business, is it?”
Damiano’s jaw tightens. For a moment, I think he might actually tell me the truth. Then his expression softens and becomes almost pleading. “I don’t want you to spend your time worrying about why we were adopted. What we have now is so much better than what might have been. If we’d been separated at the hospital, or if we were adopted by different families…”
In his eyes, I see an echo of the terrifying nightmares that still wake him up almost nightly. The ones where he screams my name because I’m dying in the fire instead of Lily.
I wrap his hand in both of mine and squeeze it. “I’m so grateful for what you did for us. Don’t ever think I’m not.”
Damiano takes a deep breath and lets it out slowly. His expression is pained and haunted. “I don’t know what I’d do without you. If anything happened to you…”
“Nothing’s going to happen to me.”
“You don’t know that. This world—” He cuts himself off, his jaw clenching.
This world.The world he’s being pulled into that I’m not allowed to be part of.
“There you go again. Why must you two always be so dramatic?”
The prissy voice shatters the peaceful afternoon. A slender, dark-haired girl strolls across the patio carrying several shopping bags emblazoned with designer names. The fruits of our sister’s morning shopping spree.
Ariana is dressed like a New York socialite in a tiny slip dress, heels, and a short bouclé jacket with large gold buttons. Her makeup is perfect, and her hair is glossy and smooth. She looks like she stepped out of a magazine.
Ever since the day we arrived in this house, Ariana has resented our presence. Me because she mistakenly feared I’d take her place as Daddy’s little princess. Damiano because he’s a constant reminder that she’s not enough for Mom and Dad—because they wanted a son.
She looks with distaste at me sitting in Damiano’s lap. His hand is draped over my thigh while he plays with my hair. My hand is resting on his bare chest, fingers splayed over his heart.
We must look like lovers, not siblings.
She shakes her head in disgust. “You two…”
“Us two what?” Damiano asks, a hard edge to his voice. His hand on my thigh tightens possessively.
She smiles mockingly at him. “Such anormalbrother and sister. Sonormalhow you’re always plastered half naked against each other. Freud would have a field day with you two.”
I glower at Ariana. She can stick her needles into me whenever she likes, but not in front of Damiano. He feels the weight of responsibility for me on his shoulders, and it devastates him when someone hurts me.
“Jealous we don’t love you half as much as we love each other?” he asks, his fingers caressing my thigh in slow circles that make my breath catch.
It takes all my self-control not to part my lips and take a ragged breath or shift in his lap and press closer.
