Bristol glances from Harper to me as my eyelids slowly flutter open, and I turn my head to glance at her. “No one uses mafia as an expression.”
I’ll admit, Bristol is a hell of a lot calmer than I would have been finding out about Dante. “There’s no point in lying to her.” I sit upright and take another bite of ice cream to take my mind off what happened.
“I’m not getting in trouble for Bristol finding out. That’s on you,” Harper grumbles at me.
“Fine, tell Dante it slipped. I don’t care.” Another bite of ice cream and at least the sugar is helping my mood, maybe.
“You’ll care when he punishes you,” Harper says.
I point my spoon at her. “He only punished you because of the chaos you caused. And let’s not forget that he helped you.” I’m careful not to divulge all the secrets of the family.
Harper’s jaw tightens; I sense her concern as well. “Enough about me. This is about you and Ashton.”
“Which is over.” I shove another bite of ice cream into my mouth to keep from groaning on about the breakup. It’s depressing me to think about Ashton choosing his father over me.
“You don’t know that,” Harper says. “Maybe it’s just a really bad fight?”
“He told me he didn’t see it working. That he wasn’t going to walk away from the mafia.” I don’t even bother to hide it anymore; Bristol knows, so what’s the point of pretending?
“Maybe he can’t walk away?” Bristol whispers. “I mean, wouldn’t it be dangerous?”
“He’s only working for Dante because he wants to; he’s not indebted to him or anything. Trust me, Dante and Aurielo are friends.”
“Aurielo?” Bristol asks.
“Ashton’s father.” I’d never met the man, though I was curious if he was more cunning and ruthless than Dante. I suppose it doesn’t matter any longer.
“Ashton’s father is also mafia?” Bristol rubs her forehead as she tries to make sense of the secrets that I’ve inadvertently spilled.
Loose lips, and I’m not even drinking. I suppose breakup anger is my kryptonite.
“Yeah, but you have to keep this conversation between us. Got it?” I warn her.
“Of course.” She purses her lips, puts her index finger and thumb to her mouth and pretends to turn a key, locking away her secrets.
“Maybe you dodged a bullet.” Harper reaches for her bottle of water on the coffee table and takes a swig. “Remember the wedding? Dante had ordered Ashton to marry me. He wasn’t?—”
“What?” I stand, dropping the spoon to the floor. I curse and head to the kitchen to wipe up the mess. “Ashton never told me any of this. You two were going to get married?”
What is Harper talking about? Why hadn’t Ashton mentioned it to me?
“Dante insisted, but neither of us would have gone through with it,” Harper says. It’s not as reassuring as she thinks.
My brain goes quickly over the timeline of events. “Wait. This was while we were dating, wasn’t it?”
If it had been before we started dating, I may have been annoyed, but knowing it was during and he never said a word to me—the nerve of him!
I clean up the mess on the floor, blotting up the remnants of ice cream. “Was Dante behind it, or my father?” I have a sneaking suspicion that the order may have come from Dante, but my old man wanted to keep us apart.
“Dante, as far as I know.”
I laugh darkly under my breath, finish cleaning up the stain before I collapse back onto the couch. “I guess that’s why Ashton wasn’t afraid of my father finding out about us. I can’t believe he fucking kept that from me!”
“Well, at least you’ve already broken up with him,” Bristol says.
Yeah, that doesn’t exactly make me feel better.
She offers a wayward smile, and I groan and toss my head in my hands. “What am I going to do?”
