Page 2 of Naz & Roz

Her mentor had repeated those exact words to her so many times that it was impossible to ignore. It didn’t matter. Her brother wasn’t leaving.

“Fine,” Roz grumbled, standing from the bench. “I’m coming.”

“Good.” Luca clapped his hands once, and followed behind her. “Naz is home this time, too. First time you’ll be seeing him in a while, right?”

Nazio “Naz” Donati.

Her father’s godson.

Resident genius—literally.

Her brother’s best friend.

Two years older than her.

The guy she had a crush on from the time she was five.

There were a lot of reasons Roz could list why she didn’t care if Naz was home around the same time she was for the first time in years. Most importantly because he’d never seemed interested in being friends with her when he was closer to her brother.

But … who knew?

“Yeah, maybe I’ll say hi,” Roz said.

Luca grinned as he slipped past her in the hallway. “You should.”

The Nazio Donati that Roz remembered from the last time she’d actually had a conversation with him was a surly teenage boy who was more interested in fixing the laptop he’d broken in pieces on the kitchen table than explaining to her where she could find his mother. Roz remembered that moment in her life vividly.

She’d been fourteen.

He was sixteen.

Naz had no idea, and she’d been too embarrassed to explain, but she was looking for his mother that day because hers was not home. Katya had gone on a weekend trip to Vegas with a friend, and her father had been in the city for work. Likely for Naz’s father.

Point was … there was no woman nearby for Roz to have help her when she suddenly realized her first ever period had started. Of course, she’d been wearing a light-colored summer dress that ended up entirely fucking ruined.

She did change before making the trip through the trails that separated her parents’ home from the Donati property, thankfully.

Eventually, Naz had listened long enough to her quiet, embarrassed voice whispering from the doorway that she was using to hide herself to say where his mother was. Catherine—as wonderful as she was—helped Roz, got her set up until her mom got home the next day, and it was like nothing had even happened.

Naz probably never knew the truth. He likely didn’t even remember that passing day in his life. She couldn’t forget it, though.

However, that brusque, distracted teenage boy with his black-rimmed glasses he wore as he tinkered with the broken electronic was not the same man standing across the room with an open beer in his hands.

Oh, sure, they looked the same … that was, if the teenager had gained about sixty pounds of muscle, grew his hair a bit longer, hadn’t shaved his face in a week, and could smile in a way that had Roz’s stomach doing fucking flip-flops.

The house was full of people, which made it a hell of a lot easier for Roz to blend into the crowd. So was the way of mafia families. They were big, and whenever something important happened—like this engagement party—everybody had to show up just because.

Roz was using that to her advantage. She wasn’t really a shy girl, but one look at Nazio from across the room as he greeted her brother, and she suddenly didn’t know how to speak.

He was just a guy.

She’d dated guys.

Something in her mind said, not a guy like that.

A cute girl passed Nazio by and stared all the while. He didn’t seem to notice her at all. He was too busy talking to Luca, and Roz was kind of mesmerized.

Like a dumb girl.