He hated it when I interrupted his business, but I could already hear the DJ downstairs and the dull roar of a crowd of hundreds of people milling around the house and backyard. The smells wafting up from the kitchen made my stomach clenchin hunger. The party would be in full swing as soon as we got downstairs.
It was my birthday. He couldn’t be mad at me today.
I knocked lightly.
“Dad? Are you ready?” I force-whispered through the crack in the door.
“Silence. My daughter is here.” The voice on the other side of the call went quiet. I pushed the door open to see him close his laptop and slide his phone into the breast pocket of his perfectly tailored black suit. His gold and diamond cufflinks shone in the dim light of his office.
“Leona, darling.” He pushed around the edge of his desk and came to stand before me. I stepped into his hug while he kissed the top of my forehead. “Tanti auguri,cuore mio.”
“Grazie, Dad.” I squeezed his middle. He had never let me in on the Family business because he was protecting me from the more unsavory part of our world. I wasn’t an idiot. I knew our Family dealt in crime, gambling, and guns. But my father did his best to shield me from the worst of it. I had lived as a spoiled princess my whole life, despite how hard I tried to get him to train me in how the business worked, but by now, I wasn’t mad at his protectiveness. I loved him to death because of it. My father was a good man.
“Your mother would be so proud,” he said, his voice thick as his palms came to my cheeks. His face beamed with pride as he took me in. “You are so beautiful, just like her.”
Little pricks of tears gathered in the corner of my eyes, but I nodded and pushed it down. “I miss her.”
“Me too. I curse the bastards who took her from us every day.”
I swallowed heavily, trying yet failing to push the images of the car bomb out of my mind. Both my mother and Max’s mother had been targeted in an attack by a rival gang. Neither ofthem had made it. Our fathers had spent months hunting them down to get revenge. When they succeeded, we could finally breathe and mourn them in peace. We could finally move on.
“You make her so proud every single day,cuore.” After a few tense moments, he cleared his throat and grabbed the door handle. “Enough heartache for now. Are you ready for your party?”
“Definitely,” I said, clearing my throat and burying the grief. Instead, I grabbed his arm and ran my free hand down the silky fabric of my dress. “But before we go downstairs, I wanted to talk to you about something.”
“What, my princess?” He brushed one of my curls behind my ear like he had been doing for as long as I could remember. I might be twenty-one, but he’d always think of me as his little girl.
Except what we needed to talk about was for the woman I had become. And he needed to see that it was time for this conversation.
“Have you spoken with Max?” Max was my father’s second-in-command. He was the son of my father’s best friend, his previous consigliere who had been killed on a mission for the Family over ten years ago when Max was only fifteen. Since then, my father had taken Max under his wing, teaching him the ins and outs of the Family’s business. In the last two or three years, he’d relied on Max as much as possible.
I had already chosen. Max was the man I was going to marry.
Even if he didn’t quite know it yet.
He frowned. “Of course I have. I speak with him every day.”
I smiled politely, doing my best not to roll my eyes. He was avoiding the question. “You know what I mean.”
For some reason, my father hated the idea of me marrying Max, which was completely asinine. The man was the best possible match for me. Dating was not a luxury afforded to mafiaprincesses. My job was to secure alliances and keep our empire strong. I was a chess piece used to bolster power. An arranged marriage was in my future, no matter what. All I wanted was the opportunity to pick my husband.
Max was simply the best choice. We had been together our entire lives. Our mothers had been best friends, and so had our fathers. We’d spent everyday and weekend together, up until when our mothers had died.
After that, things had changed. Amid their grief and revenge, neither of our fathers knew how to deal with us as children, which left the two of us to muddle our way through it. While our fathers were tracking down murderers, Max held my hand every night until I fell asleep. He wiped away my tears and whispered that everything would be okay. Eventually, it was because he had been there for me. The bigger the rift had grown between our fathers, the closer we had become. I had been in love with him ever since.
In the years since, he’d grown into a brilliantly intelligent, deadly strong, and cunningly powerful man. It also didn’t hurt that he was one of the most attractive men to walk the planet, and he made my insides turn to goo whenever he walked into a room.
Whenever my father was ready to retire, Max and I could easily take over the empire and keep the Vero Family running for another three generations, with Cas at our sides, protecting us both.
Max was my choice. There was no logical reason for my father to reject the idea.
“I’ve told you before,cuore mio. He is not the man for you.”
This time, it was my turn to frown. Yes, I loved my father, but sometimes he was too protective. I was a grown woman, and it was not unusual for women my age to marry in our world. My mother marriedhimwhen she was nineteen, and he was twenty-three. “But why not? Are you worried I’m not ready? I’m twenty-one now, Dad?—”
“BecauseIam the head of this household, andImake the decisions, Leona.” He grabbed my shoulders on each side, looking down at me through stern brows. “I will repeat this only one more time. He is not the man for you.”
He brushed past me through the doors and back toward the stairs.
