Chapter 2
Amber stood beside him, watching me through narrowed eyes.
“Winning the game you lost, apparently,” she said.
Valentina’s reaction frightened me more.
She stood farther away with a champagne glass in her hand, watching with eyes as cold as ice. While everyone else focused on Nico and me, I saw her lips move around words I could not hear but could easily imagine.
This is not going to happen.
For the first time since creating my plan, fear moved along my spine.
Valentina was not merely angry as a mother defending her son. She was angry as a woman who still loved her former husband.
Women carrying that kind of anger could be far more dangerous.
The following day was a disaster.
I woke at 6:00 after sleeping perhaps 2 hours. My mind had refused to stop replaying the dance, Nico’s hands at my waist, my racing pulse, his invitation, and the way my body had reacted as though every part of me recognized something my mind had not yet accepted.
By 7:00, my bedroom looked like a war zone. Clothes covered the bed, floor, and chair in rejected piles. Nothing seemed correct. Every dress suggested either that I was trying too hard or that I did not care enough.
Maya arrived at 8:00 using the spare key I had given her years earlier. She carried 2 enormous cups of coffee and wore the expression of someone who had expected precisely the chaos she found.
She examined the room and sighed.
“It’s only dinner.”
“With the father of the man I dated for 3 years.”
“The man who cheated on you with your sister.”
She began collecting clothes from the floor with an efficiency I envied.
“Forget them. Concentrate on yourself and the attractive Italian father.”
“Do not call him that.”
I nearly choked on my coffee.
Maya laughed and threw a navy-blue dress toward me.
“But he is.”
The restaurant was exactly the sort of place Nico Rossi would choose.
It was Italian, small, and intimate, with exposed brick walls and low lighting that created soft shadows. It seemed designed for important conversations, private deals, and the beginning of romances away from curious eyes.
Nico was already seated at a table in the most private corner.
The sight of him made me stop inside the entrance.
He wore another suit without a tie, the first 2 buttons of his shirt open. His hair was slightly disordered, as though he had recently passed his fingers through it.
When he saw me, he stood with effortless grace.
“You came.”
There was genuine relief in his voice.
“I considered running away,” I admitted.
I had already learned that lying to Nico was useless. He saw too much.
His small smile was rapidly becoming both my favorite and the most dangerous thing in my life.
“Why didn’t you?”
“Curiosity.”
He drew out my chair with a courtesy that appeared completely natural.
I sat and adjusted the blue dress Maya had chosen.
“And you?”
“Honest.”
He returned to his chair without taking his eyes from me.
“I like that.”
A waiter appeared, took our wine order, and withdrew discreetly.
The silence left behind was not uncomfortable, but it carried the expectancy of a storm.
“Is revenge still the plan?” Nico asked.
I laughed without humor and turned the wineglass between my fingers.
“Maybe. I don’t know anymore. Are you here because you want revenge on Liam?”
“Because he’s an idiot?”
“No.”
The answer came immediately.
“I’m here because you interest me.”
“How?”
“You’re brave, funny, and beautiful.”
He leaned forward slightly, bringing the familiar scent of his cologne closer.
I blinked.
“Why?”
“Because you’re my son’s former girlfriend. That makes this complicated.”
“Very complicated.”
“And yet I can’t stop thinking about you.”
My heart began to beat hard enough that it seemed possible he could hear it across the table.
“I think about you too,” I admitted. “And I feel guilty. It feels wrong.”
“It is wrong.”
He did not look away.
“Completely.”
He moved closer, narrowing the space between us.
“But it doesn’t feel wrong.”
“No,” I whispered. “It doesn’t.”
The silence between us filled with everything we felt and had not yet admitted.
“Can we try?” he asked. “Can we see where this leads?”
The question was simple but carried the weight of every possible complication.
“What about Liam, your former wife, and my sister?”
“Fuck them.”
A trace of guilt crossed his face.
“Forgive me, but you deserve happiness, Luna, not guilt.”
“And you? Do you deserve it?”
Something vulnerable appeared around his eyes and in the slight lowering of his shoulders.
“I don’t know,” he said. “But with you, I want to find out.”
Dessert arrived, a tiramisu I barely tasted because Nico began to speak honestly about himself, and I could not look away.
“Tell me something real,” I said. “Not about being a mafia boss. About you.”
He looked down at the wine as though searching in it for courage.
“I divorced 5 years ago. Valentina cheated on me, lied, and allowed me to look like an idiot for months before I found out. Even after that, she never truly let me go.”
His jaw tightened.
“Since then, there has been work, power, and business. Nothing else.”
“Until?”
“Until yesterday.”
His hand turned beneath mine, and our fingers joined.
“Until I saw you in that red dress and danced with you. That was the first time in 5 years that I felt anything.”
The admission disarmed me.
“I’m sorry about what she did.”
“Thank you.”
He pressed my hand gently.
“And your family? Apart from Amber?”
I released a breath.
“My parents divorced when I was 10. Amber was always the spoiled one and the favorite. I was responsible. I was the good girl who had to keep everything together.”
I laughed bitterly.
“Look where that brought me.”
“To me,” Nico said.
“Is that bad?”
“No. Frightening, but not bad.”
The air outside the restaurant was cold and carried the familiar New York mixture of asphalt, food, and possibility.
Nico remained inside long enough to pay while I waited on the pavement with my arms wrapped around myself.
He appeared beside me and placed his jacket over my shoulders before I could protest.
“May I take you home?”
“Are you driving, or do you have a driver tonight?”
“I’m driving. I want time alone with you.”
His car was black and luxurious, with a leather interior that smelled new and expensive.
He drove with the same assurance he brought to everything else, 1 hand on the steering wheel and the other resting near the gearshift.
I watched his profile pass through the changing light of the city.
“This is insane,” I said.
“Agreed.”
“Liam will lose his mind.”
“Probably.”
“Valentina is going to hate me.”
“She already hates everyone. Don’t take it personally.”
I laughed despite myself.
“You’re different from what I expected.”
“How?”
“Funny. Kind. I expected intimidating.”
He glanced toward me.
“I am intimidating. Just not with you.”
At my apartment door, we stood for a moment that seemed to extend beyond its natural length.
My keys were in my hand, but I could not make myself take the final step that would end the evening.
“Thank you,” I said. “For tonight.”
“Thank you for coming.”
We remained there like uncomfortable teenagers at the end of a first date.
“Are you going to kiss me?”
The question escaped before I could stop it.
Nico smiled and lifted his hand to my face. His fingers followed my jaw with a gentleness entirely opposed to the dangerous man the rest of the world believed him to be.
“I want to. Very much. But not tonight.”
“Why?”
“Because when I kiss you, it will not be the conclusion of a first date.”
His voice became lower, rougher, and filled with promise.
“It will be the beginning of everything. I want to be certain that you want that.”
“And when I already do?”
He moved close enough for me to feel his breath and the heat of his body surrounding me.
“Then tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow,” I repeated.
He stepped away. The loss of his nearness felt physical.
“Good night, Luna.”
I entered my apartment in a daze, closed the door, and leaned against it while trying to slow my heart.
A movement in the living room startled me.
Maya sat on the sofa with a bowl of popcorn and a smile suggesting she had been waiting for hours.
“He didn’t kiss me,” I said.
Maya frowned.
“And that’s good?”
“He said that when he kisses me, it will be the beginning of everything.”
I slid down the door until I was sitting on the floor with my arms around my knees.
“He wants to be certain I want it.”
Maya’s eyes widened.
“Holy shit. He’s in love.”
I laughed, but the sound was constricted by fear.
“I think I am too.”
Speaking that truth aloud was more frightening than anything Liam or Amber could have done.
The situation had begun as revenge.
It was becoming something far more real.
The intercom sounded at 2:00 the next afternoon.
I was still wearing pajamas, sitting on the sofa with cold tea and watching a television program without following it. My thoughts remained fixed on the previous evening and Nico’s promise that tomorrow had now become today.
I approached the intercom, my heart already accelerating for a reason I did not want to admit.
“Yes?”
“Luna. It’s me.”
His voice was unmistakable.
I looked at my flannel pajamas and hair that probably resembled a nest.
“You’re here now?”
“I am. May I come up?”
My apartment was disorderly. I was disorderly.
Something in the expectation carried by his voice made me unlock the entrance without hesitation.
3 minutes later, after a frantic and unsuccessful attempt to repair my hair and exchange the pajamas for jeans and a shirt, the doorbell rang.
I inhaled, counted to 3, and opened the door.
Nico stood outside dressed casually in dark jeans and a white shirt with the sleeves rolled to his elbows.
He smiled.
“Hi.”
“Hi.”
He raised a wicker basket I had not noticed.
“I thought we could have a picnic, if you’re free.”
“A picnic?”
“I know somewhere private, quiet, and beautiful.”
He studied my expression.
“Unless you have other plans.”
I should have had other plans. I should have possessed a life beyond sitting on my sofa and thinking about him.
I did not.
Even if I had, I would have cancelled everything.
“Give me 5 minutes.”
“Take 10. I’ll wait.”
The park was precisely as he had described it, hidden behind high gates and ivy-covered walls, the kind of place known only to people with considerable money and connections.
The grass was unnaturally green. Old trees formed a canopy that filtered sunlight into golden patterns. A small, perfectly still lake lay at the center.
Nico spread a blanket beneath a tree and removed food from the basket that looked prepared for a film: French cheeses, grapes, Italian bread, and wine that probably cost more than my rent.
I sat beside him and selected a grape.
“Do you organize elaborate picnics often?”
“Never.”
He poured wine into 2 actual glasses.
“This is the first?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
He looked at me, his dark eyes reflecting the light through the leaves.
“Because you deserve something different. Something special.”
His unprotected honesty disarmed me again.
“You’re dangerously good at this.”
“At what?”
“At saying the correct thing.”
“I’m only being honest.”
We spoke for what might have been hours or minutes.
He told me about Italy, his childhood in Naples, and arriving in the United States at 20 with nothing except ambition and anger.
I told him that I had once wanted to become a writer but had accepted work that paid bills while slowly extinguishing something inside me.
“You can still write,” he said.
“It’s too late.”
“It is never too late to begin again.”
He shifted closer on the blanket.
“I began again at 43 after my divorce. I rebuilt everything.”
“Was it worth it?”
“It is now.”
His eyes remained on mine.
“Especially now.”
My heart accelerated. The trees, lake, and surrounding park appeared to recede until only the 2 of us remained.
May you like
“Nico.”
I did not know what I intended to say.
