“Toodles.”

I answered the other call. “Hello?”

“Gianna.”

The sorrow in her voice cooled my veins.

I stopped in the middle of the sidewalk, my pulse fluttering in my throat. “Tara . . . how is she?”

A long pause, and I knew.

I knew my mamma was dead.

“No . . .” I stood still, but the ground moved, threatening to crumble and swallow me whole. My throat felt thick, and my words were nearly inaudible. “I’m supposed to see her tomorrow.” The plane ticket to Chicago suddenly weighed twenty pounds in my purse.

“Gianna . . . I’m so sorry, but she’s gone. She was strong for so long . . .”

My latte slipped from my fingers, splattering on the pavement. The sun warmed my skin, but inside, I was nothing but ice. My ears rang, and the bustle of this New York City street was shrouded by the hands of grief.

“I’ll come see her tomorrow,” I said mindlessly.

“She loved you so very much.” Tears and a smile touched the nurse’s voice. “You were everything to her.”

Pink church dress. Her smile. A hand on my heart. “Dance to this . . . whenever and however you want.”

Pain, raw and angry, escaped from its cage deep inside and grabbed me by the throat.

“Why?” I sobbed. Why her? Why was this world so unfair? So bitter? Why did love hurt worse than pain?

“The fact she survived such an aggressive cancer for so long was a miracle, Gianna. You were blessed with more time with her.”

The only blessing was Tara. She was the only reason I could see my mamma in the hospice center she’d resided in for the last two years. My papà forbade me from visiting—from breathing, if he could.

Tears burned the backs of my eyes, my heart, my soul. “Thank you, Tara, for everything you did for her . . . for me.”

“Yes, well, I couldn’t live with myself if I kept a mother from her daughter.”

As I stared blankly ahead of me, the world felt so big, so heavy, its weight too painful to bear.

Someone bumped into my shoulder, knocking my phone from my hand.

It cracked on the sidewalk.

I didn’t remember how I made it home. But sometime later, I stood on my terrace as rain spilled from the sky. Cold. Lonely. High. I cried, sobs that rocked my shoulders. I cried twenty-four years’ worth of pain. I cried until my stomach ached and I could cry no more.

It was the last thing I remembered as I woke on a hard jail cell floor.

One count of drug possession and driving under the influence.

Numbness had spread through my veins and settled in my heart. I sat with my arms around my knees, staring ahead. I somehow knew Allister wouldn’t come, but I didn’t want him to. I didn’t want anyone to save me. Maybe this was where I needed to be. Nonetheless, I was escorted out of the precinct thirty minutes later and straight to Ace’s club.

He glanced at me, shook his head, and looked back at the papers on his desk. “Do you understand the shit it takes to get you out of jail? I have enough on my plate without having to look out for you.”

I understood the significance of what he’d said, but still, I felt nothing. Someone’s suit jacket rested on my shoulders. It was heavy, and for a second, I thought it was guilt.

“I’d fucking leave you there if I didn’t think you’d crack like an egg the first time someone interrogates you. You need a damn therapist, Gianna,” he bit out, running a hand through his hair. “The shit you went through . . . Your papà makes me fucking sick. I wanted to end him when I was ten years old.”

Our fathers had been family friends. I’d known Nico since I was five, and he six. Maybe it was the perfect romantic story—Nico had seen most of my twisted little pieces. But I could never love Nico. He hadn’t saved me.

“I know what you’re going to say, but I have to ask it: Would you like to go home to Chicago?”

I shook my head.

“Then your single life is over.” His gaze met mine. “Pick one of my men, Gianna, or I will do it for you.”

One week later, I became Mrs. Richard Marino.

September 2015

“HAVE YOU EVER WANTED SOMETHING, Sasha, something you couldn’t shake, no matter how fucking hard you tried?” Her soft, vanilla scent, the impression her hands leave on me for days, her ridiculous clothes, her husky laugh that lights up my body. “Then you get a taste of it . . .” And it gives you fucking chills. “And you forget why you didn’t want it in the first place?”

Sasha opened her mouth, closed it. “You want something you can’t have.” The words poured from her lips in thought and disbelief, like she didn’t believe I couldn’t have whatever I wanted.

Her and me both.

I rolled the agitation off my shoulders. “I wanted something I could have.”

“Interesting use of past tense. Maybe you don’t want it because you’ve always known you could never obtain it.”

I let out a sardonic breath, hating that Sasha was fucking right.

I’d always set Gianna on an unreachable shelf, and not even because she was newly married to Antonio and oblivious to me when I first met her, but because there was something genuine and astute about her. She’d see me for what I was really was. Dirty. Stained. She’d see everything I’d tried to obliterate about my childhood. And I fought hard to escape my past. I refused to be dragged back.

I should be relieved she was out of reach once again, but, with the recent memory of her lying on my bed, finally staring up at me with sweet, submissive eyes, I didn’t feel any form of respite. It felt like something had been fucking stolen from me.

“So, you got a taste for it . . . and I’m assuming you realized it was unobtainable once again while in the computer lab last week?”

I ran a thumb across my jaw.

My business overseas had taken longer than I thought, but one month shouldn’t be long enough to come home and find Gianna fucking married. Hearing the news, nonchalantly, from Ace on the phone had felt like a blow to the stomach. It stole my fucking breath, turned my blood to fire. I’d lost it. I’d destroyed every goddamn computer in that room.

I’d known, if I touched Gianna, it would be over for me. I’d known she would feel too good to ever go back. But, Jesus, I wasn’t a saint. She was half-naked, her tits in my face, and I’d dreamed about them for so long I had to know what they tasted like. They tasted like they belonged to me; like they were mine.

And now, after that realization, she was another man’s. I could eliminate that problem within the hour. My hands sometimes shook with the fucking urge. But she wasn’t in this like I was. She hadn’t called me when she was in trouble. I bet I hadn’t even crossed her mind. She’d been under my skin for years, I knew more about her than I ever should, and I wasn’t even on her radar.

I suddenly wished I was in Moscow at that moment—to kill my fucking brother. Or better yet, never leave Gianna naked in my bed to go save his ass from the Chechens who’d managed to keep him hostage for the last month. But I knew I could never turn my back on Ronan. He was the only one who understood what made me. He should—he had the same bitch of a mother.

Sasha watched me and cocked her head. “The men you spoke of during our last session, are they still a part of your life?”