The whole goddamn situation was fucking annoying.

The blond prick grabbed Elena by the arm as she walked past, pulling her in to say something in her ear. Animosity crawled through me. Leaning back in my chair, I rested my forearm on the table and away from my gun, because I had the sudden urge to shoot another man in the Abellis’ backyard. Elena’s papà glanced at the exchange, though hardly seemed concerned.

My tongue ran across my teeth, a deep, unsettling ache unfurling in my ribs.

Elena nodded tightly before the prick dropped his hand and let her go. She disappeared inside.

“What’s his name?” I asked Adriana, nodding toward the blond whose mere presence had become tiresome.

“Oscar Perry—no, Pretzel.” Her brows knitted. “No, that doesn’t sound right either. Oscar something. God, I’m hungry for pretzels now.”

“What does he do for your papà?”

She frowned. “I don’t know. Kind of a creep, though. He’s always all over Elena.”

I let out a dry breath. “Who isn’t?” They greeted her at church like she was Mother Mary.

“True, but she doesn’t care about any of them. My sister is in love.”

My gaze narrowed. “She’s what?”

“In love.”

Something dark and unwanted slithered through my veins.

Adriana’s wide eyes came to me like she just realized she’d said too much. She tipped her entire glass of wine back. I hadn’t even noticed her acquire another.

I shook my head, agitated. “You puke tonight, I’m not holding your hair. I don’t do that shit.”

“My sister will,” she said, like she was planning on throwing up. “Are we done getting to know each other then?”

“For now.”

“Thank God,” she muttered, getting to her feet and drunkenly drifting away to join one of her loud cousins. The girl had already introduced herself to me. Well, she’d come up and said, “Mamma was right. David don’t got a thing on you,” before winking and then disappearing. Strange fucking family.

I accepted another glass of whiskey from a server’s tray, ignoring my cousin Lorenzo who came to sit next to me. He pushed his jacket open and shoved his hands in his pockets. Who the hell knew where he’d been, but I’d rather he be anywhere but staring at Elena Abelli. Just the idea itched beneath my skin.

In a moment of silence, Lorenzo’s gaze followed some Abelli jailbait’s ass as she walked across the lawn. “What’d he do to you?” He nodded toward the blond prick I guessed I hadn’t been secretive about wanting to put a bullet in.

“Pissed me off,” was all I said, swirling my glass of whiskey.

“Must have been bad, then. Takes a lot to piss you off. Let me guess, he insulted your mamma?”

“No.”

“Papà?”

“No.”

“Your most handsome cousin? Six-two, dark-haired, big cock—”

“Lorenzo?” I said dryly.

“Yeah?”

“Fuck off.”

Lorenzo laughed, slapped my shoulder hard enough to slosh some whiskey over the rim of my glass, and then left.

Told you, fucking idiot cousins.

“Whether we fall by ambition, blood, or lust, like diamonds we are cut with our own dust.”

—John Webster

IT WAS SILVER, TINY, AND reflective. I could almost see my face in it. Gianna’s dress, of course. Long feather earrings, green heels, with her hair piled on the top of her head and no makeup but red lipstick made up her ensemble tonight.

“ . . . If you’re going to do it, do it with a male stripper. Trust me on this one.” She was talking to my fifteen-year-old cousin Emma, who sat at the kitchen island sipping punch through a straw while looking bored.

All my aunts conversed about Adriana’s bachelorette party as I sat off to the side and across from Nonna at the table, with a cup of coffee in front of her. We’d only heard that tiny bit of Gianna’s conversation before my family’s noise drowned out the rest.

I shook my head, slightly amused, but more unsettled. The words Oscar Perez had whispered in my ear earlier sank to the pit of my stomach. He’d pulled me aside once more to tell me to smile, that it would complement my belleza—whatever that meant. I didn’t speak Spanish and I never wanted to. The beautiful language sounded harsh and invasive from his lips. I hated when someone told me to smile, as if a smile of mine belonged to them and not me.

He never had clarified why he’d be upset that I ran away and slept with a man, but there was only one reason I could ascertain: He thought he was going to marry me. It was hard to imagine Papà would agree to it considering Oscar wasn’t even Italian, but why else would I have sat next to him at dinner when I never had to before?

“You are unhappy.”

My gaze coasted from the scratches in the wooden table to Nonna’s brown eyes. I shook my head. “No, I’m not.” I would never let a man like Oscar Perez steal my happiness.

“You are not a good liar, cara mia.”

I didn’t respond, uncertain of what to say.

“The littlest problems seem so great to those who are young,” she lamented. “I used to worry like you, you know. Do you know what it got me? Not a thing. Do not waste your time on things you cannot change.” She stood up, bracing a hand on the table. “I’m going to bed.”

“Goodnight, Nonna.”

She stopped, turning to me. “Do you know what you need to do when you are unhappy?”

I didn’t want to argue with her that I was not unhappy, so I raised a brow. “What?”

“Something exciting.”

“Like?”

“I don’t know. Maybe smoking cigarettes with handsome young men.”

Ugh. A smile pulled on my lips. Only she would think of Nicolas as a young man.

“Goodnight, tesoro.” Nonna winked.

The candle’s flame danced, a bleak reminder of false smiles in the orange, mesmerizing light. Sheer curtains blew in the light summer breeze, and a lamp cast a soft glow against the wall of shelved books. Frank Sinatra leaked under the library door so quietly it could be a distant memory of a similar night half a century ago.

I sat with my legs folded against my side in a seat by the fireplace, a book lying on the arm. I hadn’t read more than two pages until I’d given up and rested my head against the chair and stared at the candle filling the room with the smell of lavender. My heels lay forgotten on the floor, the white bows unraveled across the red oriental rug.

I’d escaped the kitchen as soon as I could, my mamma’s talk about the wedding an annoying noise that became louder and louder until I needed silence. It wasn’t even about Oscar Perez anymore. It was about words unsaid and a future uncertain.

Like the hard shell of a coconut, the Sweet Abelli shielded the real me from the world. It couldn’t be cracked without strong tools. Lowering that barrier bared a part of me not many had seen—a me that felt. A vulnerable me. I wasn’t sure why I let Nicolas Russo see that side. Maybe it was because his indifference made me believe he didn’t want to crack me.