Page 6 of Final Reckoning

He doesn’t answer; he just stares at me. His eyes are cold and flat, and an icy finger of fear trails down my spine. “Okay, well, have a good day,” I say, hoping I sound normal.

I’m half afraid he’s going to stop me from shutting the door, but he doesn’t. I lock it, then look up. He’s still there.

Watching me.

Trying to keep my face impassive, I turn and go into the back. “Is Lando picking us up?” I ask Brianna. None of us are allowed to go anywhere alone, not until we’re certain Santiago is no longer a threat.

“No, he’s on a case. Romero’s coming. Why?”

“Creepy guy out front.”

“Inside?” she says sharply.

“Outside. Not that anything would stop him if he wanted to come in.” The building, and our bakery, have a good security system thanks to the Adamos, but it’s not like the glass is bulletproof.

“I’m texting Carlo.” She grabs her purse and digs out her phone. “He said we should err on the side of paranoia if anyone or anything gave us a bad feeling.”

“Right. Good idea.”

I go back to what I’m doing, but in seconds my mind wanders off again. Despite the guy outside, he’s not the man demanding my attention. Only when Romero comes in the back, stamping the snow off his feet, do I rejoin reality.

Firming my jaw, I force myself to focus. I’ve been like this ever since Thanksgiving. Enough.

My mind and body are my own. I refuse to give them over to some obsession with a man I may never see again. A man who lives in the shadows, who shows no sign of ever leaving them.

“Ladies,” Romero says to me and Bree, and then pulls Jade close for a kiss. It’s chaste, not a makeout session, but the way he looks at her fills me with a bittersweet longing.

Most of me is deeply joyful that my sisters have found their forever men, good men who belong to an amazing family. There’s just that one little part of me that’s jealous. Not because I don’t want the best for them, but because I’m afraid I’ll never find the same thing.

Of course, there are scads of Adamo men, and I’ve only met a few of them. Maybe there’s another one out there who’d be right for me.

No sooner do I think it than guilt stabs at me, the overwhelming sense that I’m being disloyal. And that makes me furious. God knows Matteo isn’t out there somewhere mooning over me. He owes me nothing; I owe him nothing. We shared one kiss – thanks to my ridiculous infatuation with him – and that’s all.

Okay, it was a mindblowing kiss. Earth-shattering. A tiny corner of my heart is certain that no other man will ever be able to make me feel the same way.

But you don’t want a man to make you feel this way. Lonely and needy and tormented. Hell no, I don’t. I want what my sisters have.

For all that Jade and Romero fell hard and fast, they’re realists, not head-in-the-clouds dreamers. They’ve got their feet on the ground and they’re building something amazing together. Looking at them, you’d think they’d known each other for years.

If someone had asked me to predict which of my sisters was most likely to fall for someone overnight, I would have guessed Brianna, not Jade. Bree’s headstrong and daring, the sort to grab hold of life with both hands. Still, she and Lando took longer to make things official.

They’re both wild at heart, but what they have together is anything but reckless. They’re a team, rock solid, ready to have each other’s backs no matter what.

Matteo may be an Adamo, but he’s not like his cousins. Romero and Lando make no secret of how they feel about my sisters. Matteo doesn’t love me – and he never will. If I let myself get hung up on him, I’ll be asking for all kinds of heartache and grief.

Bree’s phone beeps. She reads the text and says, “Carlo’s out back. He wants to know about the creepy guy.”

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