Page 1 of Reckless Love

One

Tears blurred my eyes, distorting the lines of text I was supposed to be reading. I tried to hide a sniffle behind a cough, but Mr. Devane had to know my heart was currently being smashed to pieces with a corporate sledgehammer.

As my grandfather’s lifelong attorney and friend, Mr. Devane and his wife had stayed by my side when I’d buried Papa a few months earlier. He’d done his best to help me hold onto what I had left of my family, but there was no holding on anymore. There was more debt than I’d ever known, and I was out of time.

The fountain pen in my hand trembled, and I focused on my fingers, willing them to still. The logo engraved on the fancy pen caught my attention, and it was enough to make me want to vomit.

Forrester Funding: Let us lead you into the future.

There was no escaping Warwick Forrester and his legacy of destroying everything my grandfather had worked for. Even now, signing away the last shares of a company Papa had started when he’d first immigrated from Sicily to New York City, I was being reminded of Warwick freaking Forrester.

It wasn’t enough that he was splashed across every newsstand from the front of the New York Times to People magazine. Black and white or glossy full color shots, it didn’t matter—the man was paparazzi gold as the East Coast’s most eligible bachelor.

With dark hair cropped close at the sides and artfully mussed at the top, penetrating deep brown eyes, and a stubble-covered jawline sharp enough to cut glass, there wasn’t a camera lens in the world that didn’t love him. Even if his bank account didn’t have more digits than a long-distance phone number, his looks alone would’ve had a line of women (and men) lining up to date him.

I knew all about his meteoric rise to power and fame in New York. He’d made his first million on some gaming app alongside his college best friend, but Warwick changed the game when he started investing and buying out smaller businesses. Within a decade, he’d amassed more holdings and companies than men double his age.

Companies like the one my grandfather had once owned.

Screw Warwick Forrester all the way to hell.

My cheeks heated at the thought, Nonna’s thickly accented rebuke ringing in my ears as she reminded me to keep my thoughts—and my body—pure, like I was still some young, innocent teenager.

But I wasn’t. And Nonna and Papa weren’t here anymore.

After my parents died in a freak plane crash when I was eight, my father’s parents had raised me. My mom’s parents had died years earlier, but that was okay. Nonna and Papa were the only family I needed.

They cherished and protected me, never ceasing to let me know how utterly loved I was. And, for a little girl who suffered from debilitating panic attacks and was terrified of her own shadow, their love was the thing that kept me going.

I didn’t make many friends at the posh Upper East Side academy I’d been enrolled at my entire life. I was the quiet girl who spent her lunchtime in the library. The two times I’d tried dating in high school had been a disaster, so I focused on my studies and gained acceptance to several Ivy League schools.

Ultimately, Columbia won because I could commute from home. Plus, Nonna had suffered a stroke that left her paralyzed on the left side of her body, and it made sense for me to stay with her.

When Papa and I lost her three years ago, it had upended our entire world. Papa retreated into himself for the better part of two years, isolating himself until I finally pushed him to get a persistent cough he’d had checked out.

All it took was one stage 4 cancer diagnosis and five short weeks, and Papa left me, too.

At twenty-three, I was the proud owner of a pretty useless fine arts degree, two gleaming urns, and a mountain of debt. Nonna’s illness and her required round-the-clock care, combined with trying to maintain the lifestyle that Nonna and I were accustomed to, sent Papa’s once thriving business floundering.

He might have eventually recovered if men like Warwick Forrester didn’t sweep in like vultures, picking the flesh of the desiccating carcasses of businesses struggling to survive. Businesses like Papa’s.

Across the table from me, the lawyer cleared his throat. Mr. Devane had been my grandfather’s attorney for decades, and I would be forever grateful with the care and consideration he treated me with.

“Miss Winters?—”

“Sia,” I whispered, shaking my head. “Please, call me Sia, Mr. Devane.”

The aged lines of his face deepened with thought. “Sia,” he corrected, “I can go over the offer one last time, if that helps?”

I shook my head bitterly. There was no need. I’d gone through it all myself, trying to find a way to draw blood from a stone, but it was hopeless. The math didn’t math the way I needed it to.

Ice by Winter would be another chain-store jewelry shop in malls across America as soon as I signed the company over to Forrester Funding. The jewelry brand my grandfather had cultivated for decades, using resources and contacts across Europe, was bankrupt.

Call it bad investments, or the fact that my grandfather had become lax the last few years between Nonna’s health and his own, but there was nothing left of the company he’d loved. And, as soon as I signed this paper, I would get enough money to pay off the last of his debts and wipe the slate clean.

My fingers thumbed the pages, flipping it open to one I didn’t recognize. My brow furrowed. “What’s this?”

Mr. Devane leaned forward. “Sia, that’s your trust fund.”

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