Page 6 of Under His Control

I nodded as I walked out with him.

“I don’t know that you can claim I’m any better off for having my job and mission.” He instantly scanned the room where everyone else was waiting, always on edge and quick to check for threats.

“Because it wears on you? Beingonall the time?”

“No. That’s just who I am. I mean knowing how different it can be to have someone to spend your life with. I think about her.”

Chloe? Still?I didn’t have to ask who he was referencing.

“It’s been…”

“Ten years,” he replied without missing a beat. “And I wonder every fucking day why she left.”

I patted his hand that draped over my shoulder. I noticed that Franco didn’t talk about it much with Dante and Romeo, but he was vulnerable with me, telling me that he missed his former flame.

That sounded like an even worse fate. To have love and lose it, versus never having it at all?

Again, maybe I should just get a job.It would be helpful to distract myself, to be preoccupied and not dwell on being single for seemingly forever.

But what the hell would I do?

Any job that I got would be a pity offering, someone giving me a position just because I was a Constella and Dante wielded so much power.

It’s all a lost cause.I’ma lost cause.

I let that sentiment sink in as I mingled and made my way through the engagement party. Like with all other events hosted at the mansion, the ballroom was decorated to show off the elegance of the architecture without being too much. All the guests drank and chatted. Romeo and Tessa smiled at everyone who’d come to wish them well, and more than a few also spoke with Nina who was just about to clear the end of her second trimester.

Happy, peppy couples, all around. And then there’s me.

Bitterness seeped through me, worsening my frustration that I didn’t know how to climb out of this funky gloom and despair.

“What, no ice sculpture fountains full of champagne?”

I turned, pausing in walking away from a table near one of the bars where the servers loaded up their trays with flutes of the drink. The man who’d spoken likely had done so to talk to himself. Even if it wasn’t a gruff line of snark, scoffing that complaint and mocking the party, he’d said it low and quiet, as though he didn’t count on anyone overhearing.

As though he didn’t anticipate that I’d be passing by and stop at the complaint about anything my family offered.

“The beverages aren’t to your liking?” I sassed as I spun to face him.

While his white button-down was simple, the rest of him wasn’t. His jeans—jeans!—were so worn and weathered they had to be the only comfortable garment anyone had on in thisballroom. His boots were covered with a faint trace of dust, and his hair, while slightly too long, wasn’t styled at all.

Who invited this cowboy here?

I’d never seen him before, but now that I faced him directly, getting the full burn of his glare, I wondered if he’d entered the back of the house earlier and we’d just happened to pass by each other in that room, when I was talking to Franco.

This engagement party wasn’t a full-on black tie affair, but a little care for decorum was required. And this guy either didn’t care or didn’t know. Strangers wouldn’t be permitted. Franco’s security forces would weed out any trespassers. Which begged the question of who the hell invited this underdressed, rugged, sexy-as-hell?—

Hold up.

I shook my head, annoyed with how quickly my mind derailed under his smirking glare. I wasnotgoing to notice how attractive this rebel was. Not now. No how.

“My beverage is fine.” He proved it in tipping back the beer bottle. “But the uppity pretension in this place is not.”

Uppity?“Then maybe you’re in the wrong place?” I set my hand on my hip. I’d be damned if some low-class idiot said my family was uppity. For many generations, the Constellas had sacrificed so much to promise our future would be prosperous and thriving. This nobody didn’t know what he was talking about. We weren’t pretentious. Or uppity. Or?—

Oh, my God. Why do I even care what this guy thinks?

“Let me guess,” he deadpanned. “Wrong place at the wrong time?”

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