Page 56 of The Enforcer

He looks sympathetically at me. “That’s not my decision. And…” He takes a sip of wine, his gaze dropping to the table. He looks like he’s trying to think of a nice way to say whatever is on his mind. I don’t need niceties.

“Say it.”

He lifts his gaze and locks eyes with me. His eyes are molten fire. “They wouldn’t come here,” he says. “Not if it meant leaving Giulio and Salvo.”

I suck my teeth and look away.

“You know that I am right.”

I decide to stay quiet rather than lie like a delusional teenager.

“You feel responsible for them.”

“I am responsible for them.”

“They are adults,” he says. “And in love.”

“In lust,” I correct, sneering at him.

But he only smiles. “That, as well. I believe in letting people make their own mistakes.”

“I don’t,” I say before I can stop myself, but as soon as those words pass my lips, I realize that I’ve lied in just the way I didn’t want to. “Actually,” I amend, “I do believe in that, but…”

Alfonso leans back in his chair. “But?” He takes a sip of wine.

“Look, if it were up to me, I would be back in New York nursing a broken heart over my breakup. You don’t have to smile like that,” I tell him, rolling my eyes.

“So, you are single?” he asks. “We can talk about that later. Please, go on.”

He leans forward and grabs an olive from the bowl between us, and then takes another sip of wine.

I roll my eyes again. “I didn’t want to come here. Not yet, at least. All I wanted to do was get Zahra to let us know she was okay, and that would have been fine, but the Council of Aunties is so damn impatient.”

“The what?”

“The Council of Aunties. It’s what we call all the elder women in our family who think they can meddle in our lives whenever they want.”

“And they sent you and Shae here to retrieve Zahra?”

“Yes.”

“I see. My mother is similar,” he says. “I come home once a year and let her try and convince me to marry some nice local girl so I can give her a daughter and grandchildren.”

I bristle at that.

“When I was younger, I tried to convince her that wasn’t what I wanted out of life.”

“What did you want?”

He takes a sip of wine and smiles. “I didn’t know. But I did know that Positano always felt too small for me. I’m a big man. I need space.”

It takes all of my willpower not to let my eyes drag down his body to remind myself of all I’d seen just a few hours ago. But I agree; Positano is too small to contain all of that. “And how did she take that?” I ask before sipping my own wine.

He shrugs. “I moved to Naples.”

I nod contemplatively and take another longer sip.

“You should try that,” he tells me.

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