Page 1 of Sin & Sapphire

PROLOGUE

ANGELO

Ten years ago…

“You draggedme halfway across the world to pitch me on trafficking girls?Testa di cazzo.” There was no heat to my words. I’d learned long ago that my brother wasn’t worth my ire.

“Don’t be an asshole, Angelo. You came for the wedding. Having a drink with me while we celebrate our cousin’s marriage is a bonus.” Gio poured two fingers of expensive bourbon and handed me a glass.

The reception dragged on, interminable, filled with foolish Italian Americans who thought the entire fucking world revolved around them. Like my brother.

Guns? Drugs? Smuggling? Supporting terrorists—freedom fighters, as they called themselves—with money laundering and weapons? Fuck yes. But trafficking people? He’d forgotten how his father met my mother. Forgotten why his father took my mother in and married her, then never touched her again, not until he laid her to rest after his enemies murdered her. She was the second wife he’d outlived. Gio’s mother died in childbirth.

I swirled the liquor in my glass to hide my disgust with the son of the man who’d adopted me, given me his name, and raised me as his own. I was a bad man. I enjoyed killing people, and I didn’t hide from the illegal acts that made my father’s fortune. Nor Gio’s. That didn’t make trafficking any easier to swallow.

As long as our father’s heart was still beating, I couldn’t do shit, but I swore to myself, the moment my father passed, I would cut this motherfucker off. He could sink or swim in America on his own.

Gio leaned forward, his deep brown eyes eager, like a goddamned puppy trying to impress its master, even though he was ten years older than me. “Angelo, I’m not asking for a loan, or even an investment. I’m looking for a full partnership. Picture it—Costas on both sides of the Atlantic, sending girls back and forth through Morocco and the Caribbean, making millions.”

My adoptive brother ran his fingers through his thick hair, such a dark brown it was almost black, and I saw, for a moment, what his wife saw in him, what his soldiers saw. Handsome. Charming. Smart as a whip. Utterly lacking in any sort of moral foundation.

Where had our father gone wrong? It didn’t matter. “The answer is still no.”

I was seven when Enrico Costa met my mother on a trip back to Italy from the States to shake hands on a real estate deal. We’d been trafficked from Morocco, and his men had rescued us both. He took me in and brought us both to the United States, determined to give us a new life and everything we’d lacked. And when my mother died and he’d announced he was returning to Italy to take over from his brother when I was eighteen, I’d leapt at the chance to go with him.

Italy was my home—where I’d been born, and where I lived now, despite my childhood in Yorkfield. And my bones ached with the need to return, even after only a day back in the States.

I shoved back from the table, unable to hide my boredom. Gio didn’t say a word as I strode out of the garden and into the house, intent on finding a quiet room to check my email and avoid the throngs of well-wishing sycophants, only here to see and be seen, cutting deals and hoping that the Costa wealth would rub off on them by our very proximity.

Disgusting. These Americans had no dignity, no self-respect, worshiping only the almighty dollar.

The Costa mansion was beautiful inside and out. It always had been. Nostalgia swept through me as I ran my fingers along the wall below a row of photographs—our father, my mother, nieces and nephews and cousins, business partners—starting in black and white and slowly turning to color as I walked down the hallway.

By the time I made my way to the grand foyer, I’d mellowed. Gio was an idiot, but he wouldn’t do anything so stupid it would piss our father off.

To my surprise, the sounds of classical music wafted through the room, a raging symphony of emotion, passionate and strong. When’s the last time I’d heard mother’s piano played? A lifetime ago, when she was still alive, before I’d left for Italy with my father.

I clasped the rail of one of the two stairwells that surrounded the entrance hall and slowly made my way up, keeping my steps quiet, the melody filling the cracks of my soul like gold in a broken vase. The house had changed very little. Gio’s wife had excellent taste in decor, even if she had shit taste in men. It was a shame Gio couldn’t keep his cock in his pants.

The door to the music room was cracked, and golden light from the windows spilled out into the hallway as the musician’s fury immolated the room. It opened silently and my eyes shot to the baby grand, where an angel sat, her long blonde hair disheveled and the lines of her back rigid as she pounded the keys.

Sunlight surrounded her in a halo as she worked out her rage, her movements exaggerated and full of emotion as she swayed over the keys, her body moving in time with the complex melody. My pants tightened as I followed the curve of her back, over lush hips and an ass I wanted to sink my fingers into, with hair that begged for me to wrap it around my fist as I fucked her from behind.

Fuck.

Who was this sweet angel, so beautiful and filled with rage? And why was I drawn so intensely to her?

The piece crescendoed, then ended, and she collapsed against the piano with a discordant jangle, her forearms hitting the keys as she lowered her head. Her hair hid her face as she rested there, her back heaving as she caught her breath, an angel come to earth after soaring too close to the sun.

For the first time in a long while, my heart thumped, urging me to take this siren into my arms and comfort her, promise her everything would be okay, that I would slay whatever dragons menaced her.

Instinct drove me forward, and I placed a hand on her shoulder, heat burning between us where my callused palm touched her skin.

She gasped, the sound unsullied and innocent, before looking up at me.

Green eyes so bright they could have been emeralds sparkling in the sun on a clear summer’s day, creamy skin and flushed cheeks, with full lips I couldn’t stop imagining wrapped around my?—

Oh fuck.I jerked my hand away as if burned and took a step backward, horrified at the direction of my thoughts.

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