Page 9 of Sin & Sapphire

4

LUCA

Ana

I have to see you.

Fuck!I looked around the study where I’d been holed up with two of my sister’s lovers since this morning. One of them had killed Ana’s father the day before. The other two watched it happen, saying nothing.

The world was better for Gio Costa’s death, but I ached for Ana right now.

Me

Not right now. Nick and Lorenzo are here.

Ana

Already dividing their plunder?

Ana had wanted out for years, and every year she convinced her father to let her stay in school instead of marrying to cement an alliance or a business deal was one more year of freedom.

And now it was gone. She’d graduated. My sister killed her father’s henchman. My sister’s lover killed her father. Angelo Costa was a fucking psychopath. Her only option was marriage.

Fuck!

“You all right?” Nick Lombardi was remarkably calm for a man who’d murdered the head of one of Yorkfield’s most brutal crime families the day before. I suppose he had the right to be—my sister’s other lover was Sicily’s most fearsome assassin, and he’d protect Nick.

And so would my family.

“I’m fine,” I muttered, staring at my phone. Sofia was in jail, Gio was dead, and all I could think about was Ana—alone, miserable, and in need of a hug she didn’t know how to ask for.

Thirty minutes later, a blonde tornado whirled into the room. Lorenzo looked up with hope, but it was Ana, not Sofia.

“Y’all live like fucking pigs when there’s no one around to impress,” she snarled, sneering at the left-over takeout containers that littered the room.

I couldn’t take my eyes off her as she stood a few feet in front of the doorway, her hair a little wilder than usual, cheeks flushed, and taking deep breaths. I’d never seen her like this in public, and I shoved my chair back to go to her, damn the consequences of making our relationship public.

Her father was dead, so there was no reason to keep it a secret anymore.

She turned toward Nick, her eyes flashing, and I could see the pain in the set of her shoulders, the way she was holding herself together by a thread. “You killed my father,” she said simply.

“I did,” he answered. It was the right thing to do. He’d tormented my family for years, and now he could never do it again. But my heart ached for Ana, who’d lost her father.

“The Sicilian branch of the family is shipping me off to Europe,” she murmured.

My eyes shot to her, but she wouldn’t look at me, her gaze steady on Nick.

“When?” I asked.

When her eyes met mine, they were full of sorrow. “In a few hours.”

I stepped toward her, my heart in my throat, but she was already turning away. “Do you?—”

“Tell Sofia I love her,” Ana interrupted before I could ask if she wanted to go, if she wanted to stay, if she wanted to take my hand and run away, leaving the violence of our families and the chains that keep us apart behind. “Tell her?—”

She stared into my eyes, her expression softening and her eyes shining with unshed tears, and I wondered if she were trying to say something different, something to me. “Tell her I’ll see her again soon.”

“How soon?” I rasped, wishing I had the courage to say the unsaid out loud. I stepped toward her, and she held her hand up.

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