Page 2 of Sin & Sapphire

“Uncle Angelo?” sixteen-year-old Ana Costa asked, her voice soft and sweet, wafting around me like a fucking ocean breeze.

Nonplussed for the first time in living memory, I stared at her, cataloging everything about this stunning young woman who’d gone from raging to sweet in the blink of an eye.

“Are you all right?” she asked, as if I were the one who’d laid my soul bare through music, ripping a hole in the heart I didn’t know I still had.

“Sì, angel,” I said gently, my heart pounding as I boxed up the lust that raced through my veins like fire over gasoline and slammed a lid on it forever. “You play beautifully.”

“Thank you,” she murmured, standing up and smoothing her skirt, revealing curves I didn’t want to know she had, didn’t want to notice.

Fuckingsixteen.

My stomach roiled. I was as disgusting as the Americans I’d criticized earlier. My mother would have been horrified. I refused to think of it any longer.

“Are you okay?” I asked Ana, unable to stop myself, even though I should have walked straight out of the room, away from her beautiful, forbidden temptation, never looking back. Whether or not her father and I shared blood, she wassixteen.

Her lips quirked up in a lopsided smile before she straightened her shoulders and ran her fingers through her hair, transforming back into the perfect mafia princess her parents had raised her to be.

“Of course. Who wouldn’t be at such a beautiful wedding? Can I escort you back to the reception?”

Absolutely fucking not.

“You go on ahead,” I told her, and hated myself for watching her hips sway as she left the room, knowing she’d figure in my fantasies, wishing I could wipe the memory of her beautiful, incandescent rage from my soul.

I wouldn’t.

Ever.

1

ANA

Present day …

The restaurant fellquiet as three men strode toward our table with murder in their eyes.

Shit.

Shit shit shit shit shit.

My pulse hammered and sweat poured down my back. I couldn’t seem to breathe, but I didn’t dare move and reveal my fear. If we survived this, my father would never forgive me for forgetting my dignity before our enemies. And if we didn’t, well, we were Costas. We’d hold onto our foolish pride until our dying breath.

My father dabbed the corners of his mouth with the cloth napkin, then set it on the table as he watched the intruders approach, menace in every step.

Uncle Angelo said nothing, although his eyes cut to me for a second, thawing slightly. If I didn’t know better, I’d say he was concerned about me. But I did know better. Angelo hadn’t uttered more than a word or two at a time to me in a decade.

It was better that way, I told myself. Angelo was a cold-blooded killer, a violent psychopath leashed only by his love for his father—my grandfather—and every time his eyes swept over my skin, a shiver ran down my spine, a disconcerting combination of fear and desire that terrified me.

“Gio,” he murmured, as if to warn his brother.

My father’s bodyguards stood, their chairs whispering against the plush carpet as they shoved backward, but our visitors were faster. I prayed to a god I didn’t believe in that these men would spare me.

The man in the lead, dressed in a sharp designer suit, whipped out his gun.

Thwap thwap thwap thwap.My father’s men fell to the ground, dead or dying.

I lifted my chin and stared down Dante Oscuro, a Sicilian assassin, who was flanked by two other men—Nico Lombardi, a fucking pediatrician and fixture in our community, who’d sworn he was too good for the violence until Sofia Russo’s magic pussy drew him back in, and Lorenzo Morelli, the Russo enforcer. They sneered at us, as if they, too, hadn’t committed unspeakable acts of violence in the name of power.

Death would be better than the future my father planned for me. I steeled myself for the shot that would take my life, and prayed I died quickly. My father hadn’t spared the Russo women and children—the Russos wouldn’t spare me. It didn’t matter that Sofia was my best friend—my father had earned our deaths with his vile crimes.

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