Page 36 of Secret Babies For My Brother's Best Friend

I downed the rest of my drink in one and slammed the glass back down. The bartender looked over, and I signaled him for a refill. I would be needing a few.

“I hear the Brenta Canal is great this time of year,” he went on, buttering me up. “Besides, you’re the only son, and your sister wants you to give her away on the big day. You have to be at the engagement party.”

I frowned at him. “How do you know all of this? How long did she have you on that call?”

“Your mother’s a forceful woman, Luca,” Christopher said, sounding almost apologetic. “And she doesn’t take no for an answer.”

“Yeah, well, she will take my no. Because I’m saying no.” I took my drink from the bartender before he could set it down, placing a stash of bills on the bar. “Keep them coming.”

“That’s not going to help you out of this,” Christopher said as he watched me clean my second glass in a few strained swigs. “Not to mention the waste. You have to sip it… savor the aged flavor of—”

“What else did she say?” I asked, ignoring his attempts to make a joke out of it.

He shook his head slowly, twirling his glass in his fingers. “Just that you don’t have a choice. Sofia’s the baby in the family, and this is a big deal for everyone.”

I scoffed and accidentally broke into a hiccup. “Big deal, she says… Because it wasn’t a big deal when I was the first one in the family to graduate college? Or even the second or third time? What about building a multi-billion dollar empire from scratch?”

“Hey, man, I’m just the messenger—”

“What about that Venetian villa where they’re holding this engagement party?” I asked, my words already starting to slur. “Brenta Canal is beautiful, yes! But who can afford that? All of that… not a big deal.”

Christopher sighed and took a sip of his whiskey. “You could’ve told her all that if you’d answered her calls.”

“I’m not going.”

He touched my shoulder and made me look at him. “Like I said before, Luca, that’s not an option.”

Christopher pulled out his phone and did something, then slid it over to me on the bar. It took my eyes a second to focus through the haze, but eventually the screen cleared in front of me. My mouth dropped as I stared down at the one way ticket he’d booked in my name.

“She said she’d kill me if I didn’t get you to the party,” Christopher said. “And I believed her.”

Chapter 14

Scarlett

Therewasnoescapinghim. Luca Moretti had taken up my every waking minute, and the little sleep I managed to get was riddled with dreams of him. His mouth on my skin, those honey-colored eyes blazing into mine as he drove into me…

“Today we’re gonna focus on breathing into our extensions,” Indigo, my yoga instructor, announced from the front of the class.

Thankfully, I allowed myself to return to the studio and took a deep breath, letting go of Luca. I hoped he’d stay that way, if only for the next forty-five minutes.

“I wouldn’t mind breathing into his extension, if you know what I mean.” Ash glanced at me from her mat, wearing the most shit-eating grin.

I stifled a laugh and rolled my eyes.

“Oh, as if you don’t think it every time you walk in here and see him in those manly yoga pants,” she said, settling into a lotus pose, prayer hands to her chest.

I shook my head. “I can’t take you anywhere.”

“You love it,” she muttered under her breath. “Now shush, you’re gonna get us in trouble.”

“Y—you started it.”

“Time to leave the world outside and just… sink into our truth,” Indigo said in his tree-hugging, sing-song voice that was more breath than sound.

Ash snorted, and I glared at her. “Stop. You’re going to get us kicked out.”

She faced the front with her eyes closed, her whole body showing that she was totally present in the moment. Doing nothing other than paying close attention to Indigo’s meditative voice leading us through a short meditation.

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