Page 77 of Of Beauty, Brains, & Bravery

“I thought you were going to call Serena,” he said.

I stared at him for a couple of seconds and shook my head. “Fucking out of it. That’s who I meant.”

“Are you sure you want to do this?”

“I’m sure,” I said, staring at him.

“Because you know this will mean war.”

“It already means war, Alessandro, when they took me, when they took Callie, when they kept Callie.” I stared at him. “That was it. The line had been drawn in the sand.”

“So we’re going to go to war for this girl?”

“What else are we going to do?”

“You could leave her,” he said. “Let Tommasso Romano do what he wants to her.” He shrugged. “She’s not a Marchesi. She means nothing to us. She was literally collateral damage for the revenge we wanted to get for Mama. And shit, if Tommasso Romano takes care of her, fuck, if he kills her, that will destroy her dad. That’s even better than we could have hoped for.”

I stared at him. My heart constricted at his words.

“You think I want to see her die?”

“I mean, I don’t think you want to see her die, but who cares what happens to her?”

“I care, Alessandro.”

I knew I couldn’t get angry at my brother. I knew I couldn’t blame him for saying the things that he was saying because, ultimately, our plan from the very beginning had been to destroy Paul Rowney, and we were going to do that through Callie, and we didn’t care if people lived or died. We just wanted our ends to be what we wanted, yet I wouldn’t live with myself if anything happened to Callie.

“You’ve changed, Antonio.” He stared at me for a couple of seconds. His eyes narrowed.

“This girl’s gotten into your brain.”

“She hasn’t gotten into anything.”

“She has,” he said. “Huh, I never would’ve believed it if I didn’t see it with my own two eyes.”

“See what?” I was getting angry again.

“That you have a heart.”

“I don’t have a heart.”

“You do,” he said, his lips twitching slightly. “Huh, I guess you’re human after all.”

I grabbed the phone, not wanting to pay attention to him anymore.

“Put it on speakerphone,” he said.

“What?”

“Just do it.”

I rolled my eyes and put it on speaker as it rang. Serena answered. “Hi, Antonio,” she said in a breathy voice.

“Serena, it’s me.”

“Yes. And what can I do for you?”

“I wanted to apologize.” There was silence on the line. “I wanted to tell you that I was very sorry for everything that happened with your dad and me the other day and the things that I said, the things that I told him.”

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