Sancia
As I hid behind the curtain I had pulled partway closed, my hand flew across the paper.
Desperately trying to capture every sinuous movement of his muscles while he walked around the courtyard, I was still drawing him when he disappeared under the portico and I heard him come inside the house.
My breath caught, and my hand stilled.
But my heart leapt into an even faster pounding rhythm that beat so hard, I could feel it in my ears and my throat.
The man with the impossibly big muscles and gun was downstairs, below my very bedroom.
The thought was so shocking I was on my feet before I registered what my body was doing.
What was I doing?
Standing, moving, going downstairs to demand that he leave, to ask his name?
Rooted in place by indecision, I glanced at my sketchbook.
Then I was no longer thinking.
I was drawing.
Bracing the sketchbook against my chest, filling in the broader details before I picked up a pencil and sharpened every one of his features, I drew and I fantasized.
It was not until my very last stroke of pencil across paper that it struck me.
I had not been thinking of Papà.
I was not worrying about his illness, the days or my time with him. I was not wondering what would become of my future once he was gone, or fretting about how and when to ask him what I was to do without him. My entire life for two years had been nothing except worry and Papà.
Guilt squeezed at my conscience as I stared at the only thing that had completely distracted me from Papà in my entire life, and I knew it before I could push the thought away.
I could not keep this.
Raw, wild, and untamed yet full of dark, controlled movement, it was the best drawing I had ever done, but it felt… dangerous.
The man in the image felt dangerous.
And the longer I stared, the more that feeling grew.
With suddenly unsteady hands, I carefully tore the paper from my sketchbook and reached for the can of setting spray. Giving the drawing a once-over with the fixative, waving it to dry it faster, I desperately looked around my room for any sort of reason.
Except I did not find reason.
Temptation mocking me, my book sat on my nightstand as the perfect excuse, and reason fell through the last of my resolve like water through a sieve.
I should have immediately destroyed the drawing. Burn it. Draw over it. Dispose of it in the bathroom. But as I held the single sheet of paper and stared at a man who was both imposing and so handsome he took my breath, I knew I would do none of those things.
I was going to give the man his drawing.
Every warning of Papà’s over the years filled my head and, rationally, I knew they were full of merit. I was not worldly or formally educated, but I was not completely ignorant either. Papà had money, and that alone made me vulnerable. Not to mention, I had heard the hushed whispers about the famiglias of Sicily from the house staff over the years. I had secretly listened to their frightening stories of violent men with guns who were called soldiers but wore no uniforms. I knew the term they all gave organized crime. I knew you were never supposed to say the word aloud.
But this was my home, Papà was a banker who did not associate with any of those men, and I was almost of legal age.
I could give a man a piece of paper.
Just because he had a gun did not mean he was dangerous to me.
Papà had hired bodyguards with guns before. Papà even had guns himself. I had seen them in his desk and in his nightstand drawer. He had said they were merely a precautionary measure of protection because he had money in the house. It made sense. Papà was sensible. I was not frightened by a man who had a gun.
But I was afraid of this drawing.
Before I could talk myself out of this, or admit that I wanted to see the mysterious man’s unusual eyes up close just once so I could remember them forever, I grabbed the book.
Carefully slipping the drawing between the pages, I turned toward the door and caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror.
My simple summer dress from last season covered my shoulders, but it was neither stylish nor sophisticated. My long, dark brown hair had not been trimmed in two years. My face was void of any blush or mascara, and suddenly, I was not seeing myself as Papà’s daughter.
Consumed with a man I had only just laid eyes on tonight, I was comparing my worth to every pretty woman I had ever seen and realizing I was not them.
I was not a woman at all.
Not yet. Not technically.
Wishing for the first time that I knew more about makeup and clothes and how to style my hair than I did about classic literature and art, I opened the book and stared at my drawing.
I was no match for the image of the shirtless man staring back at me as he stood at the open door of his SUV with a gun at his waist.
Maybe I was no match for any man.
Papà never talked about me marrying one day, let alone what would happen to me once he—I could not even think the thought.
Inhaling sharply, I closed the book and forced down my reality as I glanced out the window at the dark SUV that sat like a silent beast waiting for its prey, and I wondered. What would it be like inside? How would the seats feel? What would it smell like?
What would its owner smell like?
Closing my eyes, imagining sitting in the imposing vehicle, envisioning his strong arms as he drove, I wondered what his voice would sound like beyond the deep tones I had heard from my window.
That last thought was my final undoing.
Clutching the book to my chest, my heart beating to the tune of a thousand drums, I grasped the door handle and slowly turned, but then I stopped to listen.
No Papà. No Vittorio. No voices at all.
Slipping out of my ballet flats, making as little sound as possible, I tiptoed down the stairs.
Erico
Scanning the driveway for the tenth time, I heard it.
Footsteps.
Light as hell, but I still heard them.
My fingers tensing on my Glock, I turned my head, and there she was.
Her hand on the banister, one foot poised to take the next step down, she froze. With huge brown eyes and waves of thick, dark hair covering her shoulders and half her back, she looked at me with equal parts stunned shock and curiosity.
No shoes, no makeup, no pretense.
Gesù Cristo, she was fucking beautiful.
She was also young as hell, and she definitely wasn’t a ghost.
She was a goddamn angel.
A stunning, untouched, unsullied angel who was blushing at me.
“Mystery solved,” I muttered.
Quiet, soft, and so damn innocent, she spoke. “I am sorry?”
“You are?” I demanded, my hand still on my Glock.
Fair for a Sicilian, color flamed her cheeks, and I got her voice again. “Sancia.”
Sancia.
I fucking repeated it. Out loud. “Sancia.” Latin. Sacred. Cristo. Now I suspected why the hell my brother was being a cagey prick, and rage I didn’t know I was capable of flooded my veins.
Tentative, she took a halted step, then another. One more and she stopped at the bottom of the stairs. “What is your name?”
I purposely ignored her question. “How old are you?”
Whatever the hell her age was, if my brother was here to use her in some bullshit power move, I made a vow right then and there.