Oh, Papa would never touch her or her sisters or Mama, but the same couldn’t be said for anyone he considered a threat. Anya got the same look right before she slipped into the night to commit acts that would give a normal person nightmares. Anything to ensure the safety of their family, the security of their territory.
Rose’s hands weren’t lily white, either.
That didn’t mean she was going to roll over for her parents right now. She couldn’t pretend they didn’t get a say when it came to who she eventually settled down with, but right now she was just having fun. She was very careful to avoid ending up pregnant, and that’s the only thing they needed to worry about. “This isn’t your business.”
“Wrong.” Mama flicked a finger across the screen, scrolling to a new picture.
Rose leaned forward, frowning. A different picture of Jackson, but he didn’t look like Jackson in it. He had the same athletic build, and his golden hair was shorter than it was now and slicked back. Without his hipster beard, he was almost too pretty. Too flawless. He also wore a perfectly tailored suit that her practiced eye told her cost a small fortune. Way more than some college-dropout bartender should be able to afford. Still, it was undeniably him. “Where did you get this?”
“This man? His name isn’t Jackson.” Mama hesitated and looked at Papa. “Rose…”
She didn’t like this. She didn’t like this at all. Her parents didn’t hesitate, and they didn’t beat around the bush. “Say it.” No matter what they weren’t telling her, better to know and deal with it than to be left hanging. “Just say it.”
Papa was the one who finally spoke. “The man you’ve been sneaking off with, the one whose apartment you spent the night in last night. His name isn’t Jackson Smith. It’s Dante Verducci.”
The room took a sickening spin around her. She knew that last name, if only in theory. As heir, it was her job to keep her finger to the pulse of not just New York but the other cities where her Romanov cousins held power. They were powerful because they were stronger together, creating a network that spanned a good portion of the US coastline. But their enemies were just names to be memorized, especially Kirill and Sasha’s since they were in Los Angeles and Seattle, respectively.
“Verducci,” she said slowly. “As in the Verducci clan in LA.” They’d given her uncle Kirill—well, Kirill was technically Papa’s cousin, but they called him uncle—a lot of trouble over the last couple decades. “That’s impossible. Lorenzo Verducci only has one son. This isn’t him.”
“Dante Verducci is his nephew, the son of his late sister. She was out of the life for a bit, which is why we don’t have a complete file on him.”
“Impossible.” She didn’t know why she was arguing. Her parents wouldn’t have come to her with this if they weren’t sure they were right, but no matter which way she looked at this information, it didn’t make sense. “One, the Capparelli family would skin him alive if they knew he was in New York. They’re the only Italian game in town, and we have a hard enough time keeping them under control. They’re not going to let another family poach on their territory. Two, it doesn’t make any kind of logistical sense for Dante Verducci to be here, across the country from his territory.”
“Rose.”
She wasn’t finished. “Three, I am dating Jackson Smith. He’s a nice guy who was raised upstate, came to the city to pursue a degree at NYU, wandered off before he graduated, and has a very mundane, very non-criminal life as a bartender with a shitty apartment in Brooklyn. There is no way that guy is part of the Verducci family. He’s too…” Caring. Sweet. Safe. “Unless he’s in hiding or something?”
“Rose… He’s not in hiding,” Mama said.
Papa shook his head sharply. “You were duped.”
“Impossible.” What she and Jackson had? It was real. It felt real. He’d shared so much about his life. His sorrow about his dead mother. His conflict-filled relationship with his uncle… “Oh shit,” she whispered. Rose fought not to wrap her arms around herself. He’d peppered in real parts of his history, just enough to make the lie work.
She’d given him her heart, and it was all a lie.
A poisonous fury spiked through her. Duped. By Jackson fucking Smith. For months. Months and months where she’d given him a level of intimacy she didn’t dole out to just anyone. Where she told him small, mundane secrets. Where she slept with him. When she fell for him. They hadn’t exchanged those three little words, but they hovered on her tongue more and more lately. It was all a lie. She clenched her fists, nails digging into her palms. “I’ll kill him.”
“That won’t fix anything. Not at this juncture.” Papa took the tablet from her mother and set it face down on the desk. “There are consequences for your actions, intentional or not.”
Mama looked a little sick to her stomach. “No matter that it was unintentional, you sleeping with a Verducci puts us in a precarious position with the Capparelli family.”
Rose wanted to protest, but she knew the score. She leaned forward and pressed her fingers to her temples. The pressure did nothing to stop the headache pounding there. Consequences. There were consequences for her actions. As her father was so fond of saying, there was no excuse for ignorance, not with their resources. “I did a background check on him.”
“We know.”
Of course they did. Vasily would have passed on the report she asked for. She was heir, yes, but her parents still ran the business. Even if they had been making more noise about retiring in the past six months. Mama wanted to travel without having to worry about their enemies taking their absence as an invitation to start shit. They couldn’t leave Rose in charge alone, though. No matter that the Russian Romanovs seemed to have finally backed off their determination to see her as lesser because of her gender, the fact remained that their enemies weren’t as progressive. She needed a spouse. She knew it.
She just thought she had more time.
Unfortunately, it seemed the clock had just run out.
Rose lifted her head. “Do the Capparellis know?”
“Da.”
Fuck. “They’re using this to press their suit.” Romeo Capparelli had taken over the family business from his father a year ago, and he’d made clear his intentions to cement an alliance between their two families with a marriage pact. It was how things were done, after all.
“They already have.” Papa doesn’t look away, doesn’t blink. “Romeo wants Lorelei as his wife.”
“No. Absolutely not.” He was handsome and charming and had a smile that never lit up his dark eyes. She couldn’t sentence her little sister to a marriage to him. Lorelei was cunning and ruthless in her own way, but Romeo was a monster. He’d crush her just because he could. “I’ll marry a different Capparelli. One of his siblings—Fabian or Drucilla—or one of the cousins.” The other Capparelli siblings were just as merciless as Romeo, but at least they weren’t in charge of anything. She could find a way to control them.
Except Mama was shaking her head. “That won’t be enough. It’s Romeo who will be the groom.”