She’s confused—I can see it in her eyes.

But that’s not all I see.

I see desire there, and hope. I didn’t bring a gun into my home with me, not this time, because I spent the entire drive here wrestling with the question of what to do. Push my thoughts away and do my father’s bidding, or do the opposite and keep Alessia Ricci as my own?

Now that she’s on her knees, with those eyes, with those lips—it’s no contest. My family has meant everything to me, but Sia—my same Sia from all those years ago—could mean more.

Her hair is tousled from sleep, blonde and bright in the sunshine, and I’m so taken with the blue of her eyes that it takes me a few moments to register what she said.

I didn’t know any of it was true.

I cannot control the urge to touch her, so I close the distance and take her chin in my hand, tilting her face toward mine. I want those lips wrapped around my cock. That’s what I want. But it’ll have to wait.

“What did you say?” Her chest is rising quickly with every breath, so quickly I think she might faint. “Take a deep breath, Sia, and tell me again.”

She obeys me without a moment of hesitation, drawing a long, shuddering breath into her lungs and letting it back out. “I didn’t know any of it was true,” she repeats, voice steadier.

A Ricci, not knowing her own identity? This makes almost no sense.

“Stand up.” I offer her my hand and she takes it, rising to her feet. “What was it exactly you thought was a fairy tale?”

A smile quirks the edges of her mouth. “A horror story, more like it. My mother, when she died, was so afraid.”

“That’s not unusual,” I offer, forgetting for a moment the weight of the conversation.

“Not of dying,” she says, and it’s like we’re back there under the bleachers, talking about everything under the sun. “She was so afraid someone might find out who I really was. She was afraid of someone learning my real name.”

“Alessia Ricci,” I supply.

“Yes.” She wrinkles her nose. “But it never seemed real to me. By then, I’d gone by Sia for so long that it sounded strange for her to say it. It sounds weird as hell for you to say it. And I never knew why she was so scared. She never told me before she died, and neither did my uncle.”

I gape at her. “They never told you the reason you’d be a target for as long as you lived?”

Sia runs a hand through her hair, tousling it even more, and somehow it still looks incredible. “I didn’t think I was a target. I thought they were being paranoid adults. Why would anyone come after me? What did I ever do to anyone?”

It takes me a beat to realize it’s not a rhetorical question, and the answer I have tastes bitter in my mouth. “You, personally?” I can’t help the truth. “I don’t think you have done anything to deserve this.”

“Then why—”

A hint of the old anger blooms in my chest. “You know that my mother is dead,” I say flatly.

“Yes,” she says, eyebrows rising in concern. “I do know that. I’ve known that for a long time, but I don’t know what it has to do with me.”

“It had to do with your father, Lorenzo Ricci.”

She shakes her head. “My father’s never been around. He left before I had a chance to know him.”

“Yes,” I say impatiently, regretting my tone immediately. “He left because he hired a thug off the street to kill my mother. He slit her throat while she was walking back from the grocery store.”

Sia’s mouth drops open and she looks as if she's about to faint. “You’re kidding me. That’s the kind of shit that happens in the movies. My dad was an irresponsible ass, but he wouldn’t have—”

“He would have, and he did,” I tell her. This story, to me, is an old one. It’s not a shocking twist. “He didn’t like the way my family was taking over his territory. The Riccis—” I look at her, but I can’t place her among them. “They’ve always been our rival. That’s what my father says. But it was more or less all right until they came after my mother.”

“But why would he have done that?” Sia chews at her bottom lip. “I don’t understand. My mother wasn’t some criminal. She only ever worked and hid, but I never knew from what.”

“From me,” I tell her. “From us. She was hiding from the Morettos.”

Understanding dawns on her face. “Your mother...your family wanted revenge.”

“And we got it.” Pride swells in my chest, though I had no hand in picking off any of the Riccis. Those victories are all stories told and retold late at night, when the dinner dishes have been cleared and the coffee is gone and all there’s left to do is talk. “We got every one of them—”

Sia’s lip quivers, and my stomach sinks like a stone. What the fuck is wrong with me? The villains in my family’s legends were her family. And she is innocent. I know it with everything in my being. She’s innocent.

I reach out and fold her into my arms.

I don’t think, I only act, and she tenses against me for an instant before her body relaxes.

“I’m sorry,” I murmur into her hair. “I should have thought more carefully—”

Sia lets out a bitter laugh. “Why are you worried about insulting me? You took me from my house to kill me, right? Insults are the least of my worries.”

I push her back so I can look into her eyes. “Sia, I’m not going to kill you.”

Her blue eyes are doubtful. “Are you sure about that? Because honestly, if you are, I’d rather you get it over with, and—”

Thoughts and memories churn in my mind, and all of them are nothing in comparison to the woman standing in front of me. “I’m supposed to kill you, but I can’t do it. I never thought Alessia Ricci would be Sia Andrews. I never thought you’d be...you.”

“I never should have done it,” she grumbles, but her body relaxes in my grip.

“Should have done what?”

“Had such a crush on you. It doomed me from the start.”