Four months later …
LILIANA DRAGGED THE cloth over the back of her neck to wipe away any sweat, and help her cool down. Even though the studio was a no-go zone for phones—they had to be silenced, or shut down entirely—she snuck hers out of the bag she’d left in the corner while her back was turned to Gordo.
It wasn’t like the man could see her.
And he’d been going easier on her since she started back a month ago.
For the most part.
Besides, it was worth the risk to check—
Liliana blinked at the blank screen in front of her. No calls, and no texts to show. She was starting to wonder if she should get worried. It wasn’t like Joe to not call her. He always did—first thing in the morning, and a text before he knew she was going in to dance since she wouldn’t have her phone, and another call before bed.
He kept his promises.
All of them.
Which also meant she hadn’t seen him in months.
Why hadn’t he called today?
“Liliana, I know you’re not looking at your phone when you’re supposed to be rehearsing for tomorrow’s show.”
Gordo’s tone was half-teasing, and half-chiding. She saw the looks in some of the other ballerina’s eyes whenever she got away with a misstep or a slip that he would never let them off on, but nothing could be done about it.
She told him she was fine.
And she was.
Mostly.
She grinned, and quickly slid the phone back into the bag before turning to face the room again. The strange thing was, she didn’t look forward to this as much as she once used to. She didn’t get a sense of dread or fear now when she put on her pointe shoes—a feat she overcame by talking for hours to a therapist her father called in—but something wasn’t right about this place for her anymore.
Or maybe it wasn’t the place at all.
Maybe it was her.
And ballet.
She could move, and she could still dance like she always had, but it didn’t have that same freeing feeling it used to. She didn’t love it deep in her bones the way she used to. Sometimes, that scared her more than anything.
Sometimes, that made her more determined than anything else could, too. Determined to dance, regardless if Rich Earl had taken it from her. Determined to get on the stage at least one more time and be the ballerina who lived and breathed ballet.
She could do it.
She would do it.
She just didn’t know why she was doing it anymore.
“Let’s start again from the top,” Gordo said when Liliana rejoined the others.
From the top it was …
“Have you just come from the studio?” Cara asked.
Liliana nodded, and took a sip from her to-go cup of coffee. “I did.”
“And how was it today?”
“Same as usual.”
“Try descriptive words,” the therapist urged.
Liliana laughed under her breath, but thought about what she had been told, too. Cara Rossi had walked into her hospital room two days after Liliana arrived, and explained why she was there with a smile that could make anyone feel comforted.
She had a therapist before, but Cara was not the same.
She was entirely different.
A woman like Liliana, in a life like hers, with a husband much like the rest of the men Liliana had grown up in. The woman hailed from Chicago, but lived in Toronto, Canada with her husband, Gian, and their five boys.
She specialized in helping women—addicts, or victims of domestic violence, specifically. She could make Liliana talk for hours, but it only felt like minutes. She never once looked at Liliana with pity, or judgement for anything she said.
Yeah, she was something else.
Something special.
“I guess you could say I just haven’t regained my old love for it, yet,” Liliana said, “or maybe it’s that I haven’t found what I’m looking for in ballet, if you get what I mean. I used to dance and feel like nothing else mattered. It was just me and the stage, but now it’s me and … nothing.”
Cara raised a brow as she took in Liliana’s words. “Why do you think that is?”
“I think ballet took something from me once, and then he used it against me again. So, instead of having this deep love and respect for what ballet gave me, and what I can do with it, I am stuck feeling like it’s a weight I would rather rid myself of before it pulls me back down.”
“Use his name. He doesn’t get the power to make you silent.”
Liliana smiled. “Yeah, I know.”
“You feel like ballet took something from you. That’s the first time I’ve ever heard you say that. Why?”
Well, that wasn’t so easy to explain.
That was complicated.
Cara waited her out.
She always did.
“Rich watched me dance once … it’s what made him seek me out, and brought him into my life. Now, I’ve got this strange place in the back of mind that I keep going to every single time I have to think about getting back out on the stage.”
“Like someone else is going to be waiting.”
“Someone like him, yeah.”
“Someone else was waiting once,” Cara said softly. “Didn’t you tell me that? Someone else watched you dance once, and he was nothing like Rich, Liliana.”
Yes.
She had told Cara that.
She told her everything.
“Joe,” Liliana murmured.
“You haven’t seen him in a while, I suspect,” Cara said. “Your father tells me it wasn’t possible, so that must be difficult, too.”
“He calls. We talk.”
“Not the same, though, is it?”
Liliana frowned. “No, not at all.”
“When will you get to see him?”
That, Liliana didn’t know.
“Soon, I hope.”
Cara nodded. “Have you thought about what you might want to do besides ballet?”
Months ago, Liliana would have said nursing. She only had a little bit of schooling left to finish to actually get her degree for that, but now, she wasn’t so sure.
So was her life.
Suspended.
Upended.
Confusing.
“I still want to work in a hospital setting,” Liliana said, “but I’m not sure in what department, or whatever.”
“You know, the first place to see a domestic violence case is the hospital, Liliana. There are also shelters who employ nurses and counselors, on top of them having separate jobs at the hospital. I mean, if something like that was … in your thoughts.”
She stiffened a bit.
That had never crossed her mind.
But now that it was there …
“And you could always see ballet like this,” Cara said, smiling in that way of hers, “maybe Rich didn’t take something away from you as much as he gave you the chance to find something different when you might not have gone to look for it yourself.”
Cara leaned forward, and pointed a finger at Liliana, adding, “But don’t even thank him for it, though. He gets nothing, now—not your fear, your pain, or even your success. He gets nothing. Not even in death.”
Yeah.
Liliana would make sure of it.
“Are you ready for tomorrow?” Cella asked.
Liliana set her napkin down on the empty plate, and nodded. “For the most part, yeah.”
“Nervous?” Catherine asked from two seats down.
“Not really.” Liliana shrugged. “My foot is good—everything is healed. The doctor gave his okay a month ago, and I haven’t really had any pain but for the usual blisters and bruising from just dancing.”
“Reason number fifty-two why Cella never stayed in ballet,” her sister muttered.
Liliana laughed. “Hazard of the job?”
“Listen, nothing about feet is very fucking pretty to begin with, Liliana. But I am not going to go about helping it along with something like ballet.”
“Truth,” Catherine agreed.
“Did you see Cara when she was here today?” Liliana asked her cousin.
Catherine glanced over. “I did, yeah.”
She hadn’t known that the same therapist helping her was also helping her cousin for an entirely different set of reasons. It wasn’t something they talked about because frankly, they didn’t want or need to. Everybody deserved their privacy, too. She knew now that Cara worked with her cousin, though.
“Shouldn’t swear at the table,” Lucia said with all the attitude she could muster.
The girls grinned, giggled, and went back to their plates. It probably wasn’t the swearing that bothered her little sister as much as it was the fact nobody was talking to her. Lucia was pretty obvious in that way even if she wouldn’t admit it.
The clang of metal hitting crystal quieted the family filling the long Marcello dining table. All of her family was there—apparently, they needed to gather and celebrate her show tomorrow as a unit.
She loved them all for it, really.
All her uncles and aunts, cousins, grandparents, and her own mother, father, and siblings. Cella sat on one side of Liliana, and little Lucia—although, being a teenager, she wasn’t so little anymore—sat on the other side of her. Her brother, mother, and father sat across from her at the table while everyone else was spread out the rest of the way.
Still, they felt close.
It was kind of strange how that worked sometimes. They were always there when she needed them, and never too far away. Yet, they didn’t smother her or drive her crazy. They never voiced opinions on her choices after what happened, and they let her live.
If that wasn’t love, what was?
She had been so busy for the last month desperately trying to get up to par for her role in the show—not the lead, but the second, which was good enough for her—that she had kind of let her family fall to the wayside.
Not intentionally, of course.
They hadn’t said a thing about her doing it, either, but she knew they had to be wondering. Was she doing okay? Was she overworking herself? Was she lonely when she came home to her studio apartment night after night with no one to greet her but her thoughts?
She wished they wouldn’t worry at all, but trying to tell them not to was pointless. It was just what family did.
Liliana hadn’t realized she needed this—a moment to get away from everything else in her life, and just spend time with her family. They were her happy place, if she ever had one.
Well, them … and Joe.
At the head of the table, her uncle stood with a smile as his gaze landed on her. “Liliana, we are all so very proud of you for what you’ve been able to do, and what you are yet to do. And we certainly can’t wait to see where you go from here.”
Her father raised his own glass, and the rest of the table followed suit.
“To a Marcello principessa,” her father murmured. “To one of mine.”
“Principessa,” the word echoed from several voices.
To her, being a mafia princess had never really felt like the weight around her throat that some liked to claim it to be. No, to her, being in this family was all she had ever known, and she was grateful for them.
Sure, they could be a little overbearing, and a touch too loud. Oh, they didn’t know how to mind their own business, and they could bicker like nobody’s business, too. But that was also family.
And all they ever gave to her was unconditional love, and a constant flow of adoration and support. Who could say they had all of that?
Because she could.
And she loved them for it.
She always would.
This was the moment Liliana had once loved the most about ballet. When the curtains closed, and the applause roared. When she bowed with the rest of the dancers, and she could hear thousands of feet rising from their seats. When the lights became brighter, and she could truly appreciate just how out of breath she actually was.
These were those moments.
Instead of feeling what she used to feel, all Liliana could bring forth was a sense of … completion.
Not even resignation, or sadness.
That heaviness was gone, too.
There was no weight around her neck, and no wishing to find something she used to have when she put on her pointe shoes, and moved like air. There was no rush of adrenaline in every fast beat of her heart, and gone was the longing to get it back.
It just felt done.
Liliana didn’t have time to think on it for long because the curtain was pulling open again, and the dancers were stepping forward. Her arms were linked with the two women on either side of her, both dressed in similar pearl-white costumes with their hair slicked back into tight buns, and their faces painted identically.
Yet, she knew her family would be able to pick her out easily.
She found them in the front row easily enough. Her mother sitting beside her father, and the trail of her siblings next to them. Just behind their row sat her uncles, aunts, and the rest who had been able to come.
But it wasn’t all of them her gaze was drawn to. It wasn’t them who made a tangible, visceral clenching sensation start to grab at her chest, and her stomach.
It wasn’t their gazes who met hers, and pinned her in place even as the dancers moved to bow again.
It wasn’t them.
Because it was him.
Joe.
Then, her heart jumped.
And stopped.
Joe grinned in that way of his—something she found he liked to save just for her. A simple tilt of the edge of his lips that spoke of sin, love, and darkness. It made her hands tremble, and her knees weak.
He raised his hand a bit to wave two fingers at her, and winked, too.
The cheeky bastard.
Now, his missing calls had made a hell of a lot more sense. He didn’t like to lie to her, or even omit things in their conversations. She bet he had been ignoring her calls to avoid having to do just that.
It wasn’t Joe’s style.
“Time to move,” she heard someone call behind the curtain.
Shit.
No, what she wanted to do was stand right there, and keep staring at the love of her life. She hadn’t gotten to look at him for so long, and now he was there.
The rest of the night could wait.
Surely.
Apparently not.
Liliana let the ballerina next to her drag her off the stage. God knew if she didn’t let her do it, Liliana was never going to go willingly. As usual, the dancers were flooded by the crew and people from the studio the moment they stepped behind the curtains. Flowers were handed out, and compliments given.
Another successful show.
And Liliana felt like it was her last, too.
She wasn’t really thinking too hard on that if only because her mind was somewhere else entirely. Overwhelmed, spinning, and fucking reeling. Thinking about a man she hadn’t seen face-to-face in months who was only just a few feet away separated by nothing more than a—
“Tesoro.”
Oh, his voice.
Liliana spun around to find Joe standing right behind her still wearing that grin of his. And a fucking tailored three-piece suit that made him look like every woman’s walking wet dream. Like sin in the flesh, but covered by five-thousand dollar Armani. His blue gaze drifted over her features like he was waiting for her to say something.
To say anything.
She didn’t know what to say, or where to begin.
Behind him, her parents waited patiently.
But they let him go first.
They let her see him first.
Liliana didn’t even think about it before she launched herself at him. Joe’s arms were already open and ready to catch her. With a laugh, she grabbed his jaw, and pulled him in for a fast, burning kiss that had her heart rate picking up speed all over again.
And tight …
God, he held her so tight.
Dragged her so close.
The world drifted away when he was kissing her. The now-familiar dance of their lips melding together while he coaxed her mouth open for him was as comforting as the way she dragged in a heavy, ragged breath.
The ache in her chest …
The happiness in her heart …
All for him.
Joe pulled back just enough to gaze at her again as his thumbs stroked her cheekbones. “You look beautiful, and you were amazing.”
Liliana smiled. “I missed you.”
“I know, my girl. Me, too.”
“Aren’t you forgetting something?”
His last promise.
He only had one more to keep.
She didn’t need him to, but she wondered if he would remember what he told her that he would do when they met up again.
“I don’t think I need an introduction, but for you … It’s Joe Rossi,” he murmured, dotting kisses to the seam of her smiling lips all over again. “It’s far more than just nice to meet you again, Liliana.”