Cara missed her bed—or better yet, Gian’s—the moment she opened her eyes and looked around. The unfamiliar bedroom staring back at her wasn’t necessarily off-putting. The big bed, earthy tones, and soft bedding were comforting enough, as far as that went. But it wasn’t home.
Her body knew it instantly.
She’d already been back in Chicago for a week, and no matter how many times she woke up in the guest bedroom of the Trentini mansion, it was still startling. It only reinforced her desire to go back to Toronto; the need to be home in familiar spaces thrummed deep.
It was only Gian’s demand that she stay away until he called her back—when it would be safe again—that kept her from booking a ticket.
Well, that, and her brother.
Tommas was not letting her go, either. Each time Cara brought up her desire to return home sooner than she was allowed to, her brother was quick to shut that idea down. Things were happening, he would say. She was better, and safer, right where she was for now.
Cara knew better than to argue with difficult, stubborn men. Or rather, she knew which battles to pick.
This was not one.
Cara rolled over in the king-sized bed, ignoring how empty it felt to sleep in such a large space with no one else to help fill it up or keep her company. She had been alone for so long, happy to find occasional fun with a man, but perfectly fine to send him packing before morning even arrived. She couldn’t quite say the same, now.
It was only a week. The loneliness growing in her heart should not have been taking up so much fucking space, like a weed getting out of control.
Love made things difficult.
Complicated, even.
Cara thought it was kind of lovely, too.
She missed Gian.
Terribly.
Cara found her charging phone on the nightstand, and brought it closer, squinting through tired eyes to see if she had missed any calls or messages throughout the night. There was nothing, and that only hurt a little more. She had talked to Gian a few times over the week, but it was never long enough. Their conversations never had enough substance. She couldn’t see his face to tell if he was simply hiding something to make her less worried, or if there really was nothing she should be concerned about.
She knew the truth.
Gian wouldn’t have sent her away if he didn’t absolutely have to. Of course, something was wrong. Of course, he kept their conversations short and the depth of them at a shallow level, in order to ward off Cara’s anxiety.
She didn’t quite know how to tell him that it really wasn’t working. She was still lonely and worried. She still wanted to go home, regardless of what was waiting there—good or bad.
Still, she stayed put.
Cara rubbed a hand over her face, wavering on whether or not to call Gian’s phone. It was early to be calling—seven her time, which meant it was eight in Toronto. Gian ran on his own time, though, which happened to be like a well-oiled machine. Up before six, breakfast and a workout, and then out the door before nine, if he could help it. He ran on the same schedule like it was his default. It didn’t matter if Cara was with him or not, his internal alarms rarely changed.
She scrolled through her contacts, found Gian’s, and hit the green phone button beside his name. The call rang and rang, four times, then five and six. On the seventh, his answering recording picked up, and she ended the call before it even beeped.
Something wasn’t right.
He should have picked up.
Cara tried to push the worries aside, knowing it could be a million other things, too. Like a late night which had him sleeping in, though that had never been a thing before. Or an early meeting with whomever, which caused him to silence his phone. The second option was more likely, so that was what Cara chose to accept.
For now.
Even knowing that Gian would see the missed call and realize Cara had called him, it wasn’t quite enough for her. Maybe the man did have her a little fucked up in the head and heart. A bit too crazy about him, and them, even after she had told herself not to go that far with someone like Gian Guzzi. He was everything she wasn’t supposed to like—not his business, his arrogant, overly confident attitude, or his life. None of it was supposed to attract Cara like the dumb moth to the pretty flame, and yet, he had.
He was the first damn thing on her mind in the morning.
The last thing to cross it at night.
She kind of wanted him to know that.
He does like his pictures …
Cara grinned at her inner voice, got the camera set up on the phone, and held it out far enough to get a shot of her in the sheets, with the morning light coming in through the window behind her. The stark, white light contrasted against her body, but not quite enough to hide the fact that she had been sleeping in very little, just black boy shorts. Her hair was a curly mess, framing her face wildly, with no makeup to be seen.
It actually wasn’t too bad.
It was usually Gian taking the pictures, teasing her while he did so, but constantly going back through the images whenever he got the chance. She had gotten more than one text from him with an image or short video clip of her that were nothing short of porn. She knew when he was doing it during their encounters, as he always told her, and she never minded enough to tell him not to.
A shot of her on her knees, with his cock in her mouth. A three second video clip of his cock filling her pussy full. Each one—new or old—was like a snapshot of memories for Cara that suddenly came back in a rushing wave. She was positive that was exactly Gian’s point in randomly sending the pictures or videos for her to see.
It turned her on like nothing else. It was filthy, like his mouth and everything else about him. He managed to make her body hot in a crowded room, and he could be across the fucking city while he was doing it.
No one knew a thing.
She did.
That was enough.
Cara sent off the image in a text before she could think better of it. And then, not wanting to sit and stare at her phone until she finally got a response, she forced herself out of bed and toward the attached bathroom.
Gian would answer.
Eventually.
Cara’s phone finally buzzed with an incoming text as she neared the dining room of the Trentini mansion. She nearly checked what the text said—likely a message from Gian, as no one else bothered to text her anymore—but stopped at the hushed, yet sharp, voices coming from within the dining room. Her brother, and his fiancée.
“Have you even asked her?” Abriella demanded.
A loud sigh followed right after. “No.”
“Why the hell—”
“Because why, Ella,” Tommas replied harshly, not even posing it as a question. “Why is it any of my goddamn business what she does, or with whom, for that matter? Why does that matter; why should it matter? It doesn’t. It never should have mattered to anybody but you and me, when it was us and our business, and it doesn’t matter with her and … whoever the fuck she chooses to run around with. She’s twenty-five, a grown ass woman. Look me in the face right now and tell me to put constraints on her, only because it might look bad on the rest of us. Is that what you want me to do, to be, like the rest of them?”
Cara knew right then and there that they were talking about her, and likely Gian, but she didn’t have the first clue as to why. She decided to stay where she was, and see what else she could learn before she made her presence known to the couple.
“I-I …” Abriella made a frustrated sound under her breath before spitting out, “You know that’s not what I mean! You’re always throwing that at me like that’s my default, Tommas. And you know it’s not.”
“It’s sounding that way, Ella.”
“It’s not,” Abriella stressed, “but does she know, Tommy? Does she understand what it means to be in the position she is? That’s all I wondered. And stupid me, I thought you would have—at the very least—asked her about it.”
“It’s been a long fucking time since I’ve seen my sister, and the last time was when I put her on a plane after she barely made it through a wedding she was supposed to be in with Lea. She was a mess, Ella. A complete mess. She’s okay right now. I don’t know if that’s because of him, or something else, but she is perfectly fine. I’m not going to upset that by poking around in her personal business.”
“But what if she doesn’t know, Tommas?”
“Know what?”
“About him,” Abriella said, exasperated. “I’ve said some stuff since she’s been here, just to see, you know, and it goes right over her head. It’s like she doesn’t know anything about him, in that regard.”
“She can’t not know.”
“Really, Tommy? Because it’s entirely possible, given what we know about her. She doesn’t take an active role in your aunt and uncle’s business, she stays out of sight of the family for good reason, and she’s never had any sort of interest in being in that spotlight. She has no real reason to know. I think she might not, and that’s why you should ask, even if it’s to … be sure.”
“Abriella.”
“It’s not for me or you, it’s for her. Don’t you get that? She could be jumping head first into a deep pile of shit and not even know that’s what it is, Tommas. That’s not fair to her. You ask, or I will.”
Tommas grumbled something under his breath that sounded a hell of a lot like, “You’re awfully pushy this morning. Aren’t you supposed to be picking out colors and fabrics for the wedding? Why are you bitching at me before ten? We should have an agreement about this sort of thing, Ella.”
“Stop trying to be cute.”
“I’m not.”
“You are.”
Figuring she had gotten all of their conversation that she would, Cara decided to make her presence known. She walked into the kitchen as another message buzzed on her phone. Both her brother and his fiancée, looked up at her arrival.
“Cara,” Tommas said.
“Morning,” Abriella said at the same time.
Cara’s attention was down on her phone.
Gian had zero chill, but she knew this already.
Send another, his message demanded, but next time, lose the panties, open your legs, and get your fingers wet for me.
Cara swore her face was burning as she attempted to stuff the phone into her pocket, foolishly thinking that would save her any embarrassment. She was going to pretend like she didn’t know her fucking cheeks matched the color of her hair.
“Something going on?” Abriella asked, a sly grin covering her pretty features.
Cara waved it off. “Nothing, so hey …” Distraction was her best friend, she decided. “Were you two talking about me just now?”
Tommas passed Abriella a look that she ignored, instead turning to grab a cup from the sink and choosing to not answer Cara’s question.
Cara looked to her brother. “You were, right?”
“How would you feel about taking a drive today?” Tommas asked.
What was it with men, thinking they could change the subject of any conversation if they didn’t want to talk about what was brought up?
“I was thinking we could head over to the cemetery,” Tommas said when Cara didn’t immediately reply.
Cara stiffened. “To see Mom and Dad, or …?”
“Lea, actually.”
“Lea,” Cara echoed.
“Do you not want to?”
Cara felt the old stab of pain in her chest at the thought of visiting her twin’s grave, but she couldn’t bear to say no. It had been too long, and in some ways, Cara had managed to put her grief aside while Gian had swept into her life like a hurricane.
Maybe she owed it to her sister.
Maybe she owed it to herself.
“Yeah, all right,” Cara finally agreed.
She almost forgot about her brother changing the subject, but decided right then, it wasn’t all that important, anyway.
Cara bent down to clean the shiny marble of the gravestone, stopping for a second to admire her sister’s name in heavy font, chiseled into the very center of the stone below angel wings. She traced every letter with her thumb, surprised to find that the ache in her chest didn’t get worse the longer she stood there.
Lea’s funeral and burial had been so difficult for Cara. She barely remembered the day, but that was mostly because she had been drugged up on a mixture of antidepressants, sleeping pills, and anxiety meds. She wouldn’t have gotten through it otherwise.
“It stopped for a bit—the world, I mean,” Cara said to the headstone, “but it started turning again after a while. I wasn’t ready for it to.”
Cara went back to wiping off the stone, though she really didn’t need to. Someone had been caring for the grave beyond the groundskeeper’s job of mowing the grass or clearing the snow, depending on the time of year. The stone was clean of debris or dust, and fresh flowers rested along the bottom and on the top of the headstone.
She set the bouquet of tiger lilies—Lea’s favorite flower—along the bottom with the rest. “You could have told me about what you were doing, Lea. I mean, I get why you didn’t tell me about Frankie, but you could have.”
“Who is Frankie?”
Cara stood from the grave, brushing off the bottom of her jeans as she faced Tommas. Her brother had been standing back on the path, far enough away that she didn’t think he would overhear her conversation with her dead twin, but apparently, he had moved closer.
“You shouldn’t spy,” she told Tommas.
He shrugged. “Believe it or not, but spying has saved my ass more times than I care to count.”
“Not this time.”
“So you won’t tell me who Frankie is?”
Cara pursed her lips, deciding there was no harm in giving the bare bones of the details. “Someone Lea was involved with. I didn’t know about it until a while ago.”
“Ah.”
She turned back to the grave, pulling a string of rosary beads from her jacket pocket. They had belonged to Lea, before her death, but her sister had left the rosary behind in Toronto on that fateful trip to Chicago.
Cara wanted to return them, as it was only one thing, but it was something she could let go of. She had been able to make a quick trip to her apartment before leaving Toronto to pack a bag, and had grabbed the rosary last minute. She hung the string of beads around the stone, letting the ivory cross hang over her sister’s name.
“The grave is well kept,” Cara said, wanting to fill the silence.
“I come a couple of times a month to say hello, and replace the flowers.”
“Do you think she hears you?”
“Do you?” Tommas asked right back.
Cara blinked away the tears threatening to fall. “We’re the same, her and me. Even our DNA is identical, Tommas. It’s like that time when we were five, and I fell off the swings at the park while she was home. I broke my wrist, and she screamed and held hers the whole way from the house to the park to find me; everyone thought she was crazy. Of course, she hears me. She’s always been inside of me, listening. I was the one who wasn’t talking for the longest time.”
“I think there’s a difference between her and you, now.”
“Oh?”
“She’s not alive, anymore, Cara. You are. What was cannot now be.”
She still felt like she was living for two some days.
Sometimes, it helped.
Other times, she thought she was failing somehow.
“I still wish they had cremated her,” Cara admitted. “Then I could have taken a piece of her with me.”
Tommas frowned. “I think you’ve taken quite a lot of her with you, if you think about it.”
Maybe.
Cara didn’t know.
“Are you going to tell me what that whole discussion was between you and Abriella this morning?” Cara asked, keeping her back turned to her brother. “I listened to the whole thing, by the way.”
Tommas snorted. “I figured you did.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“I have another question instead, Cara.”
She pivoted to face him. “Shoot.”
“Are you happy?”
Cara didn’t even have to think about it, not for long. “I wasn’t. I was living in a black hole all the time, and I couldn’t escape from it. I felt like I was drowning nonstop.”
“And then you weren’t,” Tommas supplied.
“I guess not.”
“Would that happen to be because of someone?”
“Do you mean Gian Guzzi?”
Tommas smiled a little. “Yeah, that’s who I mean.”
“I think he helped,” Cara admitted, “but I think he made it possible for me to drag myself out of that black hole, too. And maybe that’s the more important part.”
Her brother nodded. “Then that’s all that matters. It’s all I need to know. The rest is details, and I’ve never cared for those.”
Neither had Cara.
“Come sit, go through these albums with me,” Abriella said from the couch, as Cara walked into the living room. “I’m sick and tired of doing wedding things, and I need a break.”
From her position, Cara could see some of the albums were weddings.
“That kind of defeats the purpose, doesn’t it?”
Abriella shrugged. “It’s not mine, so not exactly.”
Who was Cara to argue with the bride-to-be? She joined Abriella on the couch, curious about where Tommas was. After he had brought her back from the cemetery, he had disappeared upstairs. He hadn’t come back down since.
“Maybe not this one,” Abriella muttered, tossing an unopened photo album aside.
“What was that one?”
“Damian and Lily’s wedding.”
Oh.
The wedding that Lea was supposed to be in with Cara, but had died before she could attend. Cara did not need physical proof of how messed up she had probably looked that day, not the reminders of how it had made her feel to plaster on a smile and get shit done when she had been two seconds away from taking her own life. She opted not to open the album.
“Will you come for the wedding?” Abriella asked. “I know Tommy really wants you there.”
Cara smiled. “I’ll try. No promises. I have a co-op set up with a woman’s shelter to do work in the summer, too, and I won’t be able to take time off when it’s required hours.”
“Is it really that bad to be here?”
“Not as bad as I thought it would be. But it’s not always easy, either.”
Abriella frowned and looked away. “I get that. I guess if it was Alessa, I wouldn’t want all the reminders, either.”
“It’s not the reminders,” Cara said quietly. “It’s what isn’t here. Lea isn’t here, not like she is at home. And as much as it sometimes suffocates me, I would rather her be everywhere than nowhere.”
“Huh.”
Cara cleared her throat, willing away the sudden emotions lodging there. “It’s hard to explain.”
“No, I think you did pretty well there, actually.”
Cara knew all too well that Abriella Trentini was not unaccustomed to loss. In a few short months, she had lost her grandfather, both of her parents, and her brother. All that she had left now for her close family was her surviving sister. And Tommas, she had him, too.
The pain may not have been the same, but it was familiar enough. It surely stung and ached and ate away at Abriella in her quiet moments, much like it did for Cara in hers.
She didn’t doubt that.
“All right, enough of this,” Abriella said, blinking away the wetness gathering in her eyes. “No tears, or Tommas has a fit. Let’s look at some pictures, huh?”
“Sounds good.”
Although, Cara would much rather get Gian on the phone and figure out when exactly she could go back home.
She settled on the pictures, instead.
Cara found that the albums actually weren’t too bad. Most were older family photos of the Trentinis, their vacations, and the kids as they’d grown up. There were other albums of weddings from other families, Christening of babies, and more. There were even some memories that Cara had forgotten, things that had brought all the Outfit families together.
It surprised her to see herself and Lea in a few of the albums, sitting off to the side in a corner, people watching as they sometimes had done together as young teens.
“Canada Vacation and Wedding,” Abriella read from the front of the next album.
Cara wasn’t really paying attention at that point, as she was focused on the album in her hand, and the few photos of her and Lea that were hidden inside.
She only looked away from the photos when Abriella said, “Guzzi Wedding—Gian and Elena.”
“What?”
Abriella was already flipping pages, moving past decorated halls, silk-lined tables, and an ornate cake. Cara saw a familiar man in a suit standing with his father, and his younger brother. One of his mother, too, putting his boutonniere on.
No.
Cara couldn’t trust what her own eyes were seeing.
She didn’t believe it.
Abriella flipped the page again.
The woman was beautiful, and her white dress, modest at the top, yet covered in satin, tulle, and jewels, made her look like a proper princess.
A Mafioso principessa, actually.
Cara did a double take, not recognizing the woman with her perfectly done makeup and her upswept blonde hair. The ice in her brown gaze as she stared at the camera with a learned smile said she wasn’t exactly happy, but her posture spoke of elegance and grace, regardless of her emotions.
Gian and Elena, Abriella had said.
Was that the woman’s name?
Elena?
“When was that?” Cara asked.
Abriella turned the page, showcasing new photos, with Gian standing next to the very obvious bride. Both wore rings, as that too had been photographed, their hands laying one on top of the other.
“Abriella, when was that wedding?” Cara demanded, ripping the album from her.
“Whoa, relax.”
Cara flipped through more photos, progressively getting more irritated as she went. “When?”
“Three years ago. I flew in with my grandfather. Joel came, too. The invitation was basically for everyone, but only a couple of us went. Pretty common for famiglia weddings.”
Cara couldn’t breathe.
“He was married.”
It didn’t even come out as a question.
Abriella cleared her throat loudly. “Is, Cara.”
What?
Her inner question must have been as clear as day on her face, because Abriella shrugged and added, “Men in a position like Gian Guzzi—an heir to a Cosa Nostra family, a good Italian and Catholic, a Mafioso, do not get divorced. There is no acceptable divorce. He is married, Cara.”
It was that moment when her brother finally decided to make his presence known again, walking into the living room as though he didn’t know Cara’s whole world had been tipped upside down. This was what Tommas and Abriella had been discussing, she realized. This was what they knew, and that she hadn’t.
Cara felt dumb.
So fucking stupid.
Flashes of memories filled her mind, statements by people that she had let fly over her head, or reactions people had made when Gian took her out publically.
He had a wife.
That meant Cara …
She was his mistress.
A goomah.
Whore.
“What’s wrong?” Tommas asked, his gaze shooting from Cara to Abriella. “What happened?”
Abriella didn’t look all too concerned. “We were going through some albums and—”
Tommas was at Cara’s side before she had blinked, grabbing the album from her, only to see the last photo she had been looking at. One of Gian, and this Elena woman, kissing on an altar. Likely their first kiss, Cara didn’t know.
She didn’t care.
“Why would you do that?” Tommas asked Abriella.
“He’s married,” Cara said faintly.
Abriella stood from the couch, stoic and stone cold. “She deserved to know. I let her figure it out.”
“Abriella.”
She was already walking away.
Cara wished she could be angry.
She was, but not at Abriella.
Not even at her brother.
“Tommas, he’s married,” Cara said.
How had she not known?
Tommas looked down at her, wariness filling his eyes. “I don’t know much about it, just that he is, and that’s all.”
“I’m going home.”
“I don’t—”
“I’m going home.”
It wasn’t for her brother to decide.
Not on this.