“How long for?” Enzo questions, cocking a brow to add to his curiosity.
“Well, that depends,” I reply and feel the sweat begin to pour to down my back and gather across my forehead. It’s cold and unforgiving, and I hate how nervous I am. “Do I still have a room?”
“Lia,” Enzo starts softly, working toward me, and I fear the worst. “Your bedroom is still yours. We’ve been waiting for months for you to come home. Why would you think we would get rid of any of your things?”
“For what I did,” I announce and avert eye contact. I look at the floor and argue with myself to become the bitch I was, but there is something about my brother. Within all of my destruction, Enzo is that salvation I never thought I’d feel.
“They deserved it,” Carlo’s voice erupts from behind Enzo, and I look up to find him standing there with Manuel beside him. “You didn’t deserve to be carted off like that.”
“Yes, she fucking did!” Giovanni declares, slamming his drink down onto the table. “Lucky for her, chicks dig guys with scars.”
“You’re an absolute grade-A asshole,” I snarl back, immediately feeling my venomous nature toward Giovanni envelop and unfold into this monstrous beast. “I wish he’d aimed lower.” I then smirk, feeling a twinkle of malicious intent dance through my eyes. “Maybe next time I’ll have the delight myself.”
“Dream on, Princess,” Giovanni grunts, grabs his beer, and leaves us. He stops and turns back, pointing his bottle at Lorenzo. “Nice of you to bring back another thing for you to jump seeing as Maverick disappeared. You’ll need at least one person to love you other than that bastard. Or is he just something else for you to use?”
I roll my eyes at him and look back at my other brothers. I then step back, placing a hand on Lorenzo’s back to push him forward. He needs a proper introduction because clearly my brothers haven’t picked up on who he is.
“Ciao,” Lorenzo speaks with a small, nervous hand wave.
“This is Lorenzo Mancini,” I say, and wink at Carlo who used to be close to Lorenzo whenever we went to the Amalfi Coast.
“No way!” Carlo exclaims and reaches a hand out. “You’re definitely not the wimpy kid from those holidays when we were kids.”
“Sorry, wimpy?” Lorenzo asks, confusion smatters across his expression and he looks at me in terror as he tries to work it out.
“Puny, weak,” I tell him, sympathetically helping him understand better. “He means you’ve grown some since we were all kids.”
“Ahh, yes!” Lorenzo agrees and smiles brightly. “Alberto trained me.”
Of course he did, I inwardly chide.
My Uncle Alberto is an odd sort of Abbiati. He’s what some would called ‘old world mafia.’ While you live under his roof, you speak nothing but Italian – my stay being the one exception when staff spoke what little English they could. He made sure Lorenzo was not immune to that rule. Nor did he allow Lorenzo’s fitness to slip. I have seen Lorenzo in action and the timidly adorable man he usually is strips away to become a brute with a killer punch. Like I am – or was – Lorenzo is my uncle’s secret weapon because rule number is no one expects the sweet one.
“He clearly has some better qualities,” Carlo remarks, nudging Enzo. “Remember when he used to just terrorize us for being in the wrong place all the time?”
“He still does that,” I dryly add my input. I just raise my eyebrows and shrug. “He and I aren’t vast friends. I spent a lot of the last few months where I shouldn’t, sticking my nose in where I shouldn’t and causing general chaos.”
“Amelia,” Enzo, Carlo, and Manuel all groan together.
“You seriously are out to get yourself killed,” Enzo admits, looking at me as if he’s trying to work me out. “Has anything you’ve been through not taught you something?”
“Not to love back,” I chide with a scolding tone and hear Lorenzo take an involuntary gasp of air. I look at him and feel a rise of regret and pity as they mingle as one. “Lorenzo, I told you my deal back in Italy. Nothing is going to change how I feel.” I look away, almost out of respect because I feel like I’m continually punching this man in the gut. I sigh deeply before looking up. “The way I see it, is you love something or someone and when it disappears, it’s soul destroying. I’ve lived with enough grief and heartache to know when to cut a loss before real damage is done. I vowed the last time I would never go back on that and I won’t. Not even you can save me.”