Page 8 of The Wrong Mafia Bride
Hazel eyes—bright, sharp, startled—lock onto mine.
For a suspended second, everything narrows to that look. Wet lashes clumped together. Cheeks flushed pink. Lips parted like she wasn’t prepared to be seen, like I’ve caught her in the middle of something private and unguarded.
“Dante,” Gabriel barks, sharp enough to break her spell. “Come on.”
I turn to see Gabriel suddenly there, standing at the driver’s side, his presence snapping me back into my body. I smirk despite myself—annoyed more than amused—because I hadn’teven registered the car rolling up behind me. I don’t like missing things. Not like that.
But my gaze slides past him anyway, pulled back toward the gardens.
She’s gone.
The space she occupied is empty now, hedges standing still and indifferent, the gravel path washed in light with no sign she was ever there at all.
I straighten, irritation settling in my chest—not at her, but at myself. Curiosity is a liability. And yet I find myself wondering who she is, why she was crying in a place like this, and why the image of her feels lodged somewhere it shouldn’t be.
“What are you looking at?” Gabriel says, his gaze following my own, and a part of me wants to jump in front of his eyeline, because I don’t want him to see her so vulnerable. A part of me feels like her vulnerability was just for me.
“Nothing,” I say, clearing my throat as I slip into the passenger side of the car. “Let’s go.”
The leather seat creaks under my weight. The door shuts with a solid thud. Gabriel pulls away from the curb smoothly, hands steady on the wheel, eyes already forward.
In the back seat, Luca chuckles quietly into the phone pressed to his ear, one elbow braced on the seatback as he leans forward between us. “You better be waiting for me when I get home,” he says, voice low and amused. His green eyes flick to me, and he winks at the scowl on my face.
“Get off the phone, Luca,” I groan.
He grins wider, teeth flashing, then pulls the phone away from his ear. “I’ll call you later,” he says, cheerful and unapologetic, before ending the call. He leans forward even more, his palms gripping the backs of our seats. “You’re tense.”
“Sit back,” I reply.
He does neither. Instead, he tilts his head, studying me. “Marriage already getting to you?”
Gabriel snorts quietly from the driver’s seat but keeps his eyes on the road.
Luca laughs. “Ah. That’s a yes.” He makes an exaggerated pout. “You have one more week of freedom, no one told you to go prematurely celibate.”
“It’s disrespectful to be fucking every girl east of the Hudson after your wedding invites go out,” I mumble as I run a hand down my face, thumb pressing briefly into my jaw.
“Bullshit,” Luca sucks his teeth as he pats my chest twice. “You are Dante Salvatore. Prince to the Italian Mafia of New York.Youcan have a mistress.”
I glance out the window, jaw tight. “No, I cannot.”
“Gabe--”
“Shut up, Luca,” Gabriel spits out, looking in both of his side mirrors before taking an illegal u-turn. “You know if Dante didn’t agree, you would be the one marrying the O'Connor girl, right?”
“Vaffanculo non succederà mai,” Luca snaps back, and from the rearview mirror I can see his eyes hardening.
“Seriously, if you weren’t such a degenerate, Uncle Gio would have made you,” Gabriel says matter-of-factly as we merge onto the highway. “He did say last week settling down would be good for you.”
I snort, leaning my chin into my fist.
Luca is my half brother—a bastard born from one of my father’s many affairs—but the only one whose mother abandoned him at our doorstep. My mother took him in without hesitation and raised him as if he were her own. In every way that matters, Luca De Rosa is as much a prince of the Italian mafia as I am, bloodlines and surnames aside.
He could marry Erin. He’s more charismatic, more suave, more openly romantic. He would know how to make her laugh, how to soften the edges of a life she didn’t choose. He would make her happy. That’s the problem.
Luca doesn’t belong to anyone. He never has. He likes to share—especially with Gabriel and me. The three of us have passed the same woman between us on and off since high school, an arrangement built on trust, appetite, and some more wicked fantasies.
Luca can’t do that to the perfect, virginal Irish princess. And if Seamus O’Connor ever found out any of us fucked his daughter besides the one married to her, he would never forgive it. He’d kill us dead.
