Page 42 of Marry Me Not
The next timeI saw Cosimo was at his father’s funeral. A sea of mourners dressed in black filled the cemetery rows. The turnout was staggering. Hundreds of people had come, even though the service had been arranged in a matter of days.
I stood at Cosimo’s side while the priest read his remarks, my mind drifting back to our meeting in his office a few days earlier.
The deal we’d made was simple. Cosimo was not.
I’d spent all this time hoping he’d show an interest in getting to know me. Now that he was, I wasn’t sure what to make of it.
The man I’d dismissed as an ass was turning out to be not nearly as hard to get along with as I’d thought. I should be thrilled. Or at least relieved. It meant getting through the next six months wouldn’t be as difficult as I’d initially thought it would be.
And yet I was afraid of what might happen to the simmering attraction I felt toward him in the absence of his icy coldness.
I stole a discreet glance at him. Despite standing beside each other for the past hour, we hadn’t exchanged more than a handful of words. His expression was made of granite—blank, hard, impenetrable. Whatever grief he felt for his father had been locked away so completely that it left no cracks on the surface. A future don couldn’t afford to look weak. Not even here. Not with this many eyes on him.
He reached down and took my hand.
A jolt ran up my arm. I inhaled and prayed I’d hidden my surprise well enough. I couldn’t flinch every time he touched me. This was well within the boundaries we’d agreed on.
The boundaries I’d hoped would be enough to keep my heart safe.
His hold on me was firm, and he didn’t let go until the ceremony was over.
On the way to the reception hall, Mia caught up to me. “Fabi, can we talk for a second?”
“I’ll find you inside,” I said to Cosimo before I split off from him and the rest of the crowd. Mia and I stopped by a marble mausoleum with an angel carved out of dark stone perched on top of it.
She pulled me into a hug. “How are you? I’m sorry I didn’t call you yesterday like I said I would. It’s been crazy.”
I squeezed her back. “It’s okay. How are things with Rom?”
She’d told me a few days ago that she and Romolo had been seeing each other in secret. When the explosion went off, she was at her father’s campaign office, watching the news break alongside the rest of his staff. When she tried to go to Romolo,her father stopped her and locked her away in his apartment against her will. He wasn’t willing to risk his campaign by letting it come out that his daughter was involved with someone from the very family he’d publicly vowed to destroy.
Romolo had gone after her anyway. And gotten her out.
She sighed. “Rom’s been taking good care of me. My dad was taken into custody last night.”
My eyes widened. “Oh, Mia.”
She explained how she’d given Rom and Cosimo a recording she’d made of her dad confessing he’d taken illegal donations to finance his campaign. Her father’s campaign was over, and he would face charges.
“How do you feel?”
Mia picked at her cuticles. “He knew about the bomb, Fabi. The people who seem to be behind it—the Santoros—they’re the same ones who were backing his campaign. It was lucky no one else got hurt.”
She didn’t need to spell it out for me to understand what she really meant. It could have been Romolo. The man she loved.
I brushed my palms over her arms. “You made the right choice.”
She gave me a sad smile. “We’ll talk more later, yeah?”
“Of course.” I glanced over my shoulder. “I’ve got to go find Cosimo.”
I started to turn when she caught my wrist. “Fabi, be careful around Vita.”
My gaze jumped to her. “Why? What happened?”
“She was the one who set Rom on me. And she wanted him to do some pretty awful things to expose my dad.” Mia hesitated, looking as though there was more sitting on her tongue. Then she swallowed. “Some things aren’t for me to say, but just know you can’t trust her.”
Her warning stayed with me as I moved through the reception hall in search of Cosimo. I had thought it was odd that Vita had stood across from her sons at the gravesite instead of beside them. Had something happened between them since Gino died?
