Page 54 of Shades of Grey & Gold

Her hands find my face the way they just found his, warm and certain, and she looks at me with so much careful attention I feel my cheeks heat.

“She’s beautiful, Calogero, my God—” she says it over her shoulder at him without looking away from me. “Is this why you never come home? You’ve been hiding her from me? How could you, Calogero, how could you?”

“Mamma—”

“Come, come, I’m making coffee, you’ll have coffee—” Her arm loops around my waist tightly, and she walks me deeper into the house with the confidence of a woman who has never once been told no and doesn’t intend to start. “I’m Carmela—oh, I’m just so happy to meet you, you’re gorgeous! She’s gorgeous, Calogero.”

“It’s so nice to meet you, I’m Max—”

I hear Cal make a sound behind me. I look back. He has both hands up by his face and he’s looking at the ceiling like he’s asking a god for extra patience.

“Already forgetting the rules, Max,” he says quietly, almost to himself.

I make a face at him. He shakes his head. I mouth, sorry, and he just puts his hands in his pockets, shaking his head and follows us into a kitchen.

The kitchen smells like coffee, and something baking and it has that lived in feeling, while also being jaw-dropping. The counters, the appliances, it’s a chef’s dream.

Cal’s mother has already deposited me at a large kitchen island and is moving between the espresso machine and the stove like she has been feeding people her whole life and enjoys every second of it.

“We don’t have time for—” Cal starts.

“You have time for coffee,” his mother says, in a tone that is not a suggestion, with a look towards him that doesn’t open it up for discussion.

But Cal persists, “Ma, I just need to grab something from Nico in the office, and then we have to—”

She turns from the stove and looks at him. One look. The look that absolutely transcends language and culture, and the fact that her eldest son apparently runs a criminal enterprise… because he stops talking immediately.

“The first time,” she says, pointing a wooden spoon in his direction, taking a slow step towards him, “in forever—my whole life—you bring a woman to this house.And you want to be here for five minutes?Madonna mia1, Calogero Renzetti, you will be the death of me, I swear it—”

I press my lips together very hard.

Calogero Renzetti.

Not Callan. Not Reed.

I look at the countertop. I am not smiling. I am absolutely not enjoying her scolding of him.

Okay, I’m completely enjoying this.

Cal sighs the sigh of a man who has already lost a battle and pulls out a stool at the island next to me, sitting down with his elbows on the counter and his head in his hands for just a moment before he looks up.

“Fine,” he says, and holds up one finger. “Coffee. One coffee.”

“Espresso,” his mother corrects, satisfied, turning back to a little metal teapot-like espresso maker on the stove.

A bright voice floats in from somewhere deeper in the house.

“Is that the other brother? The one we hear about but never see? Could he actually exist?”

Footsteps. Then a girl appears in the kitchen doorway, maybe in her early twenties, dark hair slicked back in a bun, wearing a sweatshirt that says something I can’t read from here. She sees Cal and her face does the exact thing his mother’s did, except with significantly more theatrical flair. Then she sees me.

She stops in her tracks.

Her arm shoots out behind her, blocking another girl with similar features from entering. They both pause and their eyes go wide while their lips pull into smiles.

“Sophia.” Her voice drops to a stage whisper. “Stop. We mustn’t startle him.” She speaks the way a nature documentarian speaks about something rare and potentially dangerous in the wild. “The eldest brother has returned to his natural habitat and he has brought—” she leans sideways to look around Cal at me, and her eyes go wide. “Oh. Oh.” She straightens back up dramatically. “He has brought a beautiful stranger.”

“Maggie, I swear to God—” Cal starts and his face has darkened, he doesn’t look in theirdirection.