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Renz shot me a sympathetic look before he retreated to the party.

Ethan walked up to me, expression both sheepish and concerned. He had sandy-brown hair and smooth tanned skin. A far cry from the swarthiness that encompassed Sandro with the enticing, dangerous vibe of a modern pirate.

“Are you all right? I didn’t really know how to handle all this.” He glanced over to where Sandro disappeared. “You seem to know the guy.”

“I do.”

His brows furrowed. “Old boyfriend?”

“Childhood friend.”

“He seems territorial.” He fixed his bow tie, drawing attention to the bobbing of his throat. “I didn’t want to start a brawl for your honor at Nico’s wedding.”

Sure. Damn Sandro for his ability to reduce all my boyfriends into shadows not even worthy of following in his wake. I gave him a tight smile. “Let’s go inside.”

I broke up with Ethan that night. It was hard to respect a man who wouldn’t fight for me on his own.

I went home with Mom and Dad to their six-story row house on Tenth Street. My bedroom was on the fifth level, still strewn with unpacked boxes after my graduation. At first, I was excited to look for an apartment in Manhattan, but after this disaster with Ethan, maybe I needed a time-out from the bustling city. I’d always based my ideal man on Sandro, and growing up with the forceful personalities in my family wasn’t helping either. Maybe I needed a gentler man. Someone who was anti-Sandro and anti-overbearing.

As I was mulling this over, my gaze fell on a carved wooden box. Sandro had given it to me after one of his trips to Europe. He made a joke that he’d given me all kinds of shit and it was time to have something to hold them in.

I picked up one of my most treasured gifts. The silver cuff he’d given me for my twelfth birthday. A small crystal was set in the tiny sun overlay made of 14-carat gold. Sunflowers were etched into the bracelet. The silver had faded, and I hadn’t polished it in years. It didn’t fit my wrist anymore, but that was when I imagined I would marry Alessandro Rossi one day.

Time to get rid of that childhood obsession.

Chapter

One

Three monthslater

Sandro

My office vibrated with the pounding music of Club Aristos. Other evenings, I would have tuned it out, but not tonight. Tonight, I found out Bianca was back in New York. She fucking fled to the West Coast the week after her brother’s wedding. I had been in a shit mood ever since.

The men in her family frowned at our friendship, but they normally stayed out of our hot-and-cold drama. Every effort to find her was hitting roadblocks that led to one conclusion: She’d assumed a new identity. Bianca left no credit card trails under her name. I lost track of her phone. My investigator reported she wasn’t visiting her relatives in LA. The only reason I assumed she was in California was because she sent me a postcard of the Pacific Ocean. It had a postmark of Malibu.

It said…

Hear that, Sandro?

That’s the sound of freedom from your prying eyes.

The brat.

The urge to throw her over my knees and redden that ass had never been so strong. As soon as the image came to my mind, I shoved it away savagely. But it was too late. My cock had thickened beneath my trousers.

Off-limits,I growled to myself.Bianca is off-limits.

I glared at my desk’s bottom drawer, fighting the desire to rip it off its tracks. A box of things I’d given Bianca was delivered to this club the same day she left New York. I called her, but she had her phone off. I thought she was just in a snit.

Finally, I had stormed Jabbin’ Java, and Renz smirked when he saw me. “Don’t break anything.”

“Where is she?” I snarled.

At my blatant offense, all traces of humor left his face. “Leave her be, Alessandro. Would you give her that?”

Renz De Lucci was only twenty-five, but he had more wisdom than his hot-tempered older brothers. He’d fallen into the De Lucci obsession at eighteen and married his pregnant girlfriend in the midst of a mob war. The obsession was a popular myth in their family. According to Bianca it was like a Cupid’s arrow, but instead of love, it was obsession. She had hinted it affected women, too. Well, if she were obsessed with me, then where the fuck was she?