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His fingers stilled. “New York?”

“My parents’ home,” she corrected, eyes chasing the silhouetted line of the landmass in the distance. Pretty little lights seemed forever away.

“In Italy?”

She nodded. “It’s a villa in the countryside, very beautiful, and very peaceful. There are these ruins on our land, ancient andfalling down, now. When I was a child, my brothers and I would play all sorts of games amongst them.”

“Like what?”

“Oh, pirates, marauders, anything. They were wonderful to hide in.”

“And be crushed by, if they fell down around you?”

“Yes, a distinct possibility,” she agreed with a soft laugh.

“I’m surprised your parents allowed this.”

“They probably didn’t know,” she said, lifting one shoulder. “We were very good at grabbing the horses and just riding out for the day.”

“They must have wondered what you were doing.”

She glanced up at him. “Were you so closely monitored in your childhood?”

His laugh was something she felt rather than heard. His whole chest shifted with the force of his amusement. “Cristo,no. We were also given a lot of freedom.”

“And what did you do with that freedom?”

“It feels like a thousand years ago.”

“Are you such an old man?” She teased.

His hand stroked lower, to the base of her spine, then back up to between her shoulder blades and she let out a sigh that bordered on a purr.

“How much do you know about my family?”

“You mean besides the fact you are the very spirit of the devil in human form?”

Another laugh. “Besides that.”

“I know that you grew up outside of Rome. That’s about it.”

“With my cousins, as well as my brothers, and Sofia.”

“Who’s not related to you, right?”

“She is my parents’ goddaughter, but was very much raised as part of our family. I think of her as a sister.”

Emilia thought then of her own brother Leandro, who they’d all recently learned had been adopted by their parents.

“And King Ares your brother?”

His smile was reflective. “We’ve known Ares a long time, as you know.”

“Yes,” she murmured. Before arriving in Moricosia, she’d presumed it would give the Santoro bid an advantage, but once she’d spent time in the city, her confidence with her own proposal had grown. She didn’t push that point now. “Why did your cousins grow up with you?”

She felt him tense, and wondered if she’d asked something he wasn’t willing to discuss. But then, he breathed out, and said, “After my aunt died, my uncle couldn’t cope. He began drinking, heavily. Womanising. It wasn’t the best environment for children, so my parents stepped in.”

She compressed her lips thoughtfully. It was strange how the Santoros had become, in her mind, villains of the highest order. She’d never really looked beyond that visage, the reputation they held within her family, to contemplate them as people. Yet there was something humanising about this story — about a family that pulled together with love, when needed, to protect the younger generation.