Page 95 of Enzo

“Swear to me, son. Swear on your own life that you’re not in business with Atticus.”

Enzo didn’t miss a beat.

“I swear on my life, I’m not in business with Atticus.” He had to be telling the truth because nobody lied so effortlessly.

“Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m taking my wife home.” He pushed a strand of hair back, then whispered against my ear, “Ican’t breathe when you’re not with me,mia anima. I missed you so fucking much.”

His words settled like molten chocolate in my blood.

I should have pressed, asked questions, but instead, I let him pick me up and carry me to our little cottage where he spent the night showing me exactly how much he missed me.

36

PENELOPE

It had been three weeks since I snuck out of Enzo’s house, and somewhere along the way, I realized that Sicily was no longer my home. Enzo was.

No idea how or when it happened, but it was a fact I knew with certainty.

The frustrating part was that just as my love life bloomed, another part of my life started to fall apart: Amara’s illness.

“Want to play a round of cards?” Enzo offered, keeping his voice soft. We’d been here for hours and he’d attempted to engage Amara multiple times. “If you win, you get to captainThe Cello.”

The Cellowas the name of Enzo’s superyacht, and Amara had been begging him to let her behind the wheel.

I held my breath, hoping to glimpse that familiar spark in her eyes, but it never came. She just shook her head, not even sparing him a glance.

I watched her, a thin tube inserted into her vein while a bag of medicine dripped poison into her, fighting the cancer. The sight broke my heart.

I wore a brave face just like everyone else, but I could feel it waning.

A smile was frozen on Mama’s face, but her eyes were wide with terror. And Papà… he wasn’t faring any better. At the present moment, he had the doctor cornered by the entrance to her room, and I could hear him threatening him. I assumed he was demanding an update on the donor list, probably even insisting the doc take his liver so Amara could get better.

The doctor refused.

Rhnull was the world’s rarest blood type. It meant that she lacked any Rh protein antigens on her red blood cells, which made her cancer all the more treacherous.

We shared the same blood type in a ten-thousand-mile radius, but it was for naught, because Dr. Gvozden claimed my organs weren’t a match. My hands were tied. I wanted to visit another doctor for myself—surely one would agree it was worth a shot, even if she ended up rejecting it. But Papà had prohibited it.

I’m not losing two daughters, he’d said, ensuring the directive had reached every doctor in Italy. I was off-limits.

It left us all feeling helpless.

“We can go back on Enzo’s yacht after your treatment,” Damiano said, trying to make our sister smile.

We’d spent two days sailing around the island with my sister and brothers, and even our parents had joined, once tensions had simmered following Enzo’s return.

Things had been going so well, we should’ve predicted it would all come crashing down.

Amara’s blood results weren’t improving and they’d found clots, which was the reason we’d cut our sailing short and were back at the hospital today.

She hadn’t uttered a single word the whole ride here. She stared ahead, her eyes muted with pain. Every so often, she’dslowly raise her free hand, her fingers brushing against the hat on her head.

There wasn’t a single strand left, and the hair loss made her self-conscious. She even slept with that hat on. It made me want to cry.

I took her fingers between mine and squeezed them gently.

“I won’t let it fall,” I rasped around the lump in my throat.