Page 11 of Rosetti Family New York

He turns to me, folding his arms, not worried at all. “And what makes you think that?”

“You can’t pretend you haven’t thought about it. Access to all those rubies from Burma, diamonds from Botswana, emeralds from Colombia. You’ll be printing money and forging a strong alliance.” I can feel my control slipping. I cling to what I know, towhat works best. I let my lips curl into a flirtatious smile. “And you'll have me. Unless you want to pretend you can do better?”

His laugh is a spark in the smoke. I hate how it gets to me. How it makes me feel exposed. How it gives him the upper hand. My heart drums in my chest as he steps closer, inch by inch, like he might call my bluff. Like he might call my father and demand Juliet instead

“Seems as if you’re the one doing the pretending,” he says.

He sees right through me. Maybe he has the same fire, the same hunger, the same desperate need to be the one left standing.

My pulse jumps. I’m not going to let him have the advantage without a fight. He wants me as much as I want this. I raise my chin, and it almost feels like I’m the one with nothing to lose. “You want this wedding as much as I do,” I say.

The pause is electric. More powerful than the roar of the crowd. “You think you know me,” Leonardo says.

He doesn’t say I’m wrong.

I watch his tattoos shift as he cracks his knuckles. Heat rushes through me. His confidence is maddening, dangerous, irresistible.

“Make the call,” I say. The words come out strong, but I’m quaking inside. “Or did I overestimate you?”

His eyes glint with something almost like admiration. Almost. “You want to know my choice, Eleanor?” He rolls my name off his tongue, and my heart stops. “You?” he says, taking in my carefully held composure, my tightly pinned control. “Or the sister?”

I take a breath. It comes out sharp as a knife. “Yes. Which is it?”

The fight is still raging. Leonardo stares at me, heat and challenge and chaos, all I should be terrified of but want anyway.Then, slowly, he nods. “You,” he says, just loud enough for me to hear over the riot of fists and bodies.

I don’t let my relief show.

I don’t think I do.

Leonardo reaches for a cigarette behind his ear. He strikes a match. Inhales. Smirks like it’s the second part of the deal. “The wedding’s tomorrow,” he adds.

My control shatters in one startled gasp.

6

Leonardo

The wedding is still hours away, but breakfast feels like a full-scale ambush. "You better be making the right decision about this Eleanor," Nanna Toni says, tiny and savage across the table. "Or I will have to give you a beating like when you were eight years old."

Dom grins into his sfogliatelle, and I crack my knuckles. "You’ll have to catch me first," I shoot back.

"This is more than a joke, Leonardo," Nanna says, spooning herself another helping of yoghurt. For a tiny lady, she sure eats a lot.

"It’s never a joke with Leo," Dom says. "It’s a full-scale disaster or nothing."

I glare at him. "I’m marrying the woman. What more do you want?"

Nanna doesn’t flinch. "I want you to do what is right for you and the family."

I focus on my toast, thinking about Eleanor’s ice-blue stare. Why’d she say yes in the first place? Is Richard twisting her arm somehow? Hell, for all I know, she’s the one doing the twisting.

"Got something to say, Leo?" Dom asks, green eyes daring me to start something. "You look constipated. Or like you’re gonna back out."

"I’m not backing out." It comes out more defensive than I mean it to.

Nanna leans forward, still fierce and unbending. "I’ve lived through more than you, boy. Your mother and your father too. You are a Rosetti, yes? Then act like it."

Her words settle like concrete. But I shove them off with a shrug and a grin. "You lived through the dinosaurs, Nanna?"