Page 17 of Sin City Obsession (De Salvo Empire #1)

The housekeeper had of course shown up before they could slip out—thereby putting faces, and of course names, to the cause of the white, smudgy smear on the center window and accompanying drips on the floor.

Before Alessa had figured out how not to implode from that, Rocco had whisked her into the elevator, insisting on taking her out for breakfast. Suddenly his family’s in-hotel, free-for-her, award-winning restaurant wasn’t good enough.

He even had the nerve to call it a date.

Alessa tried very hard to pretend she was mostly flustered and confused by the behavior instead of flattered. But one thing had become immensely clear. Rocco Cavallo II was a kind of threat she had never anticipated.

Again, her mother’s words whispered through her memory. “You need a nice, strong, Italian man…” Mama Adimari would be so thrilled to learn Alessa even had the eye of a man like Rocco. She would need no less than a month to realize that anything serious between them would require a choice.

Alessa felt her stomach lurch, twisting in a strange way that she suspected had nothing to do with the coffee finally in front of her. She dragged in a breath.

“I can see you drowning again.”

Her head snapped up. “Excuse me?”

Rocco lifted his own coffee to his lips, but she could see his expression was calm.

Patient. “Let’s pretend we’re normal people while we’re here.

Tell me something about Alessa. Likes, dislikes.

” He paused and his eyes warmed with a smile as he took a slow sip.

“Another fond family memory, maybe. Whatever comes to mind. ”

She curled her fingers around her standard, plain mug.

“I don’t really know how to be normal,” she said.

“I grew up … in .” She shrugged. “Mom married and became a stay-at-home-mom after high school, and it was assumed when I was born that her little girl would follow more or less in her footsteps. She taught me the basic things. Cooking, cleaning, sewing—standard domestic, housewifely things modern feminists rage about. With an emphasis on the cooking, of course.” Alessa felt her lips twitch as flashes of time spent in the family kitchen danced through her mind.

Rocco chuckled. “So you’re saying we should’ve stayed in for brunch? I could get behind tasting your cooking.”

Heat rushed to her face and for a split-second Alessa would have sworn she heard a masculine-toned rush of air from the booth behind her, where Emanuele sat.

She swallowed hard. “I’m better at dinners,” she heard herself say, as if having a brief out-of-body experience.

She took a long gulp of coffee. “And no, what I was saying was that I kind of defied my parents pretty severely. I mean, I obeyed house rules like ‘do your homework’ and ‘wash your hands’ and I didn’t start breaking curfew until I was maybe fifteen, but in the grander sense…

.” Her voice trailed for a beat as she remembered her mother’s wordless disappointment the day Alessa had declared her semi-secret interview a success.

It was one of the few times she’d seen her parents argue, and she’d felt so guilty.

Her father had known, of course. Her father had had to vouch for her just to get her the opportunity.

But also, because of her father’s particular standing in the family, and Al’s still fresh joining, her willingness and aim with a gun had been about all she’d needed to be welcomed in as more than one of the women the others had to protect.

In her eyes, she’d seen herself as becoming a protector of those she loved. Like her father before her.

Alessa shook the memory away. “Mom didn’t say a single word to me for fourteen days.” She let her lips lift with a smile. “And for an Italian woman, you can imagine the feat of that.”

His laugh was louder this time, and his eyes twinkled with the amusement that carried in the sound. But he kept it brief before containing himself. “I’m glad you can joke about it today,” he said, “but in the moment, that must have hurt.”

Alessa let her gaze drop to what remained of her coffee.

“It did. I had been so proud of myself for doing something that I felt could make a difference, directly in our lives.” She licked her lips before looking up again.

“You see, my father … he used to work for Lady Eleonora’s security detail.

She was the boss’s wife at the time.” Rocco inclined his head, so she continued.

“When we were maybe pre-teens, there was an incident, and Dad did his job. He saved her life. But he took three bullets in the process.” Alessa paused, replaying what was necessary in her mind.

“One cracked his femur, the other two got him in the torso. It took him years to be able to pull himself up and shuffle around just in the house after, and he can’t do it without at least a cane, let alone for long.

So of course he had to retire after that.

” Even as Rocco frowned, Alessa felt the usual smile warm her cheeks.

“It was terrifying when it happened, but once he was home again, and starting to heal … I understood what he’d done.

And ever since, to me, he was a hero. And that was what I wanted to be.

” It was so ironic that sh e had started out her job hoping to protect the family—to be a hero to someone else—and yet it was her brother, who’d never expressed that thought, who’d died on a security detail.

Her throat closed and she gulped down the rest of her coffee before sliding the mug to the outer edge of the table.

Rocco took a second to stare into his own drink, as if contemplating. “Your family sounds like good stock. Even if your mother didn’t immediately approve of your career choice.” His lips kicked up in a flash of a grin.

Alessa relaxed again.

“Sorry for the wait!” Their fifty-something waitress in an undersized, retro uniform practically did a pirouette as she appeared at their table, a tray of food on one shoulder and a pot of coffee in her other hand.

“Refills, too?” Her heavily made-up eyes darted between them but she didn’t actually wait for a response before tipping the pot to pour the drink into Alessa’s waiting cup.

Rocco slid his mug over for a refill as well and conversation lulled until the food was settled, the mugs topped off, and the flouncy woman was again out of earshot.

Alessa drew a lungful of the combined greasy, baked aromas and her stomach rumbled.

She hadn’t done more than nibble on anything for dinner the night before, and considering the unexpected activities that had followed, she was actually starving.

She reached for her fork when she realized one other thing and her lungs froze. Her entire body went stiff with shock.

It was arguably stupid.

Rocco set down the potato-laden forkful in his hand, his brow furrowing. “Alessa? ”

She could do absolutely nothing about the tears suddenly burning her eyes. “I … slept.”

His frown deepened. “Eventually, yeah.”

“No, you don’t—” She sucked in a breath, determined not to have the strangest meltdown ever over something so mundane. “I mean, I didn’t have any nightmares. Or wake up screaming, or sobbing.”

Rocco’s visible hand curled into a fist. “Do you usually?” There was a hardened edge to his tone, but she wasn’t in the mindset to analyze it.

She barely managed not to sniffle like a child when the first tear rolled free, dripping down her cheek.

All she could do was answer truthfully. “Sometimes I’ll sedate myself,” she said, her voice quiet and choked.

“But the nightmares the next night are usually worse, so I don’t like to do that.

If I don’t, though … every night.” She swallowed a building lump in her throat. “Every night since—”

Al’s face flashed through her mind, followed swiftly by the image she’d put together on her own of him dead in that SUV. Both of those were followed by the all-too-real closed casket she’d watched her mother collapse on.

Rocco was suddenly sliding into the booth next to her, crowding her, curling his arm around her shoulders and pulling her into his side.

“You don’t have to tell me, beautiful,” he said gently.

“If it hurts like this, you don’t ever have to say the words.

” He pressed a hard, lingering kiss to the top of her head.

“But that sedation shit is done. That’s not healthy. ”

Alessa let herself lean on him as she fought off the worst of the tears, the worst of the emotional meltdown.

She struggled to breathe, but every breath she managed to draw smelled of Rocco—albeit accented with the cheap bodywash she tended to grab at the department store.

Regardless, the scent, and the feel of his arms around her, was comforting.

Soothing. On her own she probably would have succumbed, or at least failed to do more than make herself numb.

With Rocco’s comfort, though, her brunch was still warm by the time she found the strength to lift her fork and take a bite.

And it wasn’t until after that first bite had reawakened her appetite that she realized he’d pulled his plate over so he could stay beside her when they resumed eating—which he didn’t seem to have done until she had.

She did her best to hide her smile at that.

Alessa tilted her head into his shoulder after they’d polished off most of the meal.

He hadn’t left her side, or even removed his arm from around her.

The little girl who’d romanticized life itself and certainly everything about the world around her, the same little girl Alessa thought she had outgrown, couldn’t help but swoon. “Mom would really like you.”

It wasn’t until Rocco chuckled quietly and lowered his arm a little around her waist, so that his hand could rest on her hip, that she realized she’d spoken aloud. “Yeah?” He turned his head and her hair ruffled some more as he kissed just above her temple. “Good to know.”

She blamed the emotional rollercoaster of a morning on why it felt like her heart actually skipped a damn beat in her chest.