Page 142 of The Enslaved Duet

The dreaminess in her eyes snuffed out.

“He wasle mafieand not small,capisce? He was rising like this.” She slapped her hands together. “One day, we walked with my babies. I was pregnant with you, but just, and I had not told him this. A man from anothermafia,le Cosa Nostra, he attacked us because Salvatore had done something. He took the knife here,” she said, pressing a hand to her upper right shoulder. “And my girls, they were not hurt, but I was inside here.” She moved her hand again, this time to her chest over her heart. “I knew this was no life for my babies. Seamus, he was involved because of the cards and the money. But Tore, he was involved because helikedthis life, and I knew he would not leave it.”

She shrugged as if her shoulders were waterlogged. “I asked, we fought, he begged, and I cried more tears than one person should in one lifetime, but this is life,uh? We make decisions, and this was mine.” She stared at me again, squaring her shoulders and tipping her chin in a way that was some, it made me want to cry. “You can judge me for this,piccola, but this I will not ever regret. Look at what we have today because of this choice.”

I was still too mired in her story to argue with her that we were exactly where we were that day, sitting in her restaurant in the America of her childhood dreams, because ofmemore than her.

I could give her pride. It would hurt no one to let her have that after everything she had been through.

The door at the front of the room ricocheted opened, heralding calls from my brother as he commanded the space. Mama snapped out of her melancholy to hustle up to him and squeeze him even more tightly than usual.

He frowned at me in question over her smaller form, stroking her hair softly to comfort an ailment he couldn’t understand.

I shrugged one shoulder, unable to give voice to her story.

Or my own.

Were all love stories inherently tragic?

Was that what made them so epic? Not the gentleness of connection between two souls or the comfort of their union, but the inevitable loss of it at some time or another.

I wondered if I loved Alexander in retrospect more than I ever had while I was with him, and I came up blank.

My emotions toward my Master were too convoluted to untangle. Most of all, when I thought of him now, all I felt was grief and embarrassed hatred.

I tried to pay attention as Sebastian sat down, then as Giselle and finally Elena joined us for lunch, but my mind was lost to musings.

I had a degenerate Lord blackmailing me for sexual favours, a worried mafioso and soon-to-be worried father on my hands as well as lingering, eternally unresolved feelings for the man who had once owned me.

I figured, even though my family didn’t know it as they gabbed about Elena’s plans for adoption and Giselle pretended too hard that she didn’t care about them, then as Sebastian stormed out because of Elena’s rude inquiries about Savannah Richardson, they could damn well cut me some slack for being distracted.

Cosima

“No.”

“Listen to me, dear heart.” Jensen Brask tried to reason with me over the speakerphone as I stood in the bathroom preparing for a charity event that evening. “Weneedyou. Clemence Bisset has dropped out because she had an anaphylactic attack! It’s not like I planned this, but you really are our only hope to keep this campaign on schedule. You cannot tell me you don’t care about St. Aubyn. I know after that Bulgari afterparty you resigned from your spokeswoman role because you ‘had your reasons,’” he said, slightly mockingly. “But this is one of the best fashion houses in the world, and it’s the one that gave birth to your stardom. Youowe itto us to substitute for Clemence.”

I sighed so heavily, I blew my powder brush off the sink sill and onto the floor. After picking it up, I braced my hands on either side of the porcelain basin and looked into my tired yellow eyes.

There was really no way I could risk going back to England. Once in the past four years had been one time too many. I wasn’t foolish enough to think that I could survive another visit without drawing the all-seeing eye of the Order.

“Laying on the guilt trip a little thick there, Jen,” I accused him as I resumed carefully contouring my eyelids with dark brown and gold shadow. “You know I will always be grateful for what you and St. Aubyn did for my career, but I was serious when I said I would never work for the brand again.”

Alexander Davenport owned the fashion house. There was no way I was going to have anything to do with any aspect of that man or his business.

He’d made it clear to me I had no role in it either.

When I’d first discovered the connection, I thought he might have set the entire thing up with Willa and Sinclair, that my duo in shining armor had been sent from the lord of the manor.

But there was no way.

I’d been ridiculous to think he cared about me enough to ensure my safety and success even after I’d abandoned him.

Even hearing the name St. Aubyn made my stomach ache.

“No, Jensen, I’m sorry, but I just cannot.”

“What if I told you the shoot wasn’t in London proper? You’d fly in and a driver would pick you up directly to transfer you to Cornwall. We’re doing an indoor/outdoor shoot on the cliffs of the Jurassic Coast. The theme is very Heathcliff and Cathy.”