Page 43 of The Kiss that Captured a Billionaire

Mother and daughter… her last name…

It was too much of a coincidence.

She wiggled her nose at him. “If you don’t let me go, I’m going to shrivel into a prune before we get anything to eat. For some reason, I’m suddenly starving!”

He caressed the mark once more before he kissed her and forced himself to release her, schooling his face into something close to normal.

“I’ll feed you,” he promised, though his voice came out low and uneven.

She rewarded him with a smile and rose on her toes to kiss him, warm and unguarded, before slipping beneath his arm and stepping out of the shower with a playful slap on his right buttock and a giggle.

He stood there for a moment, water streaming down his body, while his world tilted on its axis.

By the time he turned off the taps and stepped out, she was wrapped in a towel, already disappearing toward the bedroom. “I’ll be in the kitchen,” she called.

He reached for his own towel—but his gaze snagged on the bathroom counter.

Her silver locket sat there, delicate and unassuming.

He picked it up.

The weight of it was light in his palm, but something deep inside him felt heavy. He caressed the seam with his thumbnail before applying pressure.

The locket snapped open. For a split second, guilt pierced him—he’d opened what wasn’t his. But the guilt drowned beneath the tidal wave of certainty.

Lost in the shock of his discovery, he didn’t notice the tiny scrap of color that slipped free and fell to the tile. His attention was locked on the two smiling faces inside.

The image of the dark-haired woman with Rose’s mouth struck him in the gut. He knew her face as if it were his own. He had been studying it for the past three months.

Livia Alliata.

The air left his lungs in a curse. He braced a hand on the counter, his hip digging into the edge as the room seemed to spin.

It couldn’t be.

But… it was.

Rose… my Rose… is Livia’s daughter.

The thought echoed through his mind.

He had found Lorenzo and Sophia’s missing granddaughter. She was his lover.

He closed the locket, his hand tightening around it. The ripple of realization cut both ways—one part shock, one part something far more dangerous.

This changed everything.

Not only had he found her… he’d crossed a line there was no coming back from.

He had touched her, claimed her, wanted her in ways that went far beyond the boundaries of his godfather’s trust.

And yet?—

No, he hadn’t betrayed Lorenzo’s trust. This only made things inevitable.

His gaze slid through the open bathroom door to the rumpled sheets where she’d lain with him only minutes ago. He wasn’t going to lose her. If anything, this made his course of action clearer.

Tomorrow, he’d call Mimi. He’d tell her Rose needed to be free of the theatre. That she needed to come with him to London.