Page 21 of The Sun & Her Burn

They’re all I’ve ever wanted, I thought but didn’t say.

“So, who was she,patatino?” Elena demanded to know, using my childhood nickname. “She certainly seemed your type. Blond and beautiful.”

“She’s nothing like Savannah,” I said before I could curb the impulse.

Which, of course, made everything worse.

My sister was like a bloodhound. Once she caught a scent, she could not let it go.

“Ah,” she said smugly. “So she is not just some other Unidentified Woman. What’s her name?”

“Linnea Kai,” I muttered. “And we aren’t seeing each other. She’s an old friend.”

“The one he sends the postcards to,” Tore noted, to my surprise.

When I shot him a look, he shrugged. “Cosima has spoken to me about this. The girl you write to.”

“She shouldn’t tell you my personal business,” I said, even though it made Tore, a seasoned criminal himself, flinch slightly.

“Sebastian,” Elena reprimanded. “Don’t be rude. Tore is part of our family.”

“Your family,” I corrected, even though it was cruel to do so. Something about the Italian had always rubbed me the wrong way and brought out the worst in me. I did not respond well to men who tried to be my authority figures, not after Seamus and the circling mafiosos of my youth.

I did not find crime romantic, not after my childhood. It was a testament to Dante’s winning personality that I liked him at all, given his job. Mostly, I liked him because he would raze the earth to ash for Elena, and she deserved that kind of love.

All my sisters did.

“Ours,” Elena snapped. “You are the one who always stressed to me the importance of family. Do not disparage ours now when we have all fought so hard for each other.”

Only a big sister could make a grown man feel so ashamed.

“I apologize, Tore,” I said, facing him even though I did not like the look of him.

Something in his pale brown eyes, a shade darker than my own, unsettled me.

“Nessun problema,” he said quietly in Italian.

No problem.

He was always too kind to me, always too attentive.

I wished Elena and Dante had not invited him.

“You should ask her out,” Elena said, not to be deterred from her mission. “You haven’t truly dated anyone since Savannah Richardson.”

“I’ve dated plenty.”

“Loved, then,” she pressed. “You haven’t loved since her. Since them.”

“Elena…” I warned.

But she would not be ignored.

“I read that Adam Meyers might lose his part in the new Daventry film because there are rumours he had a sex tape with a male lover,” she said baldly.

I looked around on instinct, my heart racing at the thought of anyone hearing the gossip. I hadn’t known there was a supposed sex tape, butcazzo, of course there was. My chest burned, and for a moment, I thought I might be sick in the yellowfin tuna on my plate.

“Have you spoken to him?” Elena asked softly, reaching to smooth her fingers over my knuckles, white from the strain of clutching my water glass.