Page 76 of Savage Proposal

Cristian eyes grew shiny, but he blinked all of that away. For all of his emotional maturity, he wasn’t any more likely to actuallycry than I was, no matter what the circumstances. “Father David was a liar,” he said, more to himself than to me.

I could keep pushing him, but this was one of those things that Cristian was going to have to figure out for himself. “While we’re back on the subject, so to speak,” I said. “I have to deal with Isabella’s father.”

“You have to? Or you want to?”

“Both,” I said. “I want to break the man’s fucking neck for what he did, but more than that, he’s a danger to Isabella.”

Cristian thought for a moment. “What does she want?”

My hands curled into fists. “I can’t let her bury her head in the sand,” I said. “She thinks that if she ignores him, then he’ll disappear.”

“Has he contacted you at all since she’s come here?”

I shook my head. “Not a word, and he hasn’t been to our casino either, so he has to be racking up more debt somewhere else.”

“Well, if you have his cash cow, that could present a real problem for him.”

I was glad that he understood. “So, how do I deal with him?”

Again, Cristian lapsed into quiet contemplation. He didn’t look like he was praying to me, but he might as well have been for how long it took. “Normally, I would tell you the exact opposite of what I’m about to say,” he said. “But I think you and I both know that the peaceful approach would be too good for the likes of a man who would turn over his daughter to unknown evils to save his own ass.”

“You’re right,” I said. Santino Rossi was a selfish man, and he would continue to be a selfish man whether he was in New York City or halfway around the world. He wasn’t going to change if all they did was try to scare him or run him out of town. “Are you telling me to kill him,fratello?”

Cristian blinked once. Twice. His expression was frighteningly empty. “I’m telling you to do whatever you need to do to protect the woman you love.”

There was that word again. Love. “I don’t?—”

“Please, Enzo,” he said sharply. “You forget that I know you better than anyone. I know what you were like with Sienna, and I know what youwouldbe like with Isabella if you let yourself.”

“I can’t.”

Cristian shook his head. “You won’t. That’s different.” He held up a finger and ticked it in the air, like he’d remembered something important. “There is one thing that you have to do though.”

“What?”

“Show her a picture of Sienna.”

CHAPTER 47

Isabella

There was a time in my life that I truly hated going to the grocery store. It was such a chore, and I hated making a list, so I always ended up going aisle by aisle because I could never remember what I actually needed.

Right now, perusing the same aisles with Amalia, Elio at our backs, I felt an immediate sense of relief. Getting groceries at the store was something people did in real life. Normal, average people weren’t being kept in a gilded cage and forced to confront all of the worst moments of their lives.

But Lorenzo seemed to be on a campaign to make me feel more “human” again, and so far, I had been able to speak to Gemma on the phone and plan a lunch. And now, I was walking around the store, helping Amalia locate ingredients she would need for the coming week’s menu.

Not that it wasentirelyordinary. We were getting a lot of looks from the other customers, but it had very little to do with either Amalia or me. Instead, it was Elio. Some of the women were looking at him like he was something to climb and conquer. Those women were chased off from a none-too-subtle glare fromAmalia. The rest were giving Elio a wide berth, like he was seconds away from flipping out and killing people with his bare hands.

People were actually very perceptive, even if they didn’t consciously realize it.

“What are you making for dinner tonight?” I asked as we headed toward the dried pasta aisle. I knew that Amalia had a whole shelf in the pantry with different kinds of pastas. She didn’tneedto add more, but she liked to find different, interesting shapes and spring them on Lorenzo. “Cristian was coming to hear Lorenzo’s confession, right?”

She hummed in reply. “I usually make a chicken or eggplant parmesan,” she said. “But Lorenzo has asked that I take that out of rotation for the time being.”

My stomach rolled at the mention of eggplant. “Yeah, I could understand that.”

“So, what are you in the mood for? It doesn’t have to be Italian.”

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