Page 4 of Isabella

I pull out my phone and tap a quick message to my friends Leo and Dante to see if they’ve handled the situation with the politician’s kid.

Henry Fordham is a bastard in more ways than one; in the general sense as a date-raping fucking loser, and in the literal sense as the product of a politician dad who cheated on his wife with one of his housekeepers.

What a fucking cliché.

“You ready to go?” I ask, nodding toward the door.

Isabella rolls her bottom lip into her mouth, biting down on it, and while this might not be the best time to get turned on by that action, I can’t help the bolt of excitement rushing to my dick at the sight.

She fiddles with her hands while she speaks. “I’m not sure that’s a good idea. I don’t want to leave Liana here by herself.”

“Didn’t she say she’s hanging out with some friends?”

“Well, yes, but…”

I nod toward Liana who’s dancing with two other girls on the dance floor. “Looks like she already found them.”

Isabella looks over her shoulder at her cousin, then back to me. “But we walked here together. I can’t let her walk back to our apartment by herself.”

I raise my eyebrows. “You walked here?”

“It’s only a couple blocks away,” she says with a shrug.

My phone vibrates in my hand, drawing my attention back to the screen.

“If you want, we can come back to pick her up and I’ll personally drive you both to your apartment. Or I can have my friends bring her back when she’s ready to leave. They just let me know they’ll be back shortly, and I’ll tell them to keep an eye on her.”

She does that cute nervous thing with her mouth again as she fidgets, contemplating her options before giving in with a small nod. “Okay. Let me just text her and let her know to call me when she’s ready to leave.”

I let out a long breath of relief, knowing I wasn’t going to be able to go the rest of the night without having some one-on-one time with this girl—somewhere other than in this damn club.

Isabella and what she did for me the day of my mom’s funeral have never been forgotten. She saved me without even knowing what she was doing.Hell,without evenmeknowing what she was doing.

Seeing her tonight in the club, in her little high-waisted black skirt and matching black crop top that mold to the curves of her body so perfectly, almost getting drugged by that fucking prick, I knew this was fate bringing us back together.

It’s not that I’ve been pining over this girl for all these years. She’s three years younger than me, which puts her around eight when we met. I didn’t know what it meant to like a girl back then. But what stuck with me from that day onward was the innocent act of her reaching out to me—a total stranger—in a time of need when she didn’t have to.

And that’s why I knew as soon as I saw her tonight—the little girl whose smile I never forgot and who’s grown into the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen—I had to ignore everything my dad has tried to drill into my head my entire life. I had to ignore his voice telling me that no woman is worth the weakness they would bring. That one day he’d find me a wife who would produce me an heir and stay out of my way because that’s all they’re ever good for.

I knew I had to ignore him after I had given up hope when my mom passed away, because Isabella had shed some light, telling me everything would be okay.

3

ISABELLA

Nicco Silvestri.

I can’t believe the little boy I met so many years ago has grown into the man walking next to me now. I remember the sadness filling his eyes at his mom’s funeral and his dad mumbling something in his ear. Nicco’s spine straightened, and he rushed to cover up his sorrow by wiping the tear away and replacing it with a stone-cold look that the men in this world are famous for.

I had never met Nicco before that day in the cemetery, but I remember the immense feeling I had of wanting to make him feel even the tiniest bit better.

Nicco and I exit the club and walk down the brick sidewalk illuminated by the streetlights and the late-night restaurants waiting to serve the drunk college students. We walk in silence for who knows how long before he finally speaks, pulling me out of my thoughts of the past.

“What’re you thinking about?”

“What? Oh yeah. Sorry. Um…” I don’t want to bring up his mom’s funeral again.

He places his hand on my elbow, stopping me, and gestures toward the wooden bench outside the local bakery. The space is lit up by the twinkle lights in the window and decorated with pots of flowers on each side of the bench that won’t last much longer once the cooler fall weather comes in.

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