Page 2 of A Son Hidden from the Sicilian

Luckily, he was a very good scrabbler, because he had ended up amassing far more than he’d imagined in even his exceptional dreams. Perhaps this was why he could take Dante’s lies with a grain of salt. Eventually the man would show a weakness, and Lorenzo would pounce.

He always knew just when to pounce.

Besides, Lorenzo’s business continued to succeed. And this was the bottom line. Let Dante wage whatever personality wars he wanted. Lorenzo was interested only in the bottom line.

Of course, tonight his bottom line was a little different than it usually was. He was not here for business. Not here to thumb his nose at all the screaming tabloids or even Dante himself. Though he enjoyed both.

No, his attendance at this art show was about one very specific artist.

And there she was. Not dressed in black like the other artists present. She had never quite fit the stereotype he had in his head of artists as moody, strange, dark and brooding characters.

She was bright. Cheerful. Dreamy. And her art was all of those things, with touches of a kind of whimsical macabre. She painted beautiful landscapes and portraits, then used some kind of embroidery to hint at darker shadows. Bones beneath a dress, blood spilling out of the beautiful earth.

He was not shocked her art had taken off. She wasunique, his Brianna, and what did the art world like if not that?

HisBrianna. He scowled at that. He had broken things off two years ago when she’d started to getideas, and he had not found those ideas as horrible as he should. He’d been fresh off a business success and it had gone to his head. He could admit that now. He’d gone to Florence for a holiday overly confident, careless enough to make him soft.

But then and now, Lorenzo had a clear plan for his life, and while he had to adapt to certain challenges, detours and surprises, women and relationships wouldneverbe one of those. Marriage to a struggling American artist did not match his life or business plans, so it had needed to be over.

He’d cut her off and continued to focus on what truly mattered.

Building his empire. Protecting his family.

He had no regrets about that, though the vision of her now threatened that belief. It was as if the entire past two years had evaporated, and he was once again an overly confident fool desperate to have her alone.

Because no one had quite compared to Brianna in the time since he’d left her, andthatwas irritating. That two years later she could appear in the same room as him and he could feel exactly as he had when he’d first laid eyes on her.

Then, she’d been in a museum. Painting. She’d been dressed casually. Jeans and some multicolored sweater with her hair piled up on her head. But unlike the rest of the artists in her group, she’d been focused on her work. The students had been chatting, packing up, and she had been lost in what she’d been creating.

He had been rapt. He’d watched her until she’d finished. Then approached her. Coffee had led to dinner, and then in the blink of an eye two months had gone by and he’d extended his holiday long past when he’d meant to leave.

Sometimes he still wondered if those two months had been a dream. A hallucination. He had certainly not been himself. Maybe she’d cast a spell on him. Sometimes he’d rather believe that than the truth.

Brianna Anderson was remarkable.

She was not dressed so casually tonight—she was wearing a white-and-gold gown that exposed triangles and diamonds of skin at different points. Her eyes were smoky, her hair in long, dark waves around her shoulders. Her cheeks were flushed as she spoke animatedly to a woman dressed from head to toe in black in front of a large piece Lorenzo recognized as Brianna’s own artwork at once.

But his gaze kept following the artist herself around the room. She was introduced to different people by the woman in black, and engaged in a variety of conversations over the course of an hour. She carried around a flute of champagne but never took a sip, just worried the stem in her fingers.

Never once did she look his way. Never once did she venture too close to where he still stood in the shadowed corner. He might have thought she simply didn’t see him. But it was too convenient—this distance between them at the same party.

So he bided his time. Let some of the people begin to filter out and away. The exhibited pieces were marked as sold—hers more than any other artists. A strange burst of pride settled in his chest that she would be the star tonight.

He supposed it was that pride that had him acting when he’d been determined to just observe this evening. Instead, he approached her. He tried to make some observation about the portrait she was staring so intently at, but he couldn’t look away from her. Within reach. He stood there, looking down at her, while she stared resolutely at the painting. As if she didn’t sense him here.

He doubted very much that was true.

“Hello, Brianna.”

She didn’t move. For ticking seconds, she stood perfectly and utterly still. So still it wasn’t as if she hadn’t heard him. It was as if in fight-or-flight she was stuck atfreeze.

There should be nothing remarkable about her. She was of average height, size. She had brown hair and blue eyes and a fair complexion. She had the mark ofAmericanall over her.

And yet...

The fabric of her dress, glittering in gold accents, settled on her curves like poetry. That fair skin seemed imbued with a warmth he’d once felt...and hadn’t since, no matter how many women he’d taken to his bed. And the blue of her eyes reminded him of something he could never place but spent far too many hours trying to.

She finally turned her head. She looked up at him, but her expression was politely bland. Her gaze fairly puzzled. “Oh. Hello...” She trailed off purposefully. As if she didn’t remember his name.

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