CHAPTER 4: Rosalia.

“Nothing happened, and they’re not my bodyguards,” I rolled my eyes. “You know Matteo would've been around the corner somehow and even showed up before anything got messy.”

I wished he did.

Her shoulders relaxed slightly, but she still wasn’t convinced. Davina never believed anything she didn’t say first.

She stared at me for a couple of seconds before a sigh swifted out of her nose, eyes trailing across the room as if the walls might spill my secrets. Then she dropped onto my bed.

“If anyone should be crying, it should be me. I’m the one about to be married off to that mutiny of a man, and not the other way around. You know how many times I’ve imagined stabbing Vincenzo in the throat with a salad fork just to avoid becoming Mrs. ‘Don-in-Waiting?’”

I forced a chuckle, hoping she didn't notice. Her jokes were never just jokes. They were distractions. She hated seeing me unhappy, and this was her way of showing up for me. So, she kept going, trying to make me laugh.

“My whole life’s about to be reshuffled like a rigged deck. School, my license, med school… poof, gone. Because apparently being a future doctor and being the wife of a Don-in-waiting don’t mix well in the De Laurentiis manual. Let's not even talk about the constant surveillance outside this damn house. San Francisco was fun until last week.”

“I don’t think you have to give it all up,” I met her large honey-brown eyes that sparkled with fire and defiance for a quick second before I tore mine away and closed the journal quietly, wrapping the thin rope around it.

From my peripheral vision, I noticed Davina narrowed her eyes at me. “Seriously?”

“You can still finish school,” I muttered, “wear heels into gunfights, maybe operate on a senator while six men hold assault rifles at your back,” I tried to make my own joke, and it successfully earned a deep snort from her.

The sound alone made my heart flutter, alongside the brightest smile that stretched across her warm oval face, her blonde, voluminous curls bouncing around her.

“Come on,” she gave me a look. “You don’t have a boyfriend, do you?”

“What?”

“You don’t,” she waved off my confusion. “Of course not. You’re seventeen. You’ve got this perfect little fantasy world all tied up in that diary. I swear, Rosie, you need to start living a little outside those pages.”

“Oh, God.”

Here we go again.

She was always doing this. Always trying to dissect me like I was something broken that she had to fix before the wedding clock ran out, as if I didn’t know the cost of silence already.

“You know how impossible what you’re doing is,” she squinted. “Yet you still thinking love is a fairytale and not a game of power and placement. You better let whoever he is go before it breaks you. And I mean it, I’m not sticking around to sweep up the pieces when it happens.”

“You don’t know me,” I sucked my teeth, turning away. I set the journal down on my desk and opened the drawer to create space for the journal, where my clips and crunches had taken over, anything to give me a reason not to look at her.

Stupid me!

That gave her enough time to snatch the diary.

“Davina!” I spun around too late, she was already backing up as her name floated directly from my throat.

She already had the rope off.

“Correction.” Davina’s tone turned hard. “I’m the only one who does. You don’t get to keep secrets from me,” her lips thinned. “I’m the only person in the house who actually sees you, Rosie. You're not hiding anything from me. Not now. Not when we’ve got, what… less than a year left to bond and you know we might never see as often again.”

“Give it back!” I lunged forward, but she sidestepped, and I landed hard on my stomach, breath knocked out of me.

Immediately, I felt her knees pinning my back and her palm splayed across my scalp, pressing my face into the bed. A cold rush shot through my chest… he held me down like that.

My body locked and I couldn't breathe.

The only movement I could make was push inward to get her off of me, but I couldn't. She was older, stronger and fast when she wanted to be. On the other hand, I was weak. Even if it had only been a week since it happened, my heart and thighs still ached.

“You can’t just read it!” I managed a groan.

“Why not?” she asked, laughing. “I’m not gonna leak it to the damn tabloids. I just need to know which unfortunate soul has your heart tangled up so bad that it has you writing whole sonnets like a lovesick fool. Because I know. You must think I didn't notice you and Matty before the gun works.”

My heart somersaulted in my chest. 

Unfortunately for me, with her index finger, she flipped to the last page where the inner rope was tied carefully into the spine.

“Found it,” she giggled. ‘Sometimes I think about him more than I should. Not because I’m in love with him, but because I think I already was before I knew what love meant. He makes me feel like I’m not made of glass. And I want to be anything but breakable –’