PROLOGUE: Rosalia.

We were told the Tri-Annual Gathering was supposed to be a celebration. Every three years, the families would come together in glittering ballrooms and fortified villas with walls so thick you couldn't hear the gunshots from the other side. 

I was seven the first time I attended. I wore silver shoes that hurt my toes and a dress that made me feel like a porcelain doll someone forgot to love. I clung to my sister’s hand and watched men with eyes like stone kiss her cheeks and compliment my father’s loyalty and servitude.

Now, I am seventeen. Still wearing dresses and pretending I belong to a world that wants to mount me like a statue. Except this time, I wasn’t clinging to my sister’s hand. I was waiting for him.

Dominic.

Just the thought of his name made warmth climb up my ribs and settle behind my throat. He wasn’t like the others or even polished like the famous Vincenzo. He wasn't carved from ice like the other trained heirs we were paraded in front of. Dominic was the only one who ever looked like he wanted to run, and the only one who ever asked if I wanted to, too.

“Shh,” a voice breathed into my face like he'd been running, while his strong hands clapped over my mouth during a blackout behind a chapel. “Look at me.”

My giggling was muffled, and he sighed exasperatedly, letting his fingers travel to my jawline.

“You broke his nose, Rosa.”

“He deserved it.” 

He laughed once, then leaned closer and made me swear I’d never let them turn me into a statue, and then proceeded to kiss my ears with things I’d never repeat – not even in my sleep because some things were too sacred to risk.

“Do you want me to kill him?” A glint of mischief danced in his eyes, and I shook my head quickly, my brows pulling together. 

I should’ve been scared. My father had warned me about the De Laurentiis a thousand times. He called them, “charming until they don’t need you.”

Nevertheless, I wasn’t.

Dom wasn’t mine yet. But he swore he’d find a way.

“Wait for me by the fountain after the gun works.”

I swallowed. “Okay.”

The gun works was one of those twisted rituals that made outsiders think we were playing dress-up. Men fired antique pistols loaded with blanks and ceremonial rifles into the air in synchronized bursts, a display of fake peace between families.

The louder the shots, the more bullshit they were trying to bury.

My stomach still churned every time I heard it. However, it made anticipation twirl inside me because that sound meant he was coming.

Even though I’d been to D.C. four times before, it never stopped feeling like a world apart from ours in San Francisco. I was raised in sunlight, school life, and cafe parties. Here, this life always felt fictional to me, like pages from a book my father never let me finish. No wonder he never let us stay for too long. That was changing now, though, at least for my sister.

The sky turned orange and gold as the ceremonial gunfire thundered in the distance. Even muffled by walls and space, my breath shook. 

A gust of cold wind pushed through the hedges, and I pulled my shawl tighter. The air was crispy and stingy in the garden just the way he and I always liked it.

It was tucked behind the ballroom, past the ivy-covered wall and through a maintenance door most people ever noticed. Dominic found it first, of course. Said it was too perfectly hidden not to be his grandfather’s idea. It was our hideaway. We’d sneak off every few years when the families met for mergers and strategic alliances, and tonight should’ve been the same.

Except it wasn't.

Because he was late.

I checked the time. 12:04 a.m. My back pressed against the marble edge of the fountain that was old and chipped, within the courtyard in the estate where the Gathering was held that year. It smelled like stone and moss and roses. I flattened my palms to the cold rim, watching the surface ripple beneath the moonlight. 

The noise from the ballroom was mellowed with laughter, wedding vows exchanged for the newly wedded heirs and merged families, and the occasional burst of applause. A celebration of power in pressed suits and killer heels, but this wasn’t my scene.

I hadn’t even wanted to come, but my father insisted. 

“I’ve always been in the Cosa Nostra and you are now, Rose. There are rules here. Appearances.”

And appearances apparently meant dragging his daughter around in designer gowns while assigning a six-foot shadow to follow her everywhere.

It took me fifteen minutes to lose him.

“Bathroom,” I’d said, flashing the sweetest smile I could fake as I reached the velvet-curtained hallway.

Matteo’s jaw tensed the way it always did, as if he didn’t trust me but didn’t want to admit it.

“I’ll wait outside,” his voice was flat, but at least it wasn’t a grunt. For once, he sounded almost sentimental, which made him attractive. 

“You know, if you really think I’m reckless, you don’t have to guard me. You could always tell my father you’re tired.”

His eyes cut to mine. “I am tired.”

“Oh?” I tilted my head. “Of me?”

He looked away, uninterested, like the question annoyed him more than the dozens I’d thrown his way tonight.

“It’s dangerous in here tonight.”

“That’s sweet.” I brushed his arm gently, softening only because I liked watching him pretend not to feel. “But unless you're planning to follow me into the stall...”

The grunt came anyway, and my lips curved. I was fine. I wasn’t alone.

I stepped in close enough to smell the leather of his coat. “Try not to kill anyone while I’m gone.”

His silence was permission.

The moment I got in, I veered left into the staff wing, slipped through the maintenance door, and let it creak closed behind me. My heart thudded like it remembered the pattern of his knock.

Three years.

Three years since I’d last seen him in person. Since I’d touched his hand without fear of cameras or secret phone calls and texts or even consequence. I was tired of hiding. Tired of pretending we didn’t mean something. Even if we were still hiding, tonight, if he showed up, I was going to let him touch me.

My heart did that dumb little skip thing it forgot how to do for anyone else. Excitement curled through me as I stepped out from behind the pillar, ready to startle him the way he used to startle me.

“Dom?” I whispered, but the name died in my throat.

No answer.

But the footsteps didn’t stop, so I walked around the hedges, still smiling until the grin slid off my face like someone had poured ice down my back.

It wasn’t Dominic. It was the man he swore would never find me.