Forbidden By Her Mafia Stepbrother novel · Chapter 11 of 24

Chapter 11: Through the Window

Rosanna dragged the bracelet back over the bruise with a shaking thumb.

"Last winter," she whispered. "It's nothing. Don't say it. There's a microphone in the cornice, Wynne. Go. Go now."

Wynne went.

She was back in the east wing before the house lamps came on.

She did not sleep.

At two in the morning, something scraped at the guest room window.

It was a thin steel sound, a blade working along painted wood.

She was out of the bed with the lock picks in her fist before she saw the shape on the sill.

A hand pushed the sash up.

Massimo came over it and landed on the carpet in his coat, with leaves in his hair and a cut across one palm.

"You're supposed to be in Naples," Wynne whispered.

"The driver watched me walk through the gate at the airport. I walked out through the other side." He was breathing hard. "I came over the garden wall. The lemon tree is a good ladder."

"He bolted me in."

"I know. The cook told me through the kitchen window."

"You told me two days."

"I couldn't do two days."

She crossed the room in two steps and hit him in the chest with her closed fist.

"You lied at the table," she said. "You said no, and he smiled at you."

"I know."

"He wants you to say yes. Doesn't he?"

"I know that too."

"Why won't you tell me why?"

He caught her fist and held it flat against his heart.

"Because I don't know all of it yet," Massimo said. "And because every time I tell you a rule, you hear a jailer."

"What else would I hear?"

"The man who looked at you in the front hall at my father's wedding," he said, "and said, 'You're nothing to me. Remember that.'"

Her breath caught.

She had not known he remembered.

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