Page 12 of My Wedding Mafia Style

Lucy blinks. “I’m sorry, is that a compliment or a warning?”

Bianca lifts her glass. “In this family? Yes.”

This time, everyone laughs. Even me.

Lucy looks around the table, startled by the sound, then laughs too. Soft at first, then real.

And that is the exact moment I realize I have a problem. Because my family does not simply like her. They are beginning to claim her.

Worse, I am letting them.

Chapter 5

Lucy

By the time another glass of champagne appears in front of me, I should know better. I really should. Sitting at a table full of Morettis, I’m beginning to question whether champagne is actually a beverage or simply poor judgment with bubbles.

I stare at it. It sparkles innocently. Everything treacherous sparkles first. Champagne. Diamonds. Luca’s eyes when he’s amused.

“Drink,” Bianca says from across the table. “You look like you’re thinking too much.”

“I am thinking exactly the correct amount,” I tell her.

Luca’s hand is still covering mine. That is not helping. Not because I want him to move it. No, my problem is that I don’t want him to move it at all. Apparently tonight, Iam determined to collect problems the way some people collect seashells.

His thumb shifts once against the side of my hand.

Not a stroke exactly. Not enough for anyone else to notice. But I notice. My entire nervous system notices. I reach for the champagne with my free hand.

“Careful, Lucia,” Nonna says.

I freeze with the glass halfway to my lips.

“I’m sorry?”

Her expression is calm. Too calm. I’m starting to understand that when Luca’s grandmother looks calm, someone else should probably feel alarmed.

“Champagne makes honest women more honest.”

Bianca smiles. “And dishonest women more interesting.”

The entire table looks at me. I put the glass down.

“Generally,” I add.

Luca makes a low sound beside me. It might be a laugh. It might be a warning. With him, I’m beginning to suspect those are the same thing.

Nonna lifts her own glass, studying me over the rim. “Then you have nothing to fear.”

That is exactly the kind of sentence people say right before you have several things to fear. I take a small sip anyway. Because I am brave … or doomed.

The champagne is crisp and expensive enough to make me feel underqualified. Around me, conversation begins to spread again, overlapping in that easy family way where everyone talks at once and somehow still hears every insult, compliment, and suspicious pause.

Sofia asks me more about Celia. Alessandro asks whether my family is local. Bianca wants to know what color bottle kits sell best, then immediately announces that ocean blue should be my signature color because I have “the eyes for it.” Isabella asks whether I have ever made a revenge bottle, which I pretend not to hear, mostly because I start designing one in my head immediately.

Tiny black glitter.

A little broken heart.