Page 41 of My Wedding Mafia Style

So has Lucy.

Nonna continues, her voice calm. “If you want the reins, show me you can hold something precious without turning it into strategy.”

Lucy’s fingers twitch in mine. I feel the blow before it arrives fully. Because Nonna is not speaking only of the business. She is speaking of Lucy.

My first instinct is to reject the comparison. Lucy is not a test. Not a symbol. Not a piece of my grandmother’s succession puzzle.

But then I remember my own words.

I saw opportunity.

I hate those words now. Not because they were false. Because they were incomplete.

Lucy turns her hand in mine until our palms meet. A small gesture. Private, somehow, despite the room. My chest tightens.

“I’m not precious,” she says, and there is humor in it, but not enough to hide the old bruise beneath.

I look at her.

“Yes,” I say. “You are.”

The words leave me before I can shape them into something safer.

Her eyes search mine, bright blue, yet uncertain. “Luca…”

I do not look away. “You are.”

Bianca makes a soft sound behind us. Isabella does not speak. Adriana’s expression gentles in a way I rarely see. My mother looks at me like she is trying not to cry, which is unnecessary and deeply inconvenient.

Nonna, satisfied with the destruction she has caused, reaches for a pastry.

“Good,” she says.

Lucy blinks at her. “That’s it?”

“For now.”

“For now is becoming a phrase I fear.”

“Asyou should.”

The salon begins to relax, conversation returning in small pieces. My father asks the server for another bottle. Bianca leans toward Isabella, whispering something that makes her grin. Adriana checks her phone. My mother comes to sit nearer, her warmth wrapping around Lucy without words.

But I stay where I am. So does Lucy. Her hand remains in mine.

Chapter 12

Lucy

By the time Nonna finishes with us, I feel like I have survived a family dinner, a therapy session, a business acquisition, and possibly a baptism. No water was involved, unless I count the ocean currently carrying this yacht farther away from the life I understood when I woke up this morning. Still, something happened in that room. Something I can’t quite put back where it belongs.

Luca called me precious.

The word is still sitting somewhere beneath my ribs, glowing like a tiny dangerous thing I should probably not touch. I keep telling myself he said it because his grandmother cornered him. Because his family was watching. Because the evening has become so strange that normal language no longer applies. But I heard his voice. I saw hisface. Luca Moretti is many things, but careless with words does not seem to be one of them.

Which is unfortunate, because I am very careless with reactions.

I can feel mine all over me as we leave the salon. My cheeks are warm. My hand is still tucked in his. My pulse keeps making poor choices, and the emerald dress Bianca forced upon me is doing nothing to help. It moves against my legs as we walk, soft and smooth and entirely too confident for a garment I met less than an hour ago.