Page 142 of Claimed At First Sight

My subconscious clearly agrees that Vittoria marrying Maximo makes perfect sense. She wants him. He needs a wife. They come from the same circle and would produce six perfectly behaved children who never question anything their father says.

So why did watching him turn toward Vittoria feel like a splinter lodged beneath my skin?

I refuse to examine that question before sunrise.

Or ever.

There are some places even I’m not reckless enough to go.

Several hours later, having successfully pretended that stupid dream never happened, I’m in the sitting room playing board games with my sisters, waiting for Mamma and Aldo to return from their trip.

“Stop sabotaging me,” Sienna accuses.

“I’m not sabotaging you. I’m winning,” I tell her. It’s the perfect revenge for giving my subconscious ideas.

Across the coffee table, Ari studies the board with the grave concentration of a military strategist. She moves her piece, draws a card, and sends both Sienna and me back several spaces.

“You’re both wrong. I’m the one winning,” she announces.

“You’re cheating too, bug,” Sienna mutters.

Thanks to the fire crackling in the marble hearth, the sitting room is cozy and warm despite the snow falling steadily outside.

Ari studies her next card before glancing toward my phone on the sofa beside me.

“I still wish we could have kept Gray,” she says for the umpteenth time since Maximo sent a picture of the little stray nestled against the chest of a boy yesterday afternoon.

The child’s grin stretched across his entire face while his parents smiled beside him. The cat looked content in his arms, his paws tucked against the boy’s coat as though he’d already decided he belonged there.

“Don’t you think it’s a little weird you named him after he went to another family?” Sienna says.

“He needed a name.”

“I’m fairly certain his new family already gave him one.”

“Gray suits him better.”

I hide a smile as Ari picks up my phone and opens the photograph again, staring at it.

Yesterday, I listened to her sing Maximo’s praises for most of the day. According to her, rescuing her and the cat from the alley elevated him from an ordinary Mafia don to some sort of superhero and patron saint of stray animals.

By midafternoon, I was beginning to regret not leaving her there.

The fact that Maximo hadn’t appeared at Aldo’s made her admiration considerably more difficult to tolerate.

Even now, part of me is in disbelief that an entire day passed without him showing up, inserting himself into my plans, or finding a new way to interfere in my life.

I take my phone from Ari before she can start swooning again over the man invading my dreams. She sighs and turns her attention back to the board.

My thumb hovers over Maximo’s message.

After expecting him to appear all day, all I received was a short update about a cat.

Maximo: The cat has recovered well. A foster family has agreed to take him. It’s a good home.

That’s it. That’s all he said.

No greeting or mention of our outing. And no attempt to continue the conversation.