Prologue

ANNA

Dante Caputo had stolen every thought I'd ever had, and I couldn't bring myself to even hate him for it.

Would I have given him so much of myself if I'd known I would lose him when he turned fifteen? I'd lost one of my oldest friends to his family business.

The Caputo family business.

When you put ‘the' in front of any family business you knew that it was serious business.

What was once our large friendship group had diminished until it was down to four of us, me, Dante, Gino and his closest in age brother, Joey, who had joined the business also. But I'd been devastated by it because I knew what it meant, had seen it many times before when one by one the boys had grown into what was considered to be men and they needed to earn their keep. Perhaps I should have been more bothered by what that work entailed, however, that was not the reason for my sadness. The real reason was that the move signalled an end to their childhood and the friends they left behind.

Me.

We still chatted when we saw each other from time to time, but as the days turned into weeks, those occasions reduced until they were almost non-existent.

After spending three long years pining over Dante, I decided after a pep talk from my father, to focus on my education. I had always been a good student, but with nothing to distract me, I quickly became an A plus student. That was when I considered the possibility of a future in law. All things considered it really had been no more than a pipedream. My father had initially laughed when I first told him of those ambitions and then he took me to meet with The Capo, and he hadn't laughed. He had told me that a career in law was a solid choice and one that he would happily support, under one condition, that I worked for the benefit of the family.

That was the end of my career in law before it had even started.

My father supported my decision not to pursue law and instead to move away and study fashion design. It was the sublime to the ridiculous on the face of it, but I had chosen it deliberately, something that would hold no interest for the family. Something that could remain untouched. Clean.

Now, at almost seventeen, not only was I saying goodbye to the only home I had ever known, but I was also leaving my family and friends.

Dante.

My bag was packed and I was killing time until I needed to leave for the station when there was a knock at the door. Opening it, Dante filled the space. He was dressed in jeans and a t-shirt that stretched tightly across his chest and shoulders that I swore had grown since I had last seen him a number of weeks before.

"Hey."

I couldn't fight the grin that one word evoked. "You look well."

He smirked and threw in a small shrug. "I wanted to come and see you, before you leave." A sad expression crossed his face, albeit briefly. "And you look better than I do."

"Did you want to come in?" I didn't have much time before I left, but I could think of no better way of spending my remaining time here than with Dante, even if it was a goodbye.

Moving back, he accepted the invitation to enter. Closing the door, I turned and found he was in front of me, almost toe to toe. His smell assaulted my senses and the close proximity of his body made me hot and breathless. When I'd earlier thought he had grown, I had been right because at that precise moment he was too big for the hallway, or at least that's how it felt. He had never been anything other than gorgeous in my eyes, but as he filled out and muscles replaced his earlier more juvenile physique, I didn't doubt that at least fifty percent of the human race would class him as being incredibly handsome. He stood at around six feet tall. His thick dark hair was perfectly mussed, his natural waves lending themselves to the pushed back style he wore it in, and eyes that were the richest brown, bored into me, possibly seeing through to my very soul.

"Anna." He inched closer still, before he reached forward and ran a hand across my cheek and then pushed his fingers through my hair until he was cupping my head and pulling it closer. "I don't want you to go . . . to leave me."

"Dante, I don't know what you want me to say to that. What would happen if I stayed? I haven't seen you for weeks and I understand that is how things are, and will be for years, maybe forever."

"Not forever," he told me, leaning in, as if he was about to kiss me.

I had imagined this moment for as long as I could remember, but no matter how good my imagination had been it hadn't done it justice because I was virtually panting, the heat of my skin now spreading everywhere, and I do mean everywhere.

"I swear to you, not forever."

"This isn't what I want either. I don't want to leave you, never did, but I think I have to, for us both because this, us, wouldn't work, not now."

"Do you mean that, not now?"

I nodded, emotion suddenly clogging my throat as the reality of what I was doing hit me. Dante was asking me to stay and I was essentially saying no, even if I wanted nothing more than to be with him.

"Then, let's make a plan. You and I come back together, after you've finished school and I can give you the time you deserve . . . and you deserve all the time, Anna, you deserve that and so much more, mia ragazza, because that is what you are, my girl, always and forever. What do you say?"

"Yes," I managed to croak.

"So now I would like to kiss you."

"Yes," I repeated, but this one was more of a choke than a croak.

He laughed, his breath grazing the skin of my forehead, the loose strands of my hair moving like a blade of grass might under the gentle breeze of a light wind.

"Dante," I hesitated, not because I was having second thoughts, but because I was nervous. "I want you to kiss me, but I don't know how . . . I haven't . . ."

He grinned, resembling a wolf about to pounce, perhaps he was. "That makes me so happy, knowing that I am the first one to kiss you."

I wanted him to tell me that he hadn't kissed anyone either, but he didn't. I knew that as part of the move from boy to man involved women, prostitutes, and it hurt me to know that while I had lay in my bed at night thinking of him, imagining his kiss and his touch, someone else had been getting all of that and more.

"And you will be the first to kiss me."

My eyes were drying as I stared up at him, slightly disbelieving of what he was saying. Could it be a lie, some kind of line he was spinning me? I searched the deep pools of his eyes that bore into me and saw nothing but truth and sincerity. "But you have known women."

"I have, but have never kissed one, until now, mia ragazza?"

His lips fused with mine, and in that moment I had found total happiness.