Chapter 1 - The Button on the Marble
"Get out of my house. You and that filthy little brat."
The words struck three-year-old Lily before Rosa could reach her.
Lily stood beneath the grand staircase in socks embroidered with yellow ducks. In her open palm lay a small gold button she had found beside the console table. She had meant to give it to Isabella Romano. She thought it was pretty.
"She was trying to give you something," Rosa said, hurrying out of the kitchen.
"Then teach her not to touch things that belong to other people."
Rosa dropped beside her daughter, her apron dragging on the marble. Lily's fingers opened; the button fell. "Honey, look at me. You're okay."
Lily stayed still. Behind them, Bruno's silver tray rattled.
"Miss Romano," Mr. Bruno said quietly, "the child has done nothing wrong."
"Did I ask you?"
A measured footstep sounded above them.
Alessandro Moretti descended from the upper landing, charcoal shirt open at the throat, his expression unreadable. He passed his fiancée without speaking. Isabella turned to follow him, a smile beginning at the edge of her mouth.
"Alessandro, I was just explaining the rules of the house."
He crouched and retrieved the button from where it had fallen. Then he knelt before Lily.
"I think you dropped your treasure," he said.
Lily studied his face. A tear slipped down one cheek. She reached for the button and accidentally closed her fingers around his thumb.
His breath caught. Rosa saw him recognize something he had been refusing to see: the dark eyes, the stubborn little line between the brows, the shape of a face that changed when it smiled.
He rose.
"Rosa and Lily aren't going anywhere," he said to Isabella. "Not tonight. Not ever. Go upstairs."
"You cannot order me away like a servant."
"I didn't call you one. Upstairs."
When the hallway emptied, Rosa lifted Lily against her shoulder. The child buried her face in Rosa's hair, still holding the gold button.
Alessandro stood a careful distance away.
"Why have you never told me she is our daughter?" he asked.
Rosa felt the old fear open inside her, sharp and familiar.
"You don't get to say 'our' because her eyes remind you of your mother."
"They do," he said. "But that isn't my only reason."
"Then tell me one thing about her. Her favorite breakfast. What frightens her. What she calls the rabbit in the kitchen."
Alessandro said nothing.
"Exactly." Rosa stood, her knees aching. "You know how to command a hallway. You don't know my little girl."
His jaw moved once. "Then let me learn."
"First," she said, "you have to learn that I can tell you no."
She carried Lily toward the kitchen, leaving him in a house where no one had spoken to him that way in years.
Behind her, Alessandro called, "Rosa?"
She stopped without turning.
"Are you saying she might be mine?"
May you like
Rosa looked down at Lily's small, trembling hand.
"I'm saying you should have asked me that question three years ago."
