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He was watching me when we pulled into a residential neighborhood filled with huge lots and imposing homes, some asymmetrical boxes and others like ornate dollhouses Papà had bought me for countless birthdays growing up. So when we slowed down in front of an enormous limestone mansion that took up almost an entire city block and Dario said, “Stop here for a moment. Let my wife see her new domain,” I couldn’t hide my reaction from him.

Which was pure awe.

It was like something from a storybook: the wrought iron balconies, the relief work carved into the stone including cherubs around the lower-story windows holding bows aloft, the many French doors, and wide windows.

I couldn’t reconcile someone as cold and awful as Dario Ferretti living in such a fairy-tale home. He was no Prince Charming, as the owner of this dwelling should have been.

He was the devil, more befitting a black tower than this pretty white mansion.

“You like it,” Dario surmised with muted pride.

I didn’t respond, but the damage had been done. Of course, I loved it. It wasn’t some modern box at odds with the old Italian villa I had grown up in, something austere and museum-like.

It harkened to the Old World just as I did, and I felt an instant kinship with the place.

After a long minute, the driver pulled forward without direction through automatic black gates and down into an underground parking space, where half a dozen other vehicles rested. I was silent as Dario opened my door and the driver went to work organizing the suitcases in the trunk. I wasn’t sure how Dario had found the time to get my luggage from my father’s estate given our hasty retreat, but I was grateful to see it and know I would have familiar things to keep me company in this strange new life.

When Dario stalked toward the door leading into the house, I followed automatically. Not out of obedience, but curiosity.

I wanted to see more.

We entered a marble vestibule with a staircase to one side and a freaking elevator to the other.

“Madonna,” I breathed in awe.

Dario made a noise like a truncated cough or chuckle, but when I looked at him, his face was implacable.

“I do not have time to show you around,” he informed me coolly, checking his gold-and-silver Cartier watch. “Bonnie will meet you in the lobby and give you the tour. If you need anything, she is the woman to speak to.”

Without another word, he turned on his heel and started to move up the stairs.

I blinked, thunderstruck by his dismissiveness.

“Dario!” I called sharply, stepping forward. “You can’t mean to leave me alone in a strange house with strange people the moment we enter?”

“Why not?” he asked mildly with a raised brow. “I am just as much a stranger to you as they are. I will see you after dinner.”

I blinked again, and he was gone, rounding the curving stairs so that only the echoing clack of his dress shoes on the marble remained.

My head dropped between my shoulders as I released a long breath that did nothing to make me feel better.

“This is your life now,” I muttered to myself in Italian. “For better or for worse.”

Without any other recourse, I stepped forward to press the elevator button so I could meet this Bonnie woman and get the tour of my new home.

To my surprise, Bonnie didn’t appear to have an ounce of Italian in her blood, but she greeted me in impeccable Italian when the metal doors shifted open to reveal a grand foyer with a mosaic floor inlaid with wood, jade, and pieces of marble. A woman in her mid to late forties, Bonnie seemed as Irish as they came, with shockingly orange hair, a dense collection of freckles across her entire face, hands, and neck, and wide brown eyes that smiled warmly at me as she stepped up to take my hands.

“Hello, Signora Ferretti,” she greeted in that flawless Italian. “I am so happy to meet you. Welcome to Edgemont House.”

“You speak Italian very well,” I told her in English, “but do not worry, I speak English.”

“Excellent,” she crowed as if I’d accomplished some wonderful feat. “The rest of the staff will be so pleased. Only a handful of them speak Italian and, even then, only conversationally, but Dario had us all enroll in classes when he became engaged to you.”

My brows raised so high they cut into my forehead. “Excuse me?”

I couldn’t believe it of the man I had just spent the last dozen hours with. Not when he had explicitly told me that he expected me to speak English.

“Well of course, he wanted you to feel comfortable in your own home,” Bonnie explained, letting go of my hands to wave her own around the interior of the house. “But some of the staff do not have a knack for languages. Gertie in particular, poor thing, can barely say ciao.”