The day Sofia Moretti found out Luca Romano was marrying her sister, she dropped out of school and boarded the first flight to Paris. The plane hadn’t even left the runway before Luca’s messages started flooding in. *This isn’t what you think. Come back and let me explain.* *Don’t go. Running away won’t solve this.* The last message was a single word. *Please.* Sofia had loved him for ten years. Every time she’d dared to say it, Luca had rejected her for the same reason: he was the guardian her father had appointed for her. They could never be together. And then he’d turned around and married her sister—becoming, through that marriage, the acting head of the Moretti family. Sofia stared at the screen. The man who never bowed his head to anyone had just typed *please*. Her fingers hovered over the keyboard for a long, silent moment. In the end, she pulled out the SIM card and snapped it in two. It was like pulling a thorn from her heart, one that had been embedded there for a decade. Three years later, if her father’s coffin weren’t being moved from its temporary vault to the family cemetery, she would never have returned to Boston. ... On her first day back, Sofia was intercepted at the airport arrivals gate. To be precise, she was stopped by the acting head of the Moretti family. Her guardian, in name, Luca Romano. They hadn’t seen each other in three years. He was thinner. The black suit still fit his frame perfectly, his shoulders still straight, but the bones of his wrists seemed sharper now beneath his cuffs. The men behind him kept their distance, none daring to rush him, none daring to speak. As Sofia emerged, pushing a suitcase full of restoration tools and sketches, Luca’s lips moved. “Sofia.” He’d always called her that when she was a child. After she turned sixteen and stood at his study door to tell him she loved him, he had rarely used that tone with her again. Sofia didn’t stop. She pushed her suitcase right past him. Luca ......
Not enough history yet to show a trend.