Nico arrived at the Rossi estate uninvited on Elena's second day, waved through the gate only because the guards recognized him and hadn't yet been told to treat a Marchetti as anything other than family.
"I'm checking on you," he said, when Elena met him in the entrance hall, arms crossed, clearly braced for an argument he'd already decided he was going to have. "That's all. I'm allowed to check on my sister."
"You could have called."
"I wanted to see it myself. See you living in the house that put a scar down my ribs, sleeping under the same roof as people who spent thirty years trying to kill our family." His eyes swept the hall, the Rossi crest carved into the stone above the far doorway, the portraits of men Nico had grown up being taught to hate. "I keep waiting to wake up from th
