The Mafias Deadliest Rosé

Chapter 11 – Jealousy Has a Name

Her name was Camille Reyes-Voss, and she arrived at the estate in a car that cost more than most of the soldiers made in a year, wearing a smile that Rose distrusted on principle before the woman had said a single word.

"Luca De Santis," Camille said warmly, crossing the foyer to press a kiss to each of his cheeks with the easy familiarity of someone who'd done it a hundred times before. "It's been what, three years? You look exactly the same. Insufferably charming and completely unaware of it."

"Camille." Luca's smile was genuine, easy, the kind he wore for old friends rather than business contacts. "Still running your father's shipping empire into the ground?"

"Into record profits, actually, but I'll allow the joke." Her eyes slid, briefly and appraisingly, toward Rose standing a few feet back in the doorway. "And who's this?"

"Rose. My—" Luca hesitated for half a second that felt, to Rose, considerably longer than half a second. "Security."

"Security," Camille repeated, amused, extending a hand toward Rose with the particular polish of someone raised to charm rooms for a living. "Well. Aren't you lucky, Luca. Mine just wears a bad suit and complains about my driving."

Rose shook her hand, said something polite that she couldn't remember five seconds later, and spent the rest of the greeting cataloguing, with a thoroughness that had nothing to do with security assessment, exactly how long Camille's hand lingered on Luca's arm.

---

"I don't care," Rose said, an hour later, to no one in particular, stabbing viciously at a training dummy in the yard with considerably more force than the drill required.

"Didn't ask," Elena said from the bench nearby, laptop balanced on her knees, not even looking up.

"She's very touchy. With her hands. On his arm. Repeatedly."

"Still didn't ask."

Rose landed another strike hard enough to rock the dummy's frame, and Elena finally glanced up, taking in the whole picture — the tight jaw, the overcorrected calm, the particular ferocity usually reserved for actual threats — with the slow, dawning delight of someone watching a puzzle solve itself.

"Oh my god," Elena said. "You're jealous."

"I don't get jealous," Rose said. "Jealousy is an inefficient emotion. It serves no tactical purpose."

"Sure," Elena said, setting the laptop aside entirely now, clearly more interested in this than any spreadsheet. "Tell that to the dummy you just nearly decapitated."

Rose lowered her arms, breathing hard, and something in her expression cracked just slightly — confusion, mostly, layered under something rawer she didn't have a name for. "I don't understand it," she admitted, quieter now. "I've never felt anything like this. It's not fear. It's not anger, not exactly. It's just — ugly, and small, and it won't stop."

Elena's teasing softened at that, replaced by something warmer. She patted the bench beside her, and Rose, a little to her own surprise, sat.

"That's jealousy," Elena said gently. "Congratulations, you're human after all. It's ugly for everyone, for what it's worth. Doesn't mean anything's wrong with you." She bumped Rose's shoulder with her own. "It usually just means you care more than you're ready to admit."

Rose said nothing to that, but she didn't argue either, and something in the quiet that followed felt easier than it had any right to — the first real friendship, she realized with mild surprise, she'd let herself have in this house that wasn't built entirely on necessity.

"For the record," Elena added, "Marco's convinced Camille's harmless. Old friend, nothing more. But I've also watched you take down four men with a butter knife, so if it'd make you feel better, I could hack her flight records and confirm she's leaving Thursday."

Rose huffed something that was almost a laugh. "Don't."

"No promises."

---

Luca noticed, because Luca noticed everything about her lately, and because he was, underneath the easy charm, considerably less oblivious than he let the rest of the house believe.

He found her that evening on the terrace, arms crossed, watching the sunset with the particular stiffness of someone determined not to look like they were watching anything at all, and he leaned against the railing beside her with a smile he didn't bother hiding.

"Camille's staying through tomorrow," he said conversationally. "We're having dinner tonight. Old business, mostly. Though she did mention she's always found me more interesting than the paperwork usually allows for."

"Fascinating," Rose said, in a tone that suggested it was the opposite of fascinating.

"She has a great laugh," Luca continued, watching Rose's jaw tighten with visible enjoyment. "Very warm. People say that about her a lot."

"I'm sure they do."

"You've stabbed that same spot on the railing three times since I got here."

Rose looked down, realized her fingers had indeed been drumming a hole into the wood, and forced her hand still with visible effort. "I have no idea what you're talking about."

"Rose." He was fully grinning now, delighted in a way that made her want to throw him off the terrace. "Are you jealous?"

"No."

"You're doing the thing with your jaw. The thing you do right before you break someone's wrist."

"I do not have a *thing.*"

"You absolutely have a thing." He stepped closer, close enough that she had to tip her head back slightly to keep glaring at him properly, and the amusement in his eyes had softened into something warmer, more careful. "It's a good thing. I like the thing."

"You're enjoying this," Rose snapped, finally cracking, the frustration she'd been holding all day breaking loose at once. "You're actually enjoying watching me lose my mind over some woman you clearly don't even care about, just to see what I'll do about it. That's cruel, Luca, even for you."

"I'm not enjoying watching you struggle," he said, gentler now, all the teasing draining out of his voice. "I'm enjoying finding out I matter enough to you to cause it. Those aren't the same thing."

Rose opened her mouth to argue and found, for once, that she had nothing ready to say.

Luca stepped closer still, close enough now that the last of the sunset caught gold along the edge of his jaw, close enough that she could feel the warmth of him even without touching, and something in his expression turned quiet and honest in a way that undid whatever defense she'd been about to reach for.

"Why does it bother you," he asked softly, "if I give another woman attention?"

The question hung there between them, simple and enormous at once, and Rose stood very still on the terrace with the sun going down and her heart doing something entirely unfamiliar in her chest, and found for the first time in fourteen years of always, always having an answer ready that she genuinely, hopelessly did not.