Sophia had sworn, loudly and often, that she had absolutely no interest in dating anyone connected to either the Cole or Marchetti families ever again, not after watching her sister's wedding turn into a small-scale corporate hostage situation.
So it was, she would later insist, deeply unfair that she fell first for the library's structural engineer, a man named Theo who showed up to the groundbreaking in mud-caked boots and immediately started arguing with the architect about load-bearing walls.
"He corrected Priya's numbers in front of everyone," Sophia complained to Elena, several weeks after the opening ceremony, picking at a plate of pasta with more force than the pasta strictly deserved. "Who does that? Who just walks up and starts correcting a professional woman's math at a publi
