King of Wrath (Kings of Sin #1) by Ana Huang

Janis pursed her lips, Gianni shook his head, and I quietly ate my potatoes while tension gathered over the table.

“Put your phone down.” Dante didn’t look up from his plate, but everyone, including his parents, flinched at the cutting steel in his voice.

After a drawn-out second, Luca straightened, set his phone to the side, and picked up his knife and fork.

Just like that, the tension dissipated and conversation resumed.

“If you ever tire of the corporate world, you should become a babysitter,” I whispered to Dante while Gianni waxed nostalgic about his last trip to Indonesia five years ago. “I think you’d do great.”

“I’m already a babysitter.” Dante slid the words from the corner of his mouth. “Thirty-one years with no promotion. I’m ready to resign.”

He grimaced at a speck of stuffing on one of his green beans and shoved the offending vegetable to the side.

A laugh bubbled up my throat. “Perhaps you should. I think your charge is all grown up.”

“Do you really?” Dante cut me a skeptical glance.

“Well…” I flicked my gaze at Luca, who was shoveling food in his mouth and sneaking peeks at his phone when he thought his brother wasn’t looking. “To an extent. But you’re his brother, not his father. It’s not your job to babysit him.”

Dante assuming a caretaker role was a natural consequence of his parents’ abandonment, but it was a heavy burden for one person to bear. Especially when the cared for was a grown man who seemed content to let his brother do all the heavy lifting.

The tiniest flicker passed through Dante’s eyes. “It’s always been my job. If I don’t do it, no one else will.”

“Then no one does it. You can support someone without fixing everything for them. They have to learn from their own mistakes.”

“You seem very passionate about this topic.” A hint of amusement laced his words.

“I don’t want you to burn out. But if you take on too much, for too long, you will.” My voice gentled. “It’s not healthy, physically or mentally.”

Dante was thirty-six, working a high-stress job with a high-stress family. He had little to no downtime. If he kept this up…

My stomach tightened.

The thought of anything happening to him bothered me more than it should’ve, and not just because he was my fiancé.

The flicker in his eyes returned, hotter and brighter. His expression softened. “Enjoy the meal, mia cara. Don’t let my family bullshit ruin it.”

A velvety flutter brushed my heart. “Don’t worry. I can enjoy good food under any conditions.”

It wasn’t true, but it made Dante smile.

I shifted, and our legs grazed beneath the table. It was a whisper of a touch, but my body reacted like he’d slipped his hand beneath my skirt and caressed my thigh.

The conversation from the rest of the table fell away as the mental image of his touch entered my bloodstream in an intoxicating rush.

There must be an invisible thread connecting my fantasies to his mind, because black bled into the edges of his eyes like he knew exactly what I was picturing.

My pulse drummed.

“So.” Luca’s voice snapped the thread with brutal efficiency.

Our heads jerked toward him in unison, and my pulse pounded for an entirely different reason when I noticed the speculative gleam in his eyes.

The table was too large and our voices too low for him to have heard us talking about him, but he was clearly up to something.

“How’s the wedding planning going?” Luca asked.

“Fine,” Dante said before I could answer. The softness was gone, replaced with his usual curt tone.

“Glad to hear.” The younger Russo took a bite of turkey, chewed, and swallowed before saying, “You and Vivian seem to be getting along great.”

Dante’s jaw hardened.

“Of course they’re getting along great,” Janis said. “They’re in love! Honestly, Luca, what a silly thing to say.”

I pushed my food around my plate, suddenly uneasy.

“You’re right. Sorry,” Luca said a tad too innocently. “Just never thought I’d see the day when Dante fell in love.”

“Enough.” Dante’s tone was sharp. “This isn’t a roundtable on my love life.”

Luca’s grin widened, but he heeded his brother’s warning and didn’t say anymore after that.

After dinner, Dante, Luca, and Gianni cleaned the dining room and took out the garbage while Janis and I did the dishes.

“I like the way Dante is around you,” she said. “He’s less…”

“Uptight?” Normally, I would’ve never been so blunt to the man’s mother, of all people, but wine and days of sun had loosened my tongue.

“Yes.” Janis laughed. “He likes things done a certain way, and he’s not afraid to tell you if they don’t meet his standards. When he was a toddler, we tried feeding him broccoli with a bit of mashed potatoes on it. He threw the plate on the floor. Three-hundred-dollar Wedgwood. Can you believe it?” She shook her head.

I didn’t ask why she’d been serving a toddler food on Wedgwood china. Instead, I broached a more sensitive topic, one that’d been weighing on my mind since my beach conversation with Dante.