Chapter 4 - Family Ties and Hidden Bloodlines
The heavy silence in the study was broken only by the distant sound of gulls outside the window. Mary stood frozen beneath Liam's touch, her breath shallow, every nerve ending hyper-aware of his presence. Slowly, Liam dropped his hand, stepping back to put a safe, civil distance between them.
"Sit down, Mary." He gestured toward a plush leather armchair opposite his desk.
She hesitated, then walked over and sat down, keeping her posture rigid. Liam returned to his high-backed leather chair behind the mahogany desk, resting his elbows on the arms and steepling his fingers together.
"You came to Palermo for a wedding," Liam stated, shifting from personal to business with jarring speed. "A distant cousin. Elena Moretti. She married Marco Rossi three nights ago."
"Yes," Mary said, narrowing her eyes. "How do you know that?"
"Marco Rossi is the son of Salvatore Rossi, one of my primary shipping associates in Catania. Every major family in Sicily was represented at that wedding. Including mine."
"And you noticed me?"
Liam let out a low, humorless chuckle. "You think I attend weddings to dance with elderly aunts? I observe everyone who enters my territory, Mary. Especially when they carry a face that hasn't been seen in Palermo for over twenty years."
Mary frowned, her brow furrowing in confusion. "What are you talking about? My face has never been in Palermo. I grew up in Rome. My mother never let me visit Sicily."
"Your mother is Elena Rossi—born Elena Salvatore," Liam corrected, leaning forward, his eyes piercing straight through her. "My father's younger sister. Which makes you my cousin."
The room seemed to spin. Mary gripped the armrests of the chair, her knuckles turning white. "That's impossible. My mother’s maiden name was Romano. She always said her family died in a fire when she was a child."
"She fled Palermo when she was nineteen," Liam said quietly, his voice devoid of mockery, filled instead with a strange, heavy melancholy. "She ran away with a low-level accountant from Rome to escape an arranged marriage to a rival clan leader. She changed her name, cut all ties, and pretended the Salvatore family never existed. But blood doesn't wash away that easily, Mary. Especially when you show up at a family wedding carrying the exact same eyes as my grandfather."
Mary stared at him, her mind reeling through a lifetime of memories. Her mother’s sudden silences. Her refusal to ever speak of her past. The old photographs locked away in a wooden box in their Roman apartment—photographs of a sun-drenched island she had never been allowed to visit. It was all true. She wasn't just a random tourist caught in a storm. She was walking among wolves, and one of them happened to be her blood.
"If you knew who I was, why did you pretend you didn't know?" Mary asked, her voice trembling slightly.
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"Because I wanted to see how you would react," Liam said honestly. "I wanted to see if you possessed the same fire your mother had when she defied my grandfather thirty years ago."
He stood up, walking around the desk and stopping beside her chair. "Now that you know the truth, Mary, you have a choice. You can pack your bags, take my private car to the airport, and pretend none of this ever happened. Or you can stay, learn the truth about your family, and discover why your mother ran away in the first place."
