It's kind of hard to pick a girl up for a date when she lives in the same house as you, even if Christina is on the opposite wing of where I live. When I knock on the door, she jumps up, fiddling with her phone, before tucking it into the pocket of her hoodie. "I'm not ready yet."

"You are fully dressed, aren't you?" I ask, sticking my head into the room.

She motions toward her sweatshirt and shorts as though I'm supposed to see the problem with what she's wearing. "Barely. Where are we going?"

"Mini golf," I say, blurting out the first thing that comes to mind. To be honest, I didn't put enough thought into this. Considering our first date was at a fancy restaurant but ended with us being quasi-fugitives, I don't want to repeat any aspect of that. "What you're wearing is fine."

"I need to get my..." Her eyes roam the room looking for an excuse. I'm beginning to think she's keeping something from me. "Phone."

"It's in your pocket." I lean against the doorjamb, a wry smile flitting across my face. "Unless you have two phones. One for your other drug dealer, I presume."

She freezes, eyes wide as a deer's in the headlights. "You caught me."

"I have that intuition," I say. "Some call it a sixth sense."

"A spidey-sense?" She turns her back on me, before going into the closet. I can't remember the last time someone did that when they weren't family. When she emerges a few minutes later, she's wearing black tailored shorts and a red, flowy blouse with black heeled boots. She looks so good I don't have the heart to tell her to change. "I didn't know you were Spiderman."

"I'm more of a Batman fan," I say, watching her as Christina rummages in a drawer before tucking something into her purse.

She gives a mock-gasp as she straightens up and turns toward me. "How dare you!"

"I do dare," I say. "I dare a great many things."

Christina is silent, her eyes studying my expression as she walks over to me, but her eyes are soft, appraising, not critical. Her hands fall to her sides, uncertainty brewing in her mind. I hold one of her hands in mine, rubbing her knuckles with my thumb as she speaks. "Like what?"

"Like this," I say before I can stop myself.

She doesn't resist as my other hand cups the back of her head, fingers splaying and tangling in her hair. She gasps as I bring my mouth to hers, her heels helping to bridge the gap between us. I taste mint and a faint hint of chocolate on her lips, the waxy lipstick an artificial contrast. Christina pulls away first, her brown eyes wide, cheeks flushed, like roses high on her cheekbones.

"You dare too much," she says softly, but her voice is coy, teasing, not accusatory as her eyes cast downward, shy. "I... I, um... Do I look okay?"

"Perfect," I say, but the words ring hollow, empty as a cheesy pickup line. I don't want her to be like any other girl. I don't want this to be like any other relationship. I don't know what I want exactly, but I know it's not this. "You look perfect."

She straightens up, pulling her shoulders back. "Thanks. Are we leaving now?"

"Yep," I say, still holding her hand. "The mini-golf course awaits us!"

Christina is mostly quiet on her way there, seeming to be lost in thought. When we arrive and check in at the desk, she swipes one of the business cards and a mini-golf pencil off of the Formica counter.

"What?" she says when I turn my gaze on her. "I want to remember this place."

"Why's that?" I ask, unable to help the smile that upturns my lips.

Her words taste like a lie, sound like a falsehood, but I swallow them down and wait for a reaction. Something is off about her. Usually, she seems less guarded. More... more vulnerable, more open. Now, she shrugs. "I just like mini-golf."

"Really," I say as we get our clubs and walk over to the course with its abundance of fake grass. It's an indoor mini-golf place, complete with windmills and Astroturf. "You like mini-golf."

"Do I not seem like a mini-golf type of girl?" She raises an eyebrow before lining up a black golf ball with her club and hitting it into the hole. Or, at least she tries. It narrowly swerves at the last minute to knock into the edge of the course, spinning out of control. "Darn it."

Her fake curse words are charming instead of annoying. Maybe because it's her who's saying them. "Let me show you how it's done, sweetheart."

"Oh, because you're a mini-golf pro?" she says with a scoff, but she steps back and lets me hit the ball. It careens into hers before making a wild turn... into the hole. We both let out loud reactions: her a half-angry shout, me a whoop of surprise. "You did not just do that!"

"I did," I say as she lines up her cue with the ball again, this time having to hit the ball further to get it in. It wobbles around the edge before sinking in this time.

She shoves my chest with half-hearted force. "Did Sebastian have to put up with you cheating at mini-golf, too?"

"I didn't cheat," I say. "Though Sebastian wouldn't know that."

"Why not?" she asks before we walk over to the next hole and she gestures for me to take my turn. This time, a pinwheel is spinning slowly, blocking the tunnel and requiring careful timing and judgment. In golf, however, I've always been more of a brute force, 'whack at the golf ball until it meets the hole kind of guy'. "And, does he always just literally drop into your life like that? I mean, in a helicopter?"

Something twists inside me at the questions she's asking. Why does she want to know so much about my family? About my brother? Is there something... yet, no. She's already proven herself innocent. Lucas Black has for all intents and purposes vanished from her life, not that he should have been there in the first place. No, it's not that she's spying on me. She... This is just how people have conversations. They ask about each other's families.

"He does have a flair for the dramatic," I say. "When we were younger, he would always play the prince saving the fair maiden from the dragon."

"Were you the fair maiden or the dragon?" she asks, her voice half-serious, half-mocking.

"The dragon," I say, almost miffed by her question, but she's too kind for me to stay mad at her long. "Bianca was always the princess. Allie wanted to be a knight, too."

"Allie seems nice," Christina says, hitting the ball. It rolls smoothly until it knocks against the blade of the windmill, jerking to a stop.

"She's my baby sister," I say. "I'll always be very protective of her."

Perhaps very ironic considering her family's history with mine, but Christina doesn't know the whole truth about it, and I don't intend to tell her any time soon. From the moment that Allison Steele--now Adelina Cavalli--set a wobbly foot into our lives, her bright blue eyes wide and innocent, her expressions mischievous but awkward, we all loved her. Even my father.

"That makes sense." She sighs. "I've always wondered what it would be like to have a sibling."

"It's a little overrated when it comes to brothers, maybe." I raise a hand as the sun nearly blinds me when I position my shot. "Sebastian and I have always had a sort of brotherly rivalry going on."

"Was it a friendly kind, or do you hate each other's guts?" she muses.

"Well, what do you think?" I say with a laugh. "We're hardly best buddies, but we... I guess he makes an effort, whenever he's in town."

"What does he do?" she asks.

"He owns Cavalli's," I say cautiously, not wanting to reveal too much to her. "And he also has a bunch of other restaurants around the world."

"Also called Cavalli's?" she asks. "Is he a chef?"

I try and fail to picture my brother as Gordon Ramsey type. He's far too cool and collected for that, and besides, he would hate to get his hands dirty. I can't even imagine him with a hair out of place. The thought makes me laugh.

"No, not at all," I say. "He has very fine tastes and he's good at predicting trends, what people will want to buy or eat, that sort of thing. I guess he's kind of like an influencer, of sorts." The words feel funny even as I say them.

"So... a mafia guy works as an Instagram influencer?" she says, her voice skeptical, on the verge of breaking into a laugh. "Seems a bit hard to hide your criminal associations that way..."

"Not really. Gives us the option of breaking into legitimate business as well as a... lucrative side hustle, I guess," I say. I've said too much, but she has that effect on me. Being around her is like taking a shot of truth serum. "It's about having options. A believable front."

"Yours must not have been very believable," she says, a smile twisting up the corner of her mouth. "I saw through it on our first date."

"It's hard to lie with the police, FBI, and DEA all chasing you at once," I respond.

Her shoulders sag like my admission is a reminder that that's what I do. I lie to people. I hide the truth to protect... what? My family? These days, I don't even know anymore. It's like I'm wading through quicksand, thinking I was on the beach, not realizing that what seemed like fun and games would turn into snares of death.

"Right," Christina says. "Excuses, excuses."

I smile. It's hard to find a girl who's willing to rib me this much without worrying about being killed. Maybe it's the guns that does me in, in that aspect. We lapse into a comfortable silence, both of us concentrating on the game.

Until she speaks. "Do you ever wonder where you would go, or who you would be if you were born in a different family?"

"I wouldn't be the same person," I say automatically, the words like a reflex. I wouldn't, would I? I'd be someone else entirely, genetics would see to that. Unless she means if my father wasn't a criminal. If my mother wasn't the ex-wife of a classics professor and the current wife of a drug lord. If only, if only, if only. I had so many of them growing up and they never brought me anywhere, so I gradually have come to shut them down immediately. "What's the use in wondering?"

"Sounds like someone who's wondered a lot," she says.

"Are you always this observant?" I pull the collar of my shirt away from my throat as the sun beats down on us. "Or did God just gift you with that?"

I don't know why I bring up God. I don't know why she makes me want to bring up God, why she makes me wonder what happens after i do, why I am who i am, whether who I am is a matter of choice or birth.

"God gifted me a lot of things," she says, her voice sly as a fox's tail. "Like the talent to play mini-golf. Look, I won!"

I glance down at our scorecards. She's right. "Congratulations."

Her childlike giddiness is infectious, making me smile. She reaches up on her tiptoes, and, to my surprise, wraps her arms around my neck and kisses me on the cheek, leaving behind the scent of roses. "Thank you."

"You're very welcome." We walk hand-in-hand back to the car. "So... do you ever wonder who you would be if you had a different family?"

"Well, I know I wouldn't be here if my father wasn't Pierre Martell," she says drily. "I know that one for a fact."

"Christina..." I pause, unsure of what to say. She always has me on my toes, it seems. "Maybe it was fate or bloodlines that brought us together, but... I'd like to keep you in my life."

She turns to me, eyes wide, still clutching my hand. "I wasn't fishing for--"

"And I don't say things just to say them, Christina." I squeeze her hand, wanting her to believe me. "I mean it."

Christina's gaze skims her shoes before returning to her face. "To be honest, I don't know what to do with that. I don't know how to respond."

"You don't have to respond. I didn't say it so you could reciprocate," I say. Still, it hurts me to speak. "You can say whatever you want when you're ready."

"Thanks." Her words soften at the edges, flame curling the edges of a paper. "Let's get some food."