I look over my shoulder at her and give her the most evil eye I can muster.

“Seriously?” I whisper in irritation.

I turn back around to see Gavin looking at us in confusion.

“I mean, SERIOUSLY. She’s serious. It’s horrible. I’m so distraught.”

With a sniffle, I rub my eyes and curse Charlotte to hell.

Gavin reaches out and pats my shoulder. “Don’t worry. You’re not going to go through this alone. We all love you, and we’re going to find this guy and make him pay.”

Awwwww, shit. What the hell have I done? Why didn’t I just stay in my room and ignore the blood curdling scream from down the hall like any sane person would have done? When I said I needed to get a life, this isn’t really what I had in mind.

Chapter 2

– Satisfaction and Sugar –

Marco

“Hey, Ma! What was that secret ingredient you use in your Zeppole filling again?” I shout from the living room, trying to finish up a few last minute questions on my laptop to add to the final exam for the students tomorrow.

I should know the answer to this question considering I’ve been helping my mom make her favorite Italian dessert since I was five, but just like everything in my brain lately, it’s turned into a pile of mush thanks to one beautiful, shy student I haven’t been able to stop thinking about for the last two years. Stupid fraternization rules.

My mom pokes her head out from the kitchen doorway and points her wooden spoon covered in red sauce at me. “Get off that gadget and help your sisters set the table before I whoop you with this spoon.”

She disappears back into the kitchen and I shake my head, closing the lid to my laptop and pushing myself up from the couch. I’m twenty-four years old and I still tuck my tail between my legs and run when my mother scolds me. It’s not like I’m sitting in her living room writing porn on the Lord’s Day. Well, not really. I guess it could be considered food porn to some people.

Walking into the dining room, my ears are immediately assaulted by the sounds of my two older sisters arguing.

“You’re just jealous because I can date whoever I want and you’re an old married hag at twenty-six!”

“And by date, you mean screw anyone with a penis. Give me a fucking break,” Tessa groans, placing a fork next one of the plates.

“Contessa Maria Desoto! Watch your mouth!” mom scolds, setting a huge bowl of pasta in the middle of the table. “We are going to have Sunday dinner like normal, civilized people for once. No swearing, no fighting, and no throwing food.”

She looks directly at me as she says the last part. You throw one dinner roll six months ago when your sister calls you a tool and you never live it down. It’s not my fault it ricocheted off her shoulder and up into the ceiling fan before one of the blades sent it flying into our mother’s face.

Rosa looks across the table at me and sticks out her tongue. I slyly flip her off without our mom seeing as we all take our seats. Even though it might not look like it, we really do love each other. We’re your typical loud, eating, breeding Italian family, although our mother likes to remind us on a daily basis that we aren’t doing our part in the breeding department. She met our father (God rest his soul) when they were sixteen years old, got married at eighteen, and popped out my oldest sister Contessa nine months later. Rosa followed a year after that, and I came screaming into the world a year after her.

“Alfanso, honey, say grace.”

My mother folds her hands in front of her and closes her eyes, thankfully before she can see the scowl on my face and the laughter my sisters are just barely holding in.

“Ma, how many times do I have to tell you not to call me that?” I complain, trying not to whine like a little girl.

I spent my entire childhood saddled with that name and constantly being teased—mostly from my sisters, and when I left middle school behind and started high school, I refused to let anyone call me by anything other than my middle name of Marco. Sadly, my mother continues to ignore my request.

“Alfanso is a strong, Italian name and you should be proud you share—”

“The same name as my mother’s father’s uncle’s brother from Sicily,” my sisters and I cut her off and finish in unison.

“And by Sicily, we mean the planet Melmac, Alf,” Tessa snorts, earning a one-eyed glare from my mother who still has her head bowed, eyes closed, and hands together in prayer.

I bow my head and close my eyes, refusing to take my sister’s bait when she uses the same, tired joke comparing my name to some furry creature on a TV show long before any of us were born.

“Rub-a-dub-dub, thanks for the grub. Yay God!”

Mom’s hand smacks me upside the head as soon as I finish and Tessa kicks my shin under the table. One of these days I should try not being an asshole, but it’s just too much fun.

We all start digging into our food and the only sounds that fill the room for a few minutes are forks scraping plates and ice cubes clinking in glasses. It reminds me of every single Sunday dinner we’ve ever had, even if it is surprisingly quiet for the time being. Regardless of my sisters and I being adults with our own lives and our own homes, it’s an unwritten rule that no matter where we are or what we’re doing, that we always come home for Sunday dinner.

“So, Alfanso, when are you going to bring a nice woman home to meet the family?” mom asks casually as she slathers butter on a slice of homemade bread.

“He doesn’t know any nice women; he only knows skanks.” Rosa laughs.

“Skanks with the I.Q. of a banana,” Tess adds.

I glare at both of them with my fork halfway to my mouth. “Hello? I’m sitting right here. They aren’t skanks and they aren’t stupid. I prefer to call them ‘scantily-clad ladies with limited vocabulary.’”

Mom sighs. “All of my friends have photos of grandchildren on their bookshelves. Do you want to know what I have on my bookshelves? I have porn.”

In a moment of insanity and a little bit of depression after my father passed away, I got the genius idea to write a cookbook, filled with my family’s favorite Italian dessert recipes. When the publishing house I sent it to told me it was too boring, instead of getting drunk and crying about it, I got drunk and added a bunch of tips for men on how they could get any woman they wanted just by making those recipes. It included the best recipe for Italian buttercream that wouldn’t leave grease stains on their sheets after they smeared it on their girl, as well as how to give a woman an orgasm using only cannoli filling and a spatula.

“Hey,” I bristle at her porn comment. “That’s a signed copy of Satisfaction and Sugar. If you announce on Facebook you have that, women will start clawing each other’s eyes out for it.”

I don’t mean to sound conceited, but it’s true. I get emails from a ton of women on a weekly basis, thanking me for spicing up their sex life while teaching their significant other how to bake and asking if I give in-home demonstrations. It’s really great for the ego and it’s made my popularity grow so much in the book world that the publisher has requested another cookbook from me.

Rosa snorts. “Try not to break your arm patting yourself on the back there, little brother.”

My family really is proud of my accomplishments, even if they don’t sound like it sometimes. They are my biggest supporters and always tell me how impressed they are of everything I’ve done at such a young age, but to them, I’m just Alfanso Marco Desoto. The son and brother who refuses to settle down, gets a cheap thrill out of teasing his older sisters, and had to grow up real fast when our father died suddenly of a heart attack three months before I was supposed to go to Paris to be the head pastry chef for one of the most popular restaurants in the city. I’ll never regret the decision to stick close to home to teach at my alma mater and take care of my family, but I’m not going to lie and say that I don’t still dream about Paris, although helping men all over the land get laid with desserts does take the sting out of things.