[DISCONTINUED] Don't Forget

Prologue

Three years passed since Simone, Luca, and Emiliano got married and the men were appointed heads of the Rossi family by their grandfather. They traveled to Italy in the middle of their honeymoon only for Emiliano and Luca to learn that their grandfather made it impossible for them to give up their seats.

When Simone suggested the men could get around their grandfather's terms by finding a proxy to run the business in their place, Luca and Emiliano spent weeks trying to figure out which of their three cousins — Niccolo, Florentina, or Ricardo — they could trust with such power.

Staying in Florence, Luca couldn't handle the triggering memories of what he endured at the Rossi villa, which led him and Simone to go to Sicily while Emiliano remained on the mainland. During their time there, Luca and Simone visited the orphanage where he lived after his mother's death and before is father forced him into the Rossi family, and Simone met Violetta, the woman who raised Luca while he was there as well as some of children.

Meanwhile in Florence, Emiliano was engaging in Rossi business meetings as the head of the family along with his cousins while assessing which of them would be trustworthy enough to act as a proxy for the men. However, Emiliano found the "advice" his cousins gave him ahead of meetings with their allies and business associates to be inconsistent with what he remembered from shadowing his father and grandfather growing up. That was when he decided that he couldn't trust any of them and hit another wall.

Luca and Simone returned to the mainland, with Luca feeling refreshed after visiting his loved ones in Sicily, allowing him to tolerate a few more days in Florence. After hearing from Emiliano that he couldn't trust any of the cousins to hold the proxy position, the three of them met with Emiliano and Luca's aunt Claudia. She was the only one who acknowledged Luca as part of the family and had a close bond with him and Emiliano that felt motherly in nature.

And it was that close bond that helped Luca and Emiliano decide that Claudia would be the one to proxy for them. When they announced it, their cousins took it surprisingly well. Niccolo, as Claudia's son, was fine with the decision and figured it would line him up to be the next head of the family. Florentina and Ricardo were not as happy, but to the two of them, Claudia made a more legitimate family lead than Emiliano and Luca, so they didn't raise objections. Plus, they figured that she would want to retire soon and give up her position in a few years. 

In the end, Emiliano and Luca were able to return to New York with Simone and live their lives as they wanted. They converted the top two floors of Emiliano's building into a two-story penthouse with five rooms and five-and-a-half baths, a large terrace, living room, entertainment room, and full-sized kitchen.

Something Emiliano and Luca never expected, it felt like they got a happy ending — married to and living with the woman they loved while running a successful New York business and enjoying a lavish lifestyle.

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A/N: Welcome back to the new and improved version of this book because I finally have a more solid story line without the initial overcomplicating I was going to do!

Main thing here (and I recognize this can be difficult): While I kept in many of the scenes and characters, there are changes to the base of the story, so please do your best to try to read this with fresh eyes!

I'll start posting chapters late night PDT on September 27.

Don't forget (see what I did there 😉) to follow me for announcements/updates!