Page 68 of The Billionaire's Vow

“Do you remember that summer in Italy?”Max asked, swirling his whiskey lazily.“The time Luca swore he could outdrink a local fisherman and ended upsinging operain the middle of the street?”

Luca scoffed, setting his glass down with a deliberate clink.“First of all, it wasnotopera—it was a dramatic retelling of my heartbreak at losing a poker game.”

Ava chuckled from beside him.“You lost a poker game?”she asked, truly astonished.

Luca pointed at her.“You don’t understand how much that fisherman can drink,” he grumbled, lacing his fingers through hers.

Prince Zayn smirked.“Unlike Max, who, if I recall correctly, spent theentiretrip fighting off a tenacious countess.”

Max sighed dramatically, shaking his head.“She was like a pitbull!”he snarled, taking a sip of his scotch.

Prince Rylan rolled his eyes, leaning back in his chair.“I warned you about her.”

Max shuddered.“Not emphatically enough.”

Lexie nudged him, arching a brow.“A countess?”

“You knew what you were getting into,” Max murmured, pressing a quick kiss to her temple.They looked to Dimitri and Giselle, both of them too wrapped up with each other to bother following the conversation.

The men chuckled as all eyes turned to the one among them who had yet to be caught by love’s web.

Salvatore Romano, a bastard with a black heart and colder eyes, leaned back in his chair, swirling the dark amber liquid in his glass.He was the quietest of the group, the one who observed more than he spoke, but when he did speak, every word carried weight.

“I seem to remember a time,” he drawled, his dark eyes sparkling with amusement, “when we all sat around a cheap apartment in college, swearing we wouldneverfall in love.”

The laughter that followed was immediate.

“Ahh, the glorious stupidity of youth,” Prince Rylan sighed dramatically, shaking his head.

Luca smirked.“We were idiots.”

“Some of us still are,” Prince Zayn murmured, side-eyeing Sal.

Sal merely smiled, slow and knowing.“Maybe.Or maybe I was the only one smart enough to keep my vow.”

Dimitri raised a brow.“Still holding out?”

Sal’s smile didn’t waver, but there was something unreadable in his gaze, something coldly determined that made Giselle shiver slightly.

“Let’s just say,” Sal mused, taking a slow sip of his drink, “that love and I have a complicated history.”

A moment of silence passed, a flicker of something unspoken between the men.

It wasn’t just that Sal was single.

There was something else.

Something left unsaid.

Giselle, seated beside Natalie, caught Ava’s eye, who leaned in to whisper, “They all know what that means.But none of them ever say it out loud.”

Giselle filed that little mystery away for later.

Before anyone could pry further, Sal smoothly stood, lifting his glass.“I have to say that I was stunned when I received the invitation to celebrate your engagement,” he said, tilting his head toward Dimitri and Giselle.“But she’s lovely, my friend.I know we’ve had our differences in the past, but I’m happy that you’ve found someone to fill the void inside your black heart.”

The candlelight flickered over his sharp features, the intensity in his dark eyes softening just a little as he looked between Dimitri and Giselle.

“To Dimitri and Giselle,” Sal announced.“We may joke about the past, about the fools we were when we thought we were immune to love.But we were wrong.Love—true love—has a way of finding us, whether we want it to or not.”