Bruno

Forced to marry a paralyzed Don who swear he will never touch her.

She refuses to live unwanted in her own marriage.

My father’s gambling debts bought me a husband and a cage.

Bruno Sartori didn’t want a wife. He wanted proof he could still lead and Pietro handed him an arranged marriage as a test.

I was the transaction. The name on a contract. The woman assigned to the west wing while he stayed in the east and pretended I didn’t exist.

He didn’t speak to me for a week.

So I spoke for both of us.

I walked toward him when everyone else stepped aside. I knocked on his door when no one else dared. I sat with his family and smiled and held the room together while he sat at the head of the table looking at me like I was a problem he hadn’t solved yet.

He was wrong about never touching me.

He was wrong about a lot of things.

But Bruno Sartori built his walls out of two years of grief and pride and rage — and I’m twenty-one years old with nothing left to lose and everything to prove.

This isn’t the marriage he planned.

It’s becoming something neither of us can walk away from.