Chapter 1
Dani
It’s beautiful.
It’s all I can think as the car pulls up the long cobblestone drive. Cypress trees line the old Italian road, flanked by rolling hills of green and gray. Winter is already touching the high mountains, creasing the jagged cliffs with brittle frost. A surly silver sky hangs low, and even inside of the fine, gleaming car, I can smell the early promise of snow.
It’s beautiful, whispers the voice in the back of my head. And then, heavily,It has no right to be beautiful.
I study the thin gold band on my left ring finger. Simple and beautiful, a gilded manacle. When my father sat me down in the upstate New York country house last month, I had no idea what to expect. Though I knew what he was, we were always close. Men called my father a monster, but the man I knew was warm and calm and deeply loving. Protective. He did unspeakable things to protect me throughout my life. I always promised that when the time came, I would do the same for him.
Even this?A shiver goes down my spine as I twist the engagement ring. I’m afraid. My father didn’t ask this of me, but I knew it was what he needed. He did not need to ask. I volunteered, and I saw the heartbreak in his eyes when he let me go.Even this.
The partition separating me from the driver who fetched me at the train station rolls down, sleek and soundless. “Signorina,” he says. “We are arriving. This is your new home.”
Through the window, the estate comes into view. My stomach bottoms out, and though I feel my mouth hanging open, I can’t close it.
Estateisn’t close to the word I’d use to describe the vast, imperious stone creature before me.
“La Torre,” says the driver, a hint of pride in his voice.
The Rook.My Italian is rudimentary at best, but I know the word to meancastle.Yes. That’s what I’m looking at—a castle. And within its walls, my king.
A chill ripples through me. Even as the driver parks and opens my door and helps me out. “Are you cold,signorina?”
“Oh. Yes. That must be it.” And I am cold, but that’s not why my hand trembles in his gloved one. It’s fear, plain and simple. A feeling I’ve become well-acquainted with over a lifetime as the daughter of an Italian-American Mafia kingpin. I’ve weathered shoot-outs, stalkings, and even a kidnapping when I was young. I can do this. “Thank you.”
The driver is placing a coat over my shoulders. His, I realize, and the simple kindness warms me more than the garment. “What is your name?”
“Dario,signorina.” He presses a gloved hand to his chest and bows slightly. He’s young but strapping, and I can tell from the keenness of his kind eyes that he, too, has seen the things I have. We’re all from this world, whether we come from America or Italy itself. We all know the price, and it lives in our bones. “Come, let us get you inside. You must be tired from your journey.”
As he says this, a woman prowls out from a low, ivy-drenched wing of the building. Her face is stern and lined, her gait quick and ferocious.
“Ah, Sabine,” says Dario, a hint of amusement in his voice.
She snaps something at him in Italian, so quick I can’t catch anything but the acid of it. Dario laughs.
“You are Dani, hm?” says the woman, Sabine, as she reaches me. She hooks a hand around my forearm, tight as a crab’s claw. “Well, you are hardly presentable. The master will be home soon, and it won’t do for him to see his new wife looking like a vagabond. Dario, the bags. Hurry.”
My heart is in my throat. Unceremoniously, Sabine drags me up the cobble. Not through the enormous, gleaming double front doors, but through those she emerged from. I quickly register the building as servants’ quarters, smelling of cleaning agent and furnished modestly.
“Sabine—” I begin, but the woman is too busy jerking me through the quarters, up a set of stone steps, and into what must be the receiving hall.
I choke on a gasp. Even coming from old money as I do, I’m astonished at the austere beauty of the castle’s interior. Vaulted ceilings, arched doors, sprawling rugs in rich woven color, dozens of windows in meticulous stained glass, curving stone staircases laid with thick red rugs and bolted at each step with a bar of gold.
The splendor is dreamlike, a fairy tale. But I have no time to take it in. I’m already being dragged upstairs, down twisting stone corridor after twisting stone corridor. Vivid, enormous oil paintings adorn the walls. Antiques gleam in corners: tall shining vases and suits of armor complete with pikes and muskets; and the statues.
The statues.
My heart is overfull. I forget for a moment that I’m a trade for debt, that I am cargo, a brood mare. For an instant, I feel like a princess, plucked from obscurity and placed here of all places, in a palace.
I’ve spent my life sculpting. Studying the great masters, nearly all of which come from this country, who once walked these dusty roads and sailed the now-buried canals. I’m so close to the art I love, my eyes well up.
“Don’t cry, girl. It won’t do.” Sabine has led me so deep into the labyrinth I couldn’t possibly find my way out. She’s stopped on a landing, sifting through keys from a ring at her belt. She unlocks the steel-barred oak door and thrusts me inside. “We’ve work to do. Cry in your consummation bed tonight.”
“My—?” The shock lodges like a stone in my throat. Just like that, the fairy tale withers. A trio of servants, dressed modestly and with faces downturned, emerges from the fringes of the tower room. They’re already stripping my coats, brushing my hair, attacking my road-weary face with cleanser and soap. “But we’re not—”
“What?” demands Sabine, standing still for the first time since I’ve seen her. She looks older than her years, shoulders rigid and lined face drawn. “Wed? Why should Master Santo wait for the approval of a priest, hm? You are his now. He will do with you what he wishes. And what could he want from a girl like you, but a child?”
