“Excellent.” He sounds genuinely pleased, as if our upcoming nuptials are truly about celebrating love rather than eliminating loose ends. “Oh, and one more thing. Don’t plan a honeymoon just yet. We have a meeting with the Falcones the day after the wedding.”
The name zaps electricity through my nerves. Does he know about my meeting with Gio? How much did the others tell him about my refusal to stop digging? “The Falcones?”
“Yes, they’ve requested a sit-down. Mentioned a possible truce to our little cold war.” A beat of silence. “Why?” His tone adopts a dangerous edge. “Does that concern you?”
“No.” I grip the arm of the chair, my knuckles whitening. “Just a little surprised. They’ve been pushing at our eastern territories for months.”
“Precisely why I want to hear what they have to say.” Roman assumes the same tone he used to teach me how to throw afootball, a task I was so incredibly awful at that he eventually gave up and instructed me to stick to baseball. “So. Wedding. One week. Meeting. Day after. Any questions?”
A thousand. But none that I can ask. “No questions.”
“Good. I’ll send Irina to help your bride with the details.” The line goes dead before I can respond.
I set the phone down carefully, as if it might detonate.
Just over a week.
Eight days to change this elaborate fiction into legal reality. Eight days until Aurora is truly, irrevocably bound to me.
“Who was that? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
I rise from the chair. Aurora’s hair has escaped its knot and hangs wild around her face. Dust streaks her arms, and a splash of adhesive marks the t-shirt she borrowed from me. She’s never been more beautiful as she walks to the kitchen and grabs a bottle of water.
“We’re getting married. One week from today.”
She chokes on her water, sputtering. I keep still, waiting for the rest of her reaction.
When she can breathe again, she stares at me, eyes rounded with shock. “But…that’s not…we’re not actually…”
“We are.” I edge closer. “This was always the plan. Protection through marriage.”
“In theory. Eventually.Maybe.” She shakes her head and backs away, her cheeks draining of color. “But next week?”
“It has to be real. Legal. My uncle’s already arranged everything.” I stalk her retreat, closing the distance between us. “You want to stay alive? You marry me. Bottom line.”
Her chest heaves. “I never actually thought our fake engagement would come to this. We can’t get married. I…I can’t marry you.”
Each rejection drives deeper, colder, harder. Sharp stakes stabbing between my ribs.
My heart cracks as she rears back. Her lips move, so I’m sure she’s still talking, yet I can’t hear a fucking word over the blood rushing in my ears.
I’ve misread everything.
Every touch, every kiss, every moment of connection. A catastrophic failure of judgment. And if I can’t trust my judgment with her, what else have I misinterpreted? What other errors am I blind to?
Aurora paces away from me, her arms hugging her body while she mutters to herself. “I knew it. This is always how it happens. Whatever seems good, whatever seems possible, never stays. It’s always worse than it was before. The truck always flattens you. The other shoe always drops.”
See? I break everything I touch.
Inside my chest, something shatters. A part of me I didn’t know could break. The knowledge forms a knot of agony below my sternum. My heart lurches into a painful rhythm again, a continuous punch that will never stop landing.
The rage, the hurt, all collapses into a cold, terrifying hollow.
I don’t know who I am without the control I’ve lost.
She pivots back to me with a defiant expression on her pale face. “I won’t do it. I won’t.”
The ache inside me shifts, swallowed by a growing void. “The wedding is real. You’re wearing my mother’s ring. Next week, you’ll be wearing mine. You don’t have a choice.”
