Then I was alone.
The door closed with a quiet click. The engine purred to life and then we were moving.
I pressed my hands to the cool leather seat, forcing myself to breathe. To think. Just yesterday I’d been in my apartment, painting, going about my quiet and completely unexciting life.
Options. I needed options.
Jump from the moving car—too dangerous, possibly fatal. Call for help—my phone was gone, purse nowhere to be found. Refuse at the altar—Father's threat echoed in my mind.
People die.
I didn't even know this man. Cesare Monti. The name meant nothing to me beyond whispers and rumors: a mafia Don,dangerous and ruthless. The kind of man my father did business with in shadow-filled rooms.
And I was about to become his wife.
This doesn't happen to people like me.
The thought was absurd even as it formed. I was an art curator. I taught children to paint. I lived in a studio apartment in Brooklyn and ate Thai food from the place on the corner. I wasn't someone who got forced into mafia marriages.
Except I was. Because I was a Lombardo, and Lombardos honored their agreements.
Even if it meant sacrificing their daughters.
Bianca's note burned in my memory.Sorry, little sister. I couldn't do it.
Couldn't marry him. Couldn't face this life. So she'd drugged me and run, leaving me to take her place.
My twin. My identical twin. The person who was supposed to be my other half.
I didn't know her at all.
The limousine slowed. My stomach dropped.
Through the tinted windows, I could see it—the church. Enormous and old, all Gothic spires and stained glass. People crowded the steps. Men in expensive suits. Women dripping with diamonds. The upper echelon of New York's criminal underworld, dressed up and playing at civilization.
This was real. This was actually happening.
The car stopped and the door opened. A gloved hand extended toward me.
I stared at it. This was the moment, the last chance to run, to fight, to refuse.
But Father's words still rang in my ears:People die.
I took the hand.
The world outside was too bright, too loud. April sunshine blazed down on the church steps, unseasonably warm for earlyspring. The sun was at its peak, a clock on a building across the square showing that it was just after noon. I could feel eyes on me—dozens of them, assessing, judging. Someone adjusted my veil, pulling it forward until I could barely see through the layers of tulle. Someone else snapped a photo.
Good. I didn't want to see this.
The church doors opened. Music swelled—the wedding march, traditional and inexorable. A bouquet of white roses was pressed into my hands. They smelled like a funeral.
I was positioned at the entrance to the aisle. The interior of the church stretched before me, cavernous and dark except for candles flickering in sconces. Rows of pews, filled with strangers.
And at the end—
A man. Tall and dark-suited, standing at the altar.
Waiting.
