I didn't smile. Couldn't make my face cooperate.
The mirror showed me exactly what Marco saw: rigid shoulders, tight jaw, the muscle in my cheek ticking where I was clenching my teeth. I looked like a man preparing for war, not a wedding. The tuxedo was beautiful—Giuseppe's work always was—but it couldn't disguise the tension running through me like a live wire.
Forty-eight hours. In forty-eight hours, I would be married to a stranger. A stranger I’d barely been able to speak to.
Thank you. I appreciate you coming.
That was it. That was all I'd given her. Six words, delivered with all the warmth of a tax audit.
She'd offered condolences—genuine ones, I thought, though it was hard to tell with her careful composure in place—and I'd responded like a man who'd forgotten how human interaction worked. She probably thought I was cold. Dismissive. Thekind of husband who would ignore her except when I needed something.
The thought made something twist in my chest.
Giuseppe tugged at my sleeve, muttering something in Italian about the break of the cuff. I forced myself to breathe. Forced my arms to stay extended even though every instinct screamed at me to move, to act, to do something other than stand here like a mannequin while my future unraveled in my mind.
I'd barely slept last night. Kept seeing her face.
"The shoulders are perfect," Giuseppe announced, stepping back to assess his work. "We'll have the final fitting tomorrow morning. The alterations will be complete by Friday evening."
Friday evening. The night before my wedding.
The night before Gemma Moretti became Gemma Caruso.
The thought should have felt like just another transaction. Another piece of family business, no different from the dozens of deals and alliances I'd negotiated since taking over. Strategic. Necessary. Emotionless.
Instead, it felt like standing at the edge of a cliff, looking down into water I couldn't see the bottom of.
What had happened to her? The question had been circling in my mind since the funeral, completely unshakable. Something had shaped her into that careful, guarded creature. Something had taught her to hold herself like she was bracing for impact, to smile without letting it reach her eyes, to apologize for existing.
"We need to talk about the Valentis."
Santo's voice cut through my thoughts like a blade. I watched in the mirror as my brother shoved his phone into his pocket and leaned forward, elbows on knees, that familiar dangerous energy coiling in his frame. The restless sprawl was gone. In its place was something focused, predatory.
Here we go.
"I've got confirmation now." He was on his feet, pacing the narrow space between the armchair and the window. "Enzo met with Papa privately two weeks before he died. No one else present. No record of what they discussed. Not a single witness." His jaw worked, that muscle ticking the same way mine did when I was holding back. "And there's that doctor—Anthony Ricci, the one who lost his license for selling scripts—"
"We’ve already discussed the doctor," I interrupted.
Giuseppe, bless him, had the good sense to step back. He became suddenly very interested in organizing his pins, turning his back to us with the deliberate deafness of a man who had overheard a lifetime of conversations he wasn't supposed to hear.
"And I know about the meeting," I continued. "I'm handling it."
"Handling it how?" Santo stopped pacing. His eyes locked onto mine in the mirror, dark and burning. "By getting fitted for a wedding suit while the man who might have killed our father walks around Chicago like he owns it? Three days, you said."
Marco had gone still on the arm of the sofa. That particular quality of stillness he got when he was calculating how to defuse a bomb before it went off. He didn't speak. Just watched. Waiting to see which way this would break.
"The timeline has changed," I said, keeping my voice level. The don does not raise his voice. The don does not show uncertainty. Papa had drilled that into me since I was old enough to understand. "I'm still investigating. But right now, the most important thing I can do for this family is secure the Moretti alliance."
Santo made a sound like a wounded animal.
"That means the wedding happens Saturday," I continued. "Without incident. With every family in Chicago watching us present a united front. All of them are waiting to see if we'reweak. If I cancel the wedding or postpone it, they'll smell blood in the water. And Enzo will know that whatever he's planning is working."
"So he just gets away with it?" Santo's hands clenched into fists at his sides. The veins in his forearms stood out, ropes of tension under skin. "He kills Papa and we throw a party?"
"No one is getting away with anything."
I stepped down from the platform. The unfinished tuxedo pulled across my shoulders as I moved, but I ignored it. Some conversations needed to happen face to face, not through mirrors.
