And just like that, I'm married to a stranger.
Again.
CHAPTER THREE
GIA
I think I'm going to puke.
The reception is behind the church and it is, objectively, stunning. White tents catching the evening breeze. String lights strung overhead like someone trapped the stars and put them to work. Tables with crystal and silver and flowers that probably cost more than my entire Paris apartment.
All of it is beautiful. All of it a lie dressed up in expensive fabric, exactly like everything else in my world.
People descend on us the second we step through the tent entrance.Congratulations, Gia, welcome home, Gia, we've missed you, Gia.Men pump Rafael's hand and look at me the way you look at a piece of real estate, calculating square footage and resale value. Women kiss both my cheeks and wait until I've half turned away before they start talking.
I can feel every assessment. Every whispered comment. Every pair of eyes measuring me against whatever version of me they filed away five years ago. I want to tell them all to get out of my face but I smile instead because I am Salvatore De Luca's daughter and I know how to perform.
I shake hands. I accept kisses. I say thank you and yes, it's wonderful to be home and no, I haven't changed a bit.
I am dying inside.
And I cannot find Laura anywhere.
I've been scanning since we walked in. She should be easy to spot in a room full of adults and she is nowhere. Not at the tables near the back. Not by the entrance. Not with the cluster of younger women standing near the champagne.
Where is she??
"You're looking for someone."
I turn.
Rafael is beside me and I did not hear him coming, which should be impossible because the man is the size of a small building, but here we are. He moves through crowds the way water moves through rock. I watched him do it from across the room before I could stop myself watching. The way people shift without realizing it to make space for him. The way he accepted a glass ofchampagne from a passing waiter without breaking stride, long fingers closing around the stem with a casual ease that made my brain do something stupid and unhelpful.
Goodness, he really is pleasing to the eye.
To my eye.
He still has the glass. He's not drinking it. He's just holding it, relaxed, at his side.
I am noticing his hands again and I need to stop noticing them. They are just hands that happen to be large and scarred and I am not thinking about how they felt on my throat, absolutely not.
Stop. Immediately. Stop.
"My sister." I pull my gaze up to his face, which is not actually safer but at least feels less like a betrayal of my own dignity. "Laura. She was at the church and she's not here and I need to know where she is."
"The little one."
I narrow my eyes. “Yes. The little one. My nine-year-old sister who doesn't know a single person at this reception." I turn to face him, tipping my chin up because I refuse to feel small next to him even though he has several inches on me and a presence that takes up approximately three times more space than his body actually occupies. "Where is she?”
He looks at me for a moment. Actually, thinking about it, not dismissing it.
"Probably somewhere quiet," he says. "Away from all this."
He gestures at the reception around us. Men closing deals over champagne. Women moving through the crowd like information is currency and they are very, very wealthy. The whole ugly performance of our world, violence in evening wear, murder discussed between the fish course and dessert.
"She's nine," I say. "She shouldn't be here at all."
"Neither should you."
