“It’s not like you didn’t know what you were doing,” he said, voice low and cutting. “Taking in a stray child as if she were yours.”
He took another step closer.
“Or perhaps she wasn’t a stray at all. Perhaps she was delivered to you—by your clan, your Italian mafia family—assigned to you deliberately. And this?” His gaze sharpened. “This entire situation... was a plan. For me to find out. For me to take you in—either as a nanny... or as a wife.”
A faint pause.
“And it worked, didn’t it?” he added quietly. More dangerous now. “My daughter needs you like air. You made yourself indispensable.”
His head tilted slightly.
“You must be very smart,” he said. A beat. “Too smart for your own good.”
“No,” I cut in quickly, breath uneven. “You’re twisting everything. I don’t work for them—”
“But your brother is a mafia boss,” he interrupted instantly. “And you come from a mafia family. Yet you are not mafia?” A humorless breath left him. “How convenient.”
Silence sharpened.
“On your knees,” he snapped. “Now.”
My stomach dropped so violently I felt it low in my belly.
Of all the things I had imagined might happen on my wedding day, kneeling before another woman’s grave had never been one of them.
For a moment, I couldn’t move.
The wind whispered through the cemetery, carrying the scent of damp earth and flowers left for the dead.
“Swear,” Rafael said.“Swear on her grave.”
His voice had changed again. The anger was still there, but beneath it was something far more unsettling—a devotion so consuming it bordered on madness.
“Swear that this marriage remains exactly what it was always meant to be. A name on paper. An arrangement. Nothing more.”
The next words came colder.
“You will never mistake this for love. You will never expect affection from me. You will never expect my touch, my loyalty, my heart, or a place in my life that belongs to you.”
His voice lowered.
“Those things died with her.”
A painful pause.
“And if you ever find yourself wanting more—if you ever convince yourself that time, proximity, or my daughter’s attachment to you entitles you to what belonged to Zara—remember where you’re standing.”
A dangerous pause followed.
“Because there is only one woman I will ever call the love of my life, and she’s buried beneath your feet.”
His voice dropped further.
“Now swear it.”
Something inside my chest folded inward.
For a moment, I couldn’t breathe.
