Chapter 1
The Versace gown weighed more than my dignity.
Ivory silk, hand-stitched beads, a price tag my father bragged about to every guest who walked through the penthouse door. More than most families made in a year. More than I’d ever felt worth in my 28 years.
I was three years deep in a contract to marry Dominic Rizzo. The most feared man on the East Coast. The man my father had sold me to for a seat at the Rizzo table, for protection from his own bad debts, for a legacy he’d never earned on his own.
Forty guests filled the room. Made men in tailored suits, their wives dripping in diamonds, city officials who smiled like they didn’t know exactly how their campaign funds got paid. Every single one of them here to kiss the ring of the future boss’s wife.
Me.
Lila was there too.
Our 22-year-old maid. Six months pregnant, quiet as a shadow, her thick black hair always braided tight down her back. She’d been with us two years. Hired by Dominic, not my father.
I’d hated her from the first day.
Not for anything she’d done. For the way Dominic looked at her. Soft. Like she was something fragile he had to shield from the world. He left extra cash on the kitchen counter for her. Made her sit and eat dinner with us when she worked late. Snapped at his own men once for raising their voices when she dropped a tray.
I told myself it was pity.
I told myself a lot of lies that night.
She was passing champagne flutes when it happened. Turned too fast, her elbow caught a guest’s shoulder, and the entire glass spilled straight down the front of my gown.
Cold, sticky, seeping through the silk to my skin.
The room went dead silent.
Every eye on me. On the stain spreading across the ivory fabric. On Lila, frozen, her face white as a sheet, hands shaking so bad the empty tray clattered against her hip.
Something in me broke.
Not the dress. The last thread of the girl who’d spent her whole life performing perfection for men who never saw her. All the anger, all the fear, all the humiliation of being a bargaining chip wrapped up in one ugly, violent second.
I turned to the present table beside me.
A pair of silver kitchen shears, a wedding gift from some distant cousin, sitting open on the linen cloth.
I grabbed them.
I crossed the room before anyone could breathe. Grabbed Lila’s braid at the nape of her neck, tight, so she couldn’t pull away.
And I cut.
Thick black hair fell to the marble floor in a heavy clump.
She screamed. A high, sharp sound that cut through the quiet. Dropped to her knees, hands flying to the jagged, uneven ends left at her ears, tears spilling so fast they left tracks in her foundation.
No one moved.
No one dared.
I was the future Rizzo wife. I could do whatever I wanted.
“Clean this up,” I sneered, kicking a clump of her hair across the floor toward her. “And get out. You’re lucky I don’t send you the bill for this dress.”
The front door slammed.
So hard the chandeliers rattled above us, crystals clinking like tiny bells.
Dominic walked in.
His black suit still damp from the rain outside, cigar smoke clinging to his collar, the Rizzo crest glinting gold on the chain around his neck. He was supposed to be at a meeting. Supposed to be gone another hour.
He took one look at Lila sobbing on her knees.
One look at the hair scattered across the marble.
One look at the shears still in my hand.
The crystal bourbon glass in his fingers slipped.
Shattered on the floor at his feet.
He crossed the room in three long strides.
For a second I smiled.
Finally, I thought. He’d yell at her. Put the help in her place. Tell me I was right.
Instead he dropped to his knees in front of her.
Cupped her face in both hands, so gentle, like she was the most precious thing he’d ever touched. Like I wasn’t even in the room.
“Mi amore,” he whispered. His voice cracked. I’d never heard him sound anything but cold. “Did she do this to you?”
I laughed. Sharp, shrill, ugly.
“She ruined my dress, Dominic. I taught her a lesson.”
He stood up slow.
The look on his face was the same one he wore when he ordered men buried in the North End marshes. Empty. Final.
“That baby she’s carrying,” he said. Loud enough for every single guest to hear. “It’s mine.”
The room erupted in quiet gasps.
My blood turned to ice.
He told us everything then.
Lila was his childhood sweetheart. The girl he’d loved since they were 14, growing up in the projects, sharing a single sandwich for lunch because neither of them had enough. He’d brought her here two years ago, when her mom died of cancer, because there was no one else to take care of her. Never told anyone because he knew my father would kill the engagement deal the second he found out.
He’d planned to call it off that very night.
After the party. Pull me aside, tell me the marriage was never anything more than a contract. Give my father a payout to walk away. Take Lila and the baby somewhere quiet.
That baby, he said. His firstborn son. The heir to the entire Rizzo empire.
I looked around the room.
Every made man who’d kissed my cheek an hour earlier. Every official who’d laughed at my jokes. Every woman who’d told me how lucky I was.
All of them staring at me like I was already a ghost.
Dominic grabbed my left hand.
Pulled the 5-carat engagement ring off my finger so hard the band cut my skin. Dropped it into the ice bucket beside us without a second glance.
He signaled to his two right-hand men.
They stepped toward me. Faces blank. No hesitation.
Then he leaned in.
Mouth right next to my ear, breath hot and sharp with bourbon and rage.
May you like
Whispered one sentence that made my knees give out, so I collapsed right there on the marble next to Lila, the cold seeping through my ruined gown.
“Your father already sold you to pay his gambling debts. You were never a bride. You were a shield. And now you’re nothing.”
