Chapter 1

On the eve of our wedding, my fiancé, Dante Valenti, brought Bianca—the mistress he had hidden for three years—back to the Valenti estate.

When I neither cried nor made a scene, Dante visibly relaxed. “Elena, since you don’t mind, Bianca can stay here for the time being.”

Dante was the sole heir to the Valenti family. Everyone assumed that once his father handed control of the family over to him, Dante would become the next Don, and I would become his wife and the lady of the Valenti household.

But then he continued, “Tomorrow is only the ceremony. We won’t file the marriage registration right away. Bianca has been emotionally unstable lately, so I’m going to humor her for now. You’re still the woman I’ll ultimately marry. Once she’s had her fun, I’ll hold a proper wedding with you.”

I pressed my trembling palm closed and said nothing.

Dante took my silence for consent. He took Bianca by the hand and led her away to choose a wedding gown without looking back.

I took out my phone and sent one message to our private group chat.

Tomorrow’s wedding is missing a groom. Who’s available?

The chat exploded at once.

The heirs who had grown up with Dante and me began volunteering one after another. They asked what ring size I needed, what color suit I preferred, and what time the ceremony would begin.

I smiled.

See, Dante? If you won’t marry me, someone else will.

...

Before I could choose tomorrow’s fiancé, the butler approached with a complicated expression.

“Miss Marlowe, Mr. Valenti would like you to bring out the wedding gown you planned to wear tomorrow.”

He paused before adding in a low voice, “He said that since you won’t be holding your ceremony tomorrow after all, Miss Russo might as well wear it first.”

I had spent six months designing that gown and another full year traveling between Paris, Milan, and New York, personally overseeing every stitch of embroidery.

No one knew better than Dante how much of myself I had poured into it.

Now, simply because Bianca said she liked it, he expected me to hand it over—and had even ordered the bridal atelier to alter it to her measurements overnight.

“Tell him that if he wants my wedding dress, he can come and beg me for it himself.”

Half an hour later, the estate doors were thrown open from outside.

Dante entered with more than a dozen senior bridal consultants, each carrying two or three custom gowns in different styles.

He sat down on the sofa and idly wound a strand of my hair around his finger.

“Elena, our wedding can wait. Bianca is younger than you, and this is the first time she has ever asked me for anything. Let her have this one.”

He tipped his chin toward the consultants.

“Do you like any of these? If not, I’ll have new ones flown in from Paris overnight.”

“Of course, you can still wear your original gown after Bianca is done with it. I don’t mind.”

He did not mind.

I did.

Bianca laughed beside him, threw herself into Dante’s arms, and traced a finger along the opening of his shirt.

“Dante, you’re awful. Everyone in New York society knows Elena would never touch a gown another woman had worn.”

“And now you want her to wear a wedding dress after me. She’s going to hate me.”

Dante stroked her hair indulgently. “She isn’t that petty.”

“Besides, she’s been with me for ten years. Who else could she possibly marry?”

I lowered my eyes and said nothing.

On my phone, the men in the group chat were competing to send me photographs of themselves at their most presentable.

One posted the black tuxedo he had just tried on. Another ordered his private tailor to deliver cuff links overnight. Someone else displayed the heirloom wedding ring his grandmother had left him. Every one of them seemed genuinely nervous about tomorrow.

Then Adrian Bellandi’s name appeared on the screen—the current Don of the Bellandi family, a man no one in New York’s underworld dared provoke lightly, Dante included.

The stream of messages stopped almost at once.

Adrian wrote:

Me.

Leave every detail of the wedding to me. Tomorrow, all you have to do is walk toward me.

An image of Adrian rose in my mind—his tall, powerfully built body encased in immaculate black suits, his broad back and solid chest suggesting the strength concealed beneath the severe fabric, strength capable of trapping someone completely in his arms.

I replied with a single word.

Okay.

“Elena, what are you looking at?” Dante’s impatient voice sounded beside me.

I came back to myself and turned off the screen.

Dante had Bianca in his arms and had shifted into a more comfortable position. He held out one hand to me carelessly.

“Where do we keep the protection? Bianca is clingy, and she’s younger than you. She has far too much energy in bed.”

I answered coldly, “The butler knows where it is. Ask him.”

“Look at you, getting jealous.” He laughed. “Relax. I promised you that the future heir of the Valenti family would come from you and no one else.”

My lips curved in a cold smile.

Ten years earlier, when Dante was twenty, he had sworn beneath a sky full of fireworks that I would be the only woman he ever married.

Ten years later, there were more and more women around him. Those old vows had long since been discarded, and in his eyes I seemed to have become nothing more than the vessel expected to produce his heir.

When he saw me smile, Dante paused and looked at me properly for the first time in a long while.

“You should smile more, Elena. You smiled all the time in your early twenties. Now you always look so cold. It doesn’t suit you.”

I let the smile fade and told the butler to send an entire box of condoms to Dante’s room.

Dante was pleased by my obedience. He did not realize that I was not yielding for his sake.

I simply no longer cared about him, so none of it mattered.

He still believed I was as compliant as ever, that I would continue cleaning up every mess he made.

He lifted Bianca into his arms and started upstairs.

“Oh, and you’ll sleep in the guest room tonight.”

“The wedding is tomorrow, and Bianca insists I spend the night with her. She’s irritable when she wakes up, so tell the hair and makeup team to wait outside my bedroom. They can start whenever she gets up.”

“Dante.”

I called after him from the sofa.

He stopped at the foot of the stairs and turned, brow furrowed, signaling for me to speak quickly.

I looked directly into his face and enunciated every word.

“My wedding will go ahead tomorrow. If you replace the bride, I’ll replace the groom.”