Chapter 8

Salvatore snorted, exhaling a slow cloud of smoke as though I weren't worth the air it took to acknowledge me. The smell of it hung between us, cheap arrogance wrapped in expensive tobacco. "You saw what happened in the garage, didn't you?" he said, his voice maddeningly casual, the tone a man uses when he believes the world already belongs to him. "I know you're obsessed with me, but I've told you before. This wedding is yours, but the marriage certificate belongs to Adriana. She's the one being slighted here."

He leaned in closer, and the arrogance thickened around him like the smoke. "It's perfectly natural for us to do what we just did. She's my wife-to-be by law, after all. Oh, and the house? She'll come by now and then. A night here, a night there. You'll have to make your peace with it eventually. Consider it for your own good."

I could not believe the sheer audacity of the man standing in front of me, heir apparent to the Falcone Family, a made man in waiting, and yet with less honor than a street collector.

Even though I had already sworn to myself that I would never enter a union with him, I had not braced for this. I had not expected him to be so shameless, so brazen in parading his betrayal across my face like it was a favor he was doing me.

I turned to walk away. And of course, his hand closed around my arm again, the grip careless, entitled, the touch of a man who had never once been told no.

"Listen," he said, dropping his voice to something lower, more confidential, as if we shared a secret worth keeping. "My uncle will be at the sit-down tonight. He carries weight in the Family, real weight, so this is no small evening. I'm doing you a courtesy letting you sit at that table at all."

I fought down the urge to let my eyes roll toward the heavens. "One more thing." He said it like a man laying terms on tribute owed. "If my grandfather and my father ask about the marriage license, you tell them it's already signed and settled. Understood? And Adriana's little injury this afternoon. You'll apologize to her after we eat. Don't forget it. The wedding isn't sworn yet. I can still change my mind."

With that, he strode into the Falcone family estate as though he had not just made a complete fool of himself in front of me, shoulders squared, chin high, a prince walking into a house that had not yet learned to fear him.

I let out a long breath, my fingers tightening around the handle of the gift bag until the paper creased in my grip. My thumb found the base of my ring finger and pressed there, hard, the old habit surfacing before I could stop it, the ghost of a marriage that had ruined me in another life.

Fine, I told myself, drawing the pressure of that touch into something like steel. He'll learn soon enough who I'm really binding my blood to.

The dining hall of the estate was already half full when I stepped inside. Most of the Falcone elders were seated at the long table, the eldest capos and the men whose word could end a career or a life, their faces carved in the patient stone of people who had survived every winter this Family had ever seen. Candlelight moved across dark wood and heavier silver. Somewhere a bottle of old-country red had already been opened to breathe. Lorenzo had not yet arrived. So I slipped quietly into a chair set far from Salvatore, and I left the seat beside me open. Deliberately. Waiting.

Salvatore caught it at once. A frown creased his handsome, careless face, irritation flickering there like a match struck in a draft. He rose, tugged once at his collar, and rolled his shoulders in that restless way of his, then crossed the room and dropped himself into the very chair I had saved.

"You're getting more theatrical by the day," he muttered, his gaze cutting sideways to me, then flicking to the empty place across the table meant for him. "There's already a seat set for you over there. Why are you working so hard to make a scene in front of the elders?"

I said nothing. I let the silence sit between us like a loaded thing, and I was on the verge of telling him at last that the chair had never been meant for him.

Then a figure appeared in the doorway.

Tall. Unhurried. Commanding in a way that needed no announcement.

Lorenzo entered the dining hall, and the room seemed to draw a breath and hold it. His tailored suit fell across his frame as though it had been cut by hands who understood exactly what they were dressing, dark and flawless, the fabric of a man who had come home from the old country with the throne already in his hands. His stride was steady, sure, each step landing with a quiet weight, and every movement of him carried a poise and a dignity that made the seasoned men at that table straighten in their chairs without knowing they had done it.