My heart stilled, swelling behind my ribcage like a balloon about to burst.
Angelo brought a date. Not just any date, but the date. The one everyone had been expecting him to bring.
Her name was Emily Bianchi. Her father, Emmanuel Bianchi, was a well-known businessman and an undeclared member of The Outfit. Emily was twenty-three with silky blond hair and glorious cheekbones. Tall and busty, she could fit my slender, tiny frame in her palm. She was the closest thing to Italian-American royalty after me, but since she was Angelo’s age, their connection was expected—almost prayed for—among the families of The Outfit.
I’d met her plenty of times before, and she always treated me with a blend of boredom and dismissal. Not exactly rude but impolite enough to let me know that she didn’t like the amount of attention I was getting. It didn’t help that Emily went to school with Angelo, and that she absolutely despised me for spending my summers with him.
She wore a skintight black maxi dress with a deep slit that ran along her right thigh and was adorned with enough gold around her neck and through her ears to open a pawn shop. She had her hand clasped above Angelo’s as she made conversation with the people around her. A small, possessive gesture he did not reject. Not even when his eyes wandered across the room and landed on mine, locking us together in a weird battle in which no one would win.
I stiffened in my chair, my heart jackhammering against my sternum.
Air. I needed more air. More space. More hope. Because what I saw in his eyes frightened me more than my soon-to-be husband. It was complete and utter acceptance of the situation.
They were both in their twenties.
They were both beautiful, single, and from the same social circle.
They were both ready for marriage. Game over for me.
“Francesca?” One of the diplomats whose name I didn’t catch chuckled into his napkin, trying to draw my attention back to the conversation at the table. I broke away from Angelo’s gaze and blinked, looking back and forth between the old man and my future husband. I could see Wolfe’s jaw tensing with frustration that had built throughout the evening and knew he hadn’t missed the moment I’d shared with my childhood friend.
I smiled apologetically, smoothing my dress.
“Could you repeat the question, please?”
“Care to tell us how Senator Keaton popped the question? I have to say, he never struck me as the over-romantic type,” he chortled, stroking his beard like a Harry Potter character. I didn’t even have it in me to taunt Wolfe. I was too caught up in the fact that my life was officially over, and Angelo was going to marry Emily, therefore fulfilling my worst nightmare.
“Yeah, of course. He…he…proposed to me on the…”
“Staircase to the museum,” Wolfe clipped, chucking my chin in faux affection that made my skin crawl. “I don’t know what I did to deserve her passionate kiss. You stole my breath.” He turned to me, his grays on my blues, two pools of beautiful lies. People gasped around us, enchanted by the magnetic power of his expression as he stared at me. “I stole your heart.”
You stole my first kiss.
Then my happiness.
And finally, my life.
“T-that’s right.” I dabbed my neck with a linen napkin, suddenly too nauseous and weak to fight back. My body was finally crumpling under the strain of not eating for days. “I will never forget that night,” I said.
“Me neither.”
“You make a beautiful couple,” someone remarked. I was too dizzy to even tell if they were male or female.
Wolfe smirked, raising his tumbler of whiskey to his lips.
Defying him purposely—and undoubtedly stupidly—I allowed my eyes to drift back to the table where I longed to sit. Emily was now grazing her French-manicured fingernails along Angelo’s blazered arm. Angelo looked down at her face, his mouth breaking into a grin. I could see how she defrosted him to the idea of them. How she lowered his guard, one touch at a time.
She leaned toward him, whispering something in his ear and giggling, and his eyes shot to me again. Were they talking about me? Was I making a complete fool of myself by staring at them so openly? I grabbed a glass of champagne, about to knock it down in one go.
Wolfe wrapped his fingers around my wrist, stilling my hand before it reached my mouth. It was a gentle, firm touch. Callous and hairy. A man’s touch.
“Sweetheart, we’ve been through this. This is real champagne. The grownup kind,” he said with a hint of exasperated sympathy in his voice, causing the entire table to roar with wild laughter.
“The trouble of marrying a youngster,” the other senator snorted out.
Wolfe raised a thick, condescending eyebrow. “Marriage is a tricky business. Which reminds me…” He leaned forward, his blank expression turning into a sympathetic frown. “How are you handling the divorce from Edna?”
Now my furious blush became almost unbearable. I wanted to kill him. Kill him for this stupid stunt, for forcing me into marrying him, and for the fact that, by proxy, he just threw Angelo into Emily’s arms.
I put the champagne glass back on the table, biting my tongue from pointing out that I’d drank plenty at the gala where we’d met, and he didn’t seem to care much then. Actually, he took advantage of my tipsiness when he tricked me into kissing him.
“May I be excused?” I cleared my throat and, without waiting for an answer, stood and charged toward the bathroom, aware of the fact that my nemesis’ eyes, as well as Angelo’s and my parents’, were all on my back, pointed like loaded guns.
The restrooms were at the end of the ballroom, Gentlemen and Ladies facing one another, under a massive wrought-iron, curved stairway. I slipped inside, sagging against the wall, closing my eyes, and taking the deepest breath my corseted bodice would allow.
Breathe.
Just breathe.
A hand clasped my shoulder. Small, warm fingers curling around my collarbone. I cracked my eyes open and yelped, jumping backward, my head hitting the tiles behind me.
“Sweet Jesus!”
It was Mama. Up close, her face looked too wary, too old, and too unfamiliar. It looked like she’d aged a decade overnight, and all the anger I’d harbored toward her in the past three days flew out the window. Her eyes were bloodshot and swollen from crying. Her normally proud, brown mane was littered with gray hair.
“How are you holding up, Vita Mia?”
Instead of answering, I flung myself into her arms, releasing a sob I’d been holding since Wolfe ushered me into his sleek black Escalade tonight. How could I not cut her some slack? She looked as miserable as I was.
“I hate it there. I don’t eat. I barely sleep. And to make matters worse…” I sniffed, disconnecting from her so I could hold her gaze for emphasis. “Angelo is dating Emily now.” I felt my eyes bulging out of their sockets with urgency.
“It’s only their first date,” Mama assured me, patting my back and drawing me into another hug. I shook my head in the crook of her shoulder.
“I don’t even know why it matters. I’m getting married. It’s done.”
“Sweetie…”
“Why, Mama?” I stepped out of her embrace again, dragging myself toward the imperial sinks to pluck some tissue before my makeup was completely ruined. “What possessed Papa to do something like this?”
I watched her in the reflection of the mirror behind me. The way her shoulders wilted in her slightly oversized black dress. I realized she hadn’t been eating much, either.
“Your father doesn’t share many things with me, but trust me when I tell you this was not an easy decision for him to make. We are still shaken by what happened. We just want you to give Senator Keaton an honest chance. He is handsome, rich, and has a good job. You’re not marrying beneath you.”
“I am marrying a monster,” I drawled.
“You could be happy, amore.”
I shook my head, before throwing it backward and laughing. She didn’t have to spell it out for me. Her hands were tied. I harbored many bad feelings toward my father but thinking them openly—not to mention uttering them aloud—was like pouring cyanide onto an open wound. Mama looked back and forth between the door and me, and I knew what she was thinking. We couldn’t stay here much longer. People would start asking questions. Especially when they saw that I’d been crying. Keeping up appearances was vital in The Outfit, and if people suspected Papa’s arm had been twisted by a young, ambitious senator who was new on the scene, it could kill his reputation.
Mama opened her purse and produced something, shoving it into my hand.
“I found this buried under a pile of dirty laundry in your room. Use it, Vita Mia. Start easing into your new life because it’s not going to be a bad one. And for the love of God, start eating!”
She dashed out, leaving me to open my hand and inspect the recovered item. It was my cell phone. My precious cell phone. Fully charged and stocked with messages and missed calls. I wanted to inspect them all—privately, and when time allowed for it. I knew that my assumption that Senator Keaton had taken my phone privileges without asking him was a little extreme. Then again, blackmailing my father into giving him my hand was not exactly subtle courting, so no one could blame me for jumping to conclusions.
I threw the used tissue in the trash can and stormed out to the dim alcove under the staircase, my five-inch Louboutins slapping against the marble floor. I made two steps outside before I was cornered against the mirror overlooking the back of the stairway by a tall, delicate-boned frame. I groaned, slowly opening my eyes as my spine recovered from the collision with the mirror.
Angelo was boxing me in with his arms on either side of my head, his body flush against mine. His chest brushed the exposed, tender flesh of my cleavage, and our hearts crashed against each other in unison, our breaths mingling together.
He sought me out. He came after me. He still wanted me.
“Goddess,” he whispered, cupping the side of my face and pressing his forehead to mine.
His voice was so drenched with emotion, my hands quivered their way to his face, holding his cheeks for the first time. He pressed his thumb to the center of my lips.
I held onto the lapels of his jacket, knowing what I was asking for, and asking for it anyway. The need to be held by him was stronger than the need to do the right thing by us. I longed for him to tell me that Emily meant nothing to him, even though it wasn’t fair to her. Or him. Not even to me.