Serena Valente. Dominic Bellandi. SV & DB.
That was when I recognized the initials engraved on the gift set. It should have been mine—BR, for Bianca Romano. Dominic had told me the jeweler made an error, swore he'd ordered the correct monogram. When I suggested calling the shop to hold them accountable, he dismissed it with a wave of his hand, told me I shouldn't be so uptight about a couple of letters. I believed him. I believed him the way anyone raised inside the rules of an arrangement believes the man chosen for her—because the alternative was admitting the whole foundation was rotten. Until I pulled up the surveillance footage from the compound's hallway camera, the kind of tape nobody bothered to erase because nobody expected the promised bride to check. There she was: a girl with cropped dark hair, perched on Dominic's lap in the private study, snatching his phone from his hand to place the order herself. Her crimson nails caught the low light as she typed. In that moment I understood how foolish I had been—not naïve the way a sheltered girl is naïve, but willfully blind, the way a woman becomes when her father's illness has already swallowed every ounce of fight she has left.
Lost in my thoughts, I didn't notice Dominic had already grabbed his overcoat and moved toward the door. The heavy fabric settled over his shoulders the way authority settled over a room when he walked in: effortlessly, as though the world had been cut to fit him.
"I won't be back tonight. I'm meeting your parents for dinner tomorrow. Send me the address," he said, the words tossed behind him the way a man flicks ash from a cigarette—nonchalant, already half gone. As if he had forgotten that tomorrow was supposed to be my day to try on wedding gowns. As if the alliance ceremony the two Families had spent months negotiating was just another line item in a schedule he kept loosely at best.
My thumb found the inside of my ring finger, pressing into the groove the betrothal ring had worn there, and I said nothing. The front door closed. The silence it left behind was louder than anything he'd said.
The next day, I decided to go to the bridal atelier alone. I had the address on a card Theo Bellandi's personal aide had sent weeks ago—an old-money establishment on the upper stretch of Via Seta, the kind of place where Mafia wives had been fitted for generations and where discretion was stitched into the curtains as tightly as the beading on the gowns. I stepped outside, and a sleek black BMW with tinted rear glass pulled up to the curb before I'd taken three steps.
Dominic rolled down the window. His gaze swept over my face, lingering on the careful makeup I had applied that morning—foundation to hide the sleepless bruising under my eyes, a muted lip color that the Bellandi matriarch would find acceptable. His brow furrowed. "What's with the makeup? You look weird." A chuckle of discontent, the kind that sat right on the edge of cruelty, and then a flick of his head toward the passenger side. "Get in. We're going together."
I kept my eyes on the ground, trying to avoid any confrontation. My fingers clenched tightly around the transit pass in my coat pocket—a small, provincial habit I hadn't shaken, because where I came from, in the coastal enclave where my father had run a quiet shipping front for allied Family interests, women still rode the local bus without apology. But as I started to open the passenger door, the window slid down, and there was Serena Valente.
She beamed, reaching her hand out enthusiastically. "Hey! You must be Bianca! I'm Serena, Dominic's friend," she said, the warmth in her voice almost aggressive in its brightness. "Hope you don't mind me tagging along! He's about to make the biggest decision of his life, and, well, knowing him since we were kids, he's got a knack for messing things up. I just don't want him to pick some ugly dress and ruin it for you." She laughed, leaning into Dominic and throwing her arm around his neck with the ease of someone who had been occupying that space for years. "If it weren't for this idiot sending me a last-minute invite with gifts, I wouldn't even be here. My father almost wouldn't let me come."
Instead of taking offense, Dominic grinned. "Oh, I could just send your father a tribute too. I know exactly what he likes. But you actually love going out with me, don't you, Miss Valente?"
