Chapter 3
Roman didn’t return to the estate until after midnight on the eve of the wedding.
I was kneeling on my bedroom floor, wrapping my parents’ wedding photograph in soft cloth, when the burning smell came again. My right hand started jerking before I could reach for my medication.
The glass slipped from my fingers. I tried to stand, but my legs gave out and I struck the edge of the bed. When the room came back into focus, Roman had kicked open the door and was on one knee beside me.
“Mara, look at me.” He supported the back of my neck, panic roughening a voice that hadn’t held any emotion for me in months.
I had bitten the side of my tongue. Blood warmed the corner of my mouth, and several anticonvulsant pills lay among the broken glass. The prescription label faced the floor. If he turned the bottle over, the lie would be finished.
I snatched it first and shoved it into the medical case beneath my bed. “It was a migraine. I stood up too fast.”
Roman’s face closed at once. “So you chose the night before my wedding to collapse in front of me?”
The words were quiet, which somehow made them crueler.
He had seen how weak I was. He simply preferred to believe it was another desperate performance designed to stop him.
“Yes.” I wiped the blood from my lip. “I spilled pomegranate juice and broke a glass. Sorry about the rug.”
His jaw tightened as he looked around the nearly empty room. His gaze stopped on the bare wall where my photographs had been. “Where is everything?”
“I donated it.”
“Why?”
“You’re getting married. The estate will have a new woman running it. Keeping my bedroom like a mausoleum would be creepy.”
He surged to his feet. “Who gave you permission to decide what stays in my house?”
His anger made no sense. He was the one who had ordered me to build a separate life, the one who had reminded me again and again not to cross his line.
“Fine. I won’t decide.” I placed the last frame in my suitcase. “I hope you and Sienna are happy, and I hope the DeLuca family never has another weakness.”
A storm gathered behind his gray eyes. “Is that all you have to say to me?”
“No. Thank you.”
Those two words hit him harder than any accusation. I walked around him and into the bathroom. As the door closed, I thought I heard him say my name, but his voice was too faint to tell from another trick of my brain.
By dawn, black Cadillac Escalades crowded the circular drive. Family heads, state senators, bankers, and lawyers passed through metal detectors while news helicopters hovered over the Hudson, waiting to capture the wedding that would unite DeLuca and Caruso power.
I put on a gray cashmere coat and set the medical case beside my feet.
Roman appeared outside my room in a black tuxedo. Every detail from his collar to his cuff links was perfect, but the shadows beneath his eyes said he hadn’t slept. His gaze went from my coat to my luggage, and his brows drew together.
“You’re going to the church dressed like that?”
“I—”
Luca’s voice rose from downstairs. “Don, the Caruso cars are here.”
Roman didn’t move. His eyes fixed on the Swiss hospital seal on my case, and for one dangerous second, I thought he was about to understand. I pulled the coat across it.
“Change your clothes,” he ordered. “You’re riding with me.”
I nodded. When he turned away, I said without making a sound, [Goodbye, Roman.]
Ten minutes after the convoy left, I climbed into the black Town Car I had booked.
Massive screens along the expressway to JFK carried the wedding live. The camera swept across the church ceiling, and my breath caught. Thousands of winter anemones hung beneath the glass dome. At the center of the altar, an oval honey-colored diamond rested on a ring pillow.
It was the wedding I had described to him, down to the smallest detail.
Only I wasn’t the bride.
I shut off the screen and switched my phone to airplane mode. As boarding began, three messages from Elias appeared.
[I gave Roman the deeds.]
[He saw your medical authorization. I couldn’t keep lying for you.]
[Mara, he knows what you’re planning.]
Roman’s name filled the screen a second later.
I declined the call.
A voicemail appeared at once.
[Mara, don’t get on that plane. I didn’t marry her.]
