Too Late, Mafia Boss

After ten years together, Ethan Caldwell, head of New York's Caldwell crime family, finally proposed.

Then, a week before the wedding, my eighteen-year-old self traveled ten years into the future and met the woman I'd become.

Still wearing her school sweatshirt, she beamed at me. “Claire Bennett! Are you and Ethan married already?”

She walked through the foyer, looking around the three-story house that was supposed to become our marital home. Outside the window, two guards in dark suits stood beside the iron gates.

“So you went back to the Caldwell family with him after all?”

I didn't answer. Still holding on to a little hope, she continued farther into the house.

“Three stories. Good. Just what I wanted.”

“And there's a garden. Not bad. But why are there roses instead of sunflowers? I don't like roses.”

The farther she went, the more she frowned.

“Didn't I say I wanted a movie room where I could curl up and watch films?”

“And didn't Ethan promise he'd be home with me by ten every night? It's ten thirty. Where is he?”

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After ten years together, Ethan Caldwell, head of New York's Caldwell crime family, finally proposed.

Then, a week before the wedding, my eighteen-year-old self traveled ten years into the future and met the woman I'd become.

Still wearing her school sweatshirt, she beamed at me. “Claire Bennett! Are you and Ethan married already?”

She walked through the foyer, looking around the three-story house that was supposed to become our marital home. Outside the window, two guards in dark suits stood beside the iron gates.

“So you went back to the Caldwell family with him after all?”

I didn't answer. Still holding on to a little hope, she continued farther into the house.

“Three stories. Good. Just what I wanted.”

“And there's a garden. Not bad. But why are there roses instead of sunflowers? I don't like roses.”

The farther she went, the more she frowned.

“Didn't I say I wanted a movie room where I could curl up and watch films?”

“And didn't Ethan promise he'd be home with me by ten every night? It's ten thirty. Where is he?”

I kept explaining.

“The roses are for fresh arrangements. Ethan said they've just redone security here, so we aren't changing the garden yet. We can plant sunflowers when we have a different yard.”

“There are only six usable rooms. The study, sitting room, and guards' room take up a few, and he's already made plans for the others. We'll have a movie room later.”

“His adopted sister is sick. There's no one to take care of her, so he isn't coming home tonight.”

I managed a smile.

“We'll have the rest of our lives together once we're married. One night doesn't matter.”

Her gaze settled on the wedding invitations I still hadn't sent.

The Caldwell crest was stamped on the seals. The guest list included restaurant owners, shareholders in trucking companies, and men who never discussed their businesses in public.

After the wedding, they would call me Mrs. Caldwell.

Slowly, her expression cooled. “How old are you?”

“Twenty-eight.”

“Twenty-eight.”

She repeated it, then gave a short laugh. Her next words came out slowly, almost accusingly.

“Didn't Ethan say he'd marry me when I was twenty-four?”

I automatically began reaching for another excuse for him.

Before I could speak, she asked, “Claire, don't you hate waiting more than anything?”

“How did you end up like this?”

She looked so disappointed in me.

The question left me shaken.

How had I ended up like this?

At eighteen, I hated waiting. Back then, Ethan hadn't taken his father's place, and the Caldwell name hadn't earned him much special treatment from me.

One reason I'd fallen for him was that he never made me wait.

Throughout high school, no matter how late I stayed to study, he would be outside on his bike as soon as I finished.

“I'll take you home. No waiting around for a cab.”

In our senior year, his grades and test scores weren't good enough to get him into my first-choice college.

“If you can't keep up, that's that,” I'd told him. “I'm not putting my life on hold while you get your scores up.”

He'd worked himself relentlessly, raising his SAT score by two hundred points in six months and getting his grades up enough to follow me.

After high school, his father wanted to send him overseas to learn the family business from his uncle. They said three years. No one would promise when he could come home.

I didn't want to spend my four years of college waiting. Just as I was about to end things, he refused his father.

“I'll find my own job. I don't want your men following her around every time she leaves the house, either.”

It was the first time I'd heard him speak to his father that way.

His family cut him off. He stayed with me through four years of college, working part-time jobs and living on instant noodles.

I searched my memory for the moment I'd started accepting Ethan's promises of later.

Was it when he went back to the family and started leaving early and coming home late?

After his father fell ill, men throughout the organization began fighting for power. One night, Ethan came home injured, his cuffs soaked with blood. As I unwound his bandages, he took my hand. Once he'd secured his position, he said, no one would ever be able to hurt us again.

I'd believed him.

Or on my twenty-fourth birthday, when he'd come home drunk, held me tight, and begged?

“Claire, could you give me a little more time?”

“Things in the family haven't settled down. If you marry me now, you'll be someone they can use against me.”

“Let me get this under control. I don't want you living in fear from the day we get married.”

I'd softened despite myself. For the first time, I'd nodded and said, “Okay. I'll wait.”

Or had it been the day his adopted sister, Sophie Caldwell, came home from abroad after her divorce? He'd turned off his phone, leaving me waiting until three in the morning.

At some point, waiting had become all I did.

I waited for him to come home. For a proposal. For a house. For the garden, the movie room, the balcony he'd promised me years before.

We had so much time ahead of us, he always said.

So I waited another day. Another year.

Until the woman in the mirror looked exhausted, weighing everything she did and everywhere she went against the trouble it might cause Ethan.

Over the years, I'd gone through the budgets for the family's restaurants, warehouse leases, and catering invoices for him. When I found problems, I'd work late into the night putting everything in order. The next day, his men would take it from there.

But officially, I had no position and no salary. I was only his fiancée, waiting to get married.

Now the lively girl I'd been at eighteen stood in front of me, unable to hide her disappointment.

“Claire, do you even remember your dreams?”

“You said you wanted your own company. To decide for yourself how every dollar was spent.”

“Do you remember who you wanted to be?”

“How could you give all of that up for Ethan?”

I lowered my eyes. After a long silence, I called him.

He didn't answer the first time.

The second call rang for a full fifty seconds before he picked up. “What is it now, princess?”

I paused, then said it plainly.

“Cancel the wedding next week.”

The low murmur of men's voices on the other end stopped. I heard Ethan close a door.

He stopped breathing for a moment. “Why?”

I thought about it.

“There aren't any sunflowers in the garden. You never set up the movie room you promised. You aren't home by ten—”

“Oh, stop making excuses,” he cut in. “This is about Sophie. How many times do I have to explain? She's my sister. Why do you keep going after her?”

“I'm doing the things I promised, one at a time. That three-story house—you couldn't wait to live there. After the wedding, we can move in properly. You'll get everything else later.”

I looked around the house, already decorated for our wedding. The guards outside the living room stood with their hands at their sides, as though they hadn't heard a word I'd said.

They took their orders only from Ethan.

All I could do was sigh.

“But I don't want to wait anymore.”

I couldn't keep disappointing the eighteen-year-old girl standing in front of me.