Chapter 1

On my wedding day, the wedding planner looked at me with pity in her eyes.

She told me the groom had called with a last-minute request. He wanted the name on the floral arch changed from "Elena" to "Sofia."

Five years of loyalty to Dante Romero, and I found out he was planning a "secret" ceremony with his mistress an hour before ours.

He claimed she was dying of cancer. He said it was her final wish to be a bride, and that as a good mafia wife, I should understand. He swore it was just charity.

But I had seen the texts where he called me "furniture."

I had watched him step over my body when I fell down the stairs at a club, just so he could leave with her.

And this morning, I watched Sofia walk into the hotel lobby wearing *my* custom French lace wedding dress, smirking as she clung to his arm.

Dante thinks I'm crying in the bridal suite.

He thinks I will sit in the front row of his "fake" wedding and wait for my turn like a dutiful puppet.

He is wrong.

I wiped my tears and picked up my phone. I didn't cancel the wedding date. I just changed the location to the ballroom next door.

And I changed the groom.

As Dante says his vows to his mistress, I am walking down the aisle to meet the only man the Romero family fears.

The Reaper.

Chapter 1

The reflection in the tri-fold mirror was a stranger's. I was a Vitiello confection. The caged canary. My dark hair was pinned with a severity that pulled at my scalp, my skin a stark, bloodless white against the silk. I resembled a porcelain doll, the kind whose fine-grained cracks are only visible upon close inspection.

I stood in the center of the bridal suite, hemmed in by layers of imported French lace that felt less like a wedding gown and more like a burial winding-sheet.

Five years.

Five years of alliance with the Romero family. Five years of Dante Romero holding my hand at galas, his whispers spooling promises in my ear, swearing on his mother's grave that I was his only sun. I had believed him. I didn't just do my duty; I had offered him my heart.

I turned to the wedding planner, a nervous woman named Claire who was currently pinning the hem of my train. She wouldn't meet my eyes.

"Is something wrong, Claire?"

She swallowed hard, the click of her throat unnaturally loud in the still air. "Miss Vitiello... Mr. Romero called. He... he requested a change for the archway lettering."

"A change?"

"He wants the name on the floral arch to read 'Sofia'."

The oxygen thinned in the room, becoming sharp and unbreathable.

Sofia.

Xu Wei. The dancer. The outsider. The chaotic variable he swore he had excised years ago.

"He said it was a surprise," Claire whispered, her hands shaking. "For a... a secondary reception."

I walked to the window, my train whispering over the carpet like dry leaves. Down on the street, parked in the loading zone, was Dante's black Maserati. He was leaning against the hood, phone pressed to his ear. He was smiling. A soft, tender smile I hadn't seen in months.

I focused on his lips. I knew how to read lips; it was a necessary art for a mafia wife, a way to glean truth in rooms where women were decorative.

I love you, baby. Just a few more days. She doesn't suspect a thing. It's just politics.

A bitter, metallic taste coated my tongue.

A flashback hit me like a physical blow. Last week. I had walked into his office unannounced. He was on his knees. Not praying. He was kneeling in front of a woman with dyed blonde hair. Sofia.

"I have to marry her, Sofia. It's the family. But you are my soul. It's a dying wish of my father to see the alliance. Elena will understand. She's a good mafia wife. She'll look the other way."

I had run then. I had fled before I could vomit. I had convinced myself I heard wrong. I had convinced myself Dante, my Dante, had honor.

But looking at him now, laughing into the phone while I stood in his wedding dress, the denial died.

A rigidness started in my feet and shot up my legs, locking my joints. The steel my father always said I had finally surfaced.

"Claire," I said. My voice was a flat, toneless thing.

"Yes, Miss Vitiello?"

"Change the name on the arch to Sofia. Do exactly as he asks."

"But-"

"And book the East Ballroom for the same time. The one adjacent to his."

"For whom?"

"For me," I said, turning away from the window. "I have a wedding to attend."

Dante walked into the boutique ten minutes later. He smelled of expensive cologne and lies. He wrapped his arms around my waist, burying his face in my neck.

"Sorry I'm late, amore," he murmured against my skin. "Family business. The shipment at the docks was delayed. We might have to push the wedding back an hour or two on the first."

He was lying. He wanted time to marry her first. To make me the second wife. The mistress in my own marriage.

I didn't pull away. I didn't cry. I stood perfectly still.

"That's fine, Dante," I said. "I have plenty to do that day."

He kissed my cheek, relieved. "You're the best. A true queen."

Yes, I thought as he rushed out the door again. And queens don't cry. They declare war.

I waited until the door chimed shut behind him. My hands were trembling, not with sadness, but with a terrible, crystalline clarity.

I reached into my purse and pulled out my phone. I dialed a number I had been too afraid to call an hour ago.

"Father," I said, my voice thin but sharp enough to cut the room's stagnant air.

"Elena?"

"Does the blood oath with Valerio Moretti still stand?"

"Elena," my father's voice cracked. Alessandro Vitiello, a Capo who had broken men's fingers for looking at me wrong, sounded small. Terrified. "That pact is from the old wars. Valerio Moretti is... he is not a man you bargain with. He is the Reaper. He controls the eastern seaboard. He has an army, Elena. A real army."

"Does it stand?" I repeated, my voice flat. "Yes or no."

"Technically, yes. The debt remains unpaid. It was never formally dissolved. But why-"

"Good," I cut him off. "I am getting married on the first of the month, just as planned. But you might want to prepare a different suit. The groom is changing."

I wasn't just leaving the Romero alliance. I was going to burn it to the ground. And I was going to do it holding the hand of the only man Dante Romero feared.

Valerio Moretti.