Cassandra folds her arms across her chest, a strikingly formidable creature despite the softness of her features. “She’s my best friend. I wasn’t going to let her get married without me.”
Teo sighs, gesturing to the man next to her. “Rocco, we really need to have a conversation about confidentiality.”
The heavily tattooed ex-don throws an arm around his wife’s shoulders and shoots Teo a lazy smile. “I’m retired, remember? I don’t answer to you.”
“You’re on sabbatical.”
The two continue to bicker about semantics, but my attention is quickly recaptured by the woman before me.
If it weren’t for the fact her eyes were darting around so quickly, I would have sworn she’d frozen entirely in shock.
They hadn’t told her. They’d dressed her up likethatand dragged her to this hotel without so much as a heads-up. There was a part of me that would have probably felt sorry for her if I weren’t in an equally dire position.
As if sensing my gaze, Mia Chiavari finally lets her eyes rest on me again.
“Why? Why you?”
For a moment, it’s hard to look away from the open vulnerability on her face.
She is beautiful. But that much I knew already; it was an objective reality that one tended not to forget.
The clothes she wore only accentuated that fact. The shade of her dress perfectly complemented her slightly bronzed skin. Her fiery hair—cascading over her shoulders in subtle waves—drew the eye away from her generous cleavage to where it softly framed her face.
Mia Chiavari was objectively beautiful, but it was her expression that drew me in.
I liked the stubborn set of her jaw, the determination in her alarmingly bright, emerald-green eyes. I even liked the measured elevation of her brow as she assessed and reassessed her environment. She took the measure of me, like she was plotting five separate ways to kill me.
She was a fighter. Andthatwas what set my heart to racing.
“Natali is in need of an heir, Mia—” Teo begins to answer for me, only for Mia to cut him off.
“I wasn’t fucking talking to you.”
My eyebrows raise at that. The don of the Guild doing as he was told is new. Everything about her spiritedness calls to me like a siren song.
“Honey.” This time, it’s Marco who speaks. The older man holds onto her arm more firmly. “This is the last step in securing the alliance. He will ensure your safety as long as you provide him with a child.”
Mia suddenly looks very close to vomiting. “You’resellingme to him.”
“This is not a negotiation.”
The two of them stare at each other for a moment as something wordless passes between them. Then, Mia swallows hard and takes a step back.
“What kind of choice is this?” she whispers.
I half expect her to start crying, but she simply stares at her father with a grief I’m not sure how to comprehend. Somehow, it’s so much more terrible because sheisn’tcrying. Everything about her declares that her heart is breaking right before my eyes, but she doesn’t shed a single tear.
Perhaps my reaction is more to do with my relationship with my own parents, but surely, this is not a normal reaction to being told such a terrible thing.
“I’m sorry,” Marco whispers back. “I love you.”
I have to look away for a moment, forcing my mind to focus on all the reasons I need to do this.
Ever since my mother died…ever since Ikilledmy mother for threatening the life of my sister…the Prince’s Hand has been in freefall.
I have no second. I have no heir. There’s no one left to pick up the pieces if I die. And there’s a strong likelihood of that happening, considering the war with the Cartel on the horizon.
The prospect of dying has never been of particular significance to me until now.
