“Disgraziato,” he says under his breath before continuing.
“You stupid boy. I could make one call right now and shut you down.” He straightened, adjusting his cuffs. “You have one month to make your decision. Meet Eleanor. Give her a chance. If it doesn’t work, if you truly cannot find common ground, then we’ll discuss alternatives. But marriage is non-negotiable.”
Alternatives. He made it sound like a concession. But I knew better. There were no alternatives. There was only his way.
He turned toward the door, pausing with his hand on the handle.
“One month, Lorenzo. And I suggest you use it wisely.”
The door opened, and then he was gone.
I stood in the silence of my office, the echo of his footsteps fading down the hallway.
That man had never been a father, not in the way that counted. He’d been a provider, a controller, a man who measured love in dollars and obedience. My mother had faded into the wallpaper of our mansion, drifting from room to room like a ghost, her eyes always distant, her hands always folded.
I’d grown up surrounded by wealth and starved of warmth.
I remembered the dinners: long tables, polished silver, and candles that flickered over my mother’s hollow cheeks. My father would talk about investments, about our newest partners, about the weight of the Falcone name. My mother would nod and smile, saying nothing. And I would sit between them, feeling like a prop in a play I’d never auditioned for. Then it turned into sitting in on business and family meetings as my father and uncles plotted taking over the city and getting rid of bodies.
I’d learned early that love was a lie. That marriage was a cage. That the only person you could truly count on was yourself. Anything anyone else made you a target in our world.
Plus, I enjoy the life I’ve built, not held down by any one woman. Free to come and go as I please. The Falcone name carries a lot of weight; part of that is the endless flow of women willing to throw themselves at my feet in hopes of getting a taste of the high life. I’d be lying if I said I wanted anything more than that arrangement. Women chase the name, not the man. Maybe that’s why none of them have ever stayed on my mind for long.
And now he wanted me to repeat the cycle. To chain myself to a woman I didn’t know, didn’t want, didn’tchoose.
The thought alone made my stomach turn.
Beneath me, the evening crowd swelled, laughter and conversation, and the clink of glasses rising up like music. This place was mine. I had poured every ounce of my rebellion into it. The dark wood, the leather booths, the vintage mirrors behind the bar. In building this place, I carved out a corner of the world where I was free. The bar was more than a business. It was aliving testament to my own choices, a place where I shaped my identity apart from my father’s shadow. Here, for a few hours each night, I could almost believe I had escaped him. I built it to be different from everything my father represented.
I named the barThe Gilded Cageafter the life I’d spent trapped inside. A world of crime and money disguised as privilege, where power was treated like royalty and freedom was always an illusion, even now.
I pressed my palm against the glass, feeling the cool surface against my skin.
One month.
I had one month to find a way out.
The blood was still hot in my veins when I slammed the office door behind me.
My father’s voice echoed in my skull —“You’re a Falcone, Lorenzo. Act like it.”
The old man had always known exactly which buttons to press. And tonight, he’d pressed them all. The arranged marriage he’d been pushing for years. The threat to cut me off. The fucking disrespect, as if I were still a child who needed scolding.
Damn, I needed a drink. Something that burned going down.
I stalked through the back hallways of the Gilded Cage, the bass from the main floor vibrating through the walls. My staff parted like water, heads down, voices hushed as I walked by. They knew better than to approach me when I had that look in my eyes.
I made my way to the bar in the back corner, where I could breathe without the weight of my name pressing down on my chest.
I stepped into the low light, and then?—
I saw a woman sitting at the far end of the bar, tucked into the shadows where the light barely reached. Alone with only a battered suitcase at her feet, and a glass in her hand.
And I stopped breathing.
Her face was half-hidden by the grey, oversized hoodie she wore, but I saw enough. Long, dark, curly hair, tangled, falling over her shoulders. She was beautiful in a way that cut. No makeup. No pretense. Just raw, unpolished caramel skin and bone. Her eyes were red-rimmed, swollen from crying, but even through the puffiness, I could see their color: a deep brown, almost black in the dim light. I watched as her lips parted slightly before she bit the bottom one as if trying to hold something back.
Something in the air shifted when I looked at her, a tension, a thrum that vibrated under my skin. Every nerve in my body went on alert. My pulse, which had been hammering with rage, shifted into something primal. My hands curled into fists at my sides, a new hunger rising.
