Page 5 of Sinful Bride

I can do this. I've been doing it my whole life.

And as long as I keep doing it, I can remain as happy as it's possible to be, and nothing has to change.

2

DECLAN

The cold air hits my face the moment I step outside the Capetti estate, and I breathe it in like I've been drowning. The valet brings my car around—a black Mercedes that cost more than my father made in his entire life—and I tip him without looking at his face. I can't look at anyone right now and risk them seeing whatever the fuck is written across my expression.

You don't belong here.

Her words echo in my head as I pull out of the circular driveway, the mansion's lights fading in my rearview mirror. My hands grip the steering wheel too tightly, knuckles white against the leather. I force myself to loosen my grip and breathe.

She's right, of course. That's the worst part. Elena Capetti, with her midnight-blue silk dress and her diamond bracelet and her perfectly cultivated disdain, saw right through me, just like everyone else there tonight did. She saw past the expensive suit and the title and the power I'm supposed to wield, straight down to the truth I've been trying to ignore for months now.

I don't belong in this world, and I never will. I never wanted to.

But I'm here now, anyway.

The drive back to my new penthouse takes twenty minutes, but it feels longer. The city lights blur past, Chicago at night in all its gritty glory. This is my city now. My territory. The Irish mob answers to me, reports to me, and bleeds for me. But most days I still feel like I'm playing dress-up in another man's clothes.

Lachlan just... walked away. Handed me everything he'd built, everything he'd fought for, and disappeared like smoke, leaving me holding the reins of an organization I never asked for. Now I'm surrounded by men who used to work for him, along with my own men who remember when we were just lackeys for a different powerful mob boss in New York.

Now I'm supposed to sit at tables with men like Enzo Capetti and dance with their daughters. Pretend I understand the rules of their world.

I'm just surprised you would even be here.

I pull into the underground parking garage of my building, the gate recognizing my car and opening automatically. Everything in my life is automatic now, seamless, and expensive. Nothing like the cramped apartment above the bar where I grew up, where the heat only worked half the time, and the neighbors' fights bled through the thin walls every night. Hell, even after I worked for the Santoro family, I still lived in a pretty shitty place. I was always afraid to spend the money we made, because a childhood of poverty made me feel that it could be gone at any second.

Now I have so much there's no way to lose it all. And I have to spend it, if I'm going to look like I belong enough to pretend that I do.

I should be grateful. Lachlan gave me a gift most men would kill for. But I feel like a fraud.

The elevator ride to the penthouse is silent and lonely, and I stare at my reflection in the polished steel doors. The suit is more expensive than anything I've ever worn, made by some Italian designer whose name I can't pronounce, but it doesn't quite fit me right. My hair is too long, falling across my forehead, but one of my men told me it makes me look less threatening. More approachable. So I left it like this for tonight.

Civilized.

The thought makes me feel worse, all over again.

The penthouse is dark when I enter, except for the city lights filtering through the floor-to-ceiling windows. I don't bother turning on the lamps. I just shrug out of my jacket, toss it over the back of the leather couch, and head straight for the bar cart.

There's good whiskey on it now, none of the cheap stuff Lachlan and I used to sneak when we were kids. The first sip burns going down, and I welcome it, focusing on the physical sensation of the heat spreading through my chest. Anything to stop thinking about her.

But I can't stop.

Elena Capetti. Twenty years old and already more poised than most women twice her age. She moved through that ballroom like she owned it—which, I suppose, she does by association. Her father's estate, her father's party. And I was just a guest, an outsider allowed in on sufferance, tolerated because I have power now, even if I don't have breeding.

The way she looked at me when we danced was like I was something distasteful she'd found on the bottom of her shoe.

This isn't really your world, is it?

No. It's not. But it's the world I'm stuck in now, and I'll be damned if I let some mafia princess make me feel small.

Except she did. She made me feel exactly as small as I've been feeling since I took over this position… worse, actually, given the disdain in her eyes.

I drain the whiskey and pour another, heavier this time. The alcohol is starting to dull the sharp edges of my anger and humiliation. But it's not dulling everything. Underneath the anger and the wounded pride, there's something else.

Desire.