Page 18 of The Bond

“Enzo has arrived, which means you are to meet your father now,” Mom informed me.

My insides turned to jelly just hearing Enzo’s name.

No, stop it, I mentally commanded. You will not give him the satisfaction of ruining this marriage pact. I was going to make this walk down the aisle look effortless, no matter how much pain each step caused me. I would hold up my family’s end of the bargain. We would not look go back on our word so that the De Lucas could take advantage.

Mom made her exit so that she could enter the church while the bridesmaids and the maid of honor helped me out of the private room to the church doors outside, where I found my father waiting with the groomsmen already lined up.

I felt my stomach lurch as I approached my father. With my escape to the safehouse upstate and the fire that almost killed Enzo, I hadn’t spent much time with Father all these weeks. In fact, until yesterday’s rehearsal, I hadn’t seen Papa since one of our video chats while he was in the hospital. Luckily, he’d been discharged from the hospital weeks ago so he could recuperate from the hitman’s bullet that nearly took his life.

My father looked far better than the last time I saw him in the video chat from his hospital room. He’d regained some weight and the color had returned to his face, thank goodness.

“Lena, you look like an angel,” Papa complimented me as I leaned closer to greet him with a kiss on his cheek.

“Thank you,” I said, taking my position next to him.

Wedding march music was playing, signaling that my mom and Enzo were already taking their places inside. Next, the groomsmen and the bridesmaids headed down the aisle together, leaving me to stand at the entrance, waiting with Papa.

As the crowd of groomsmen and bridesmaids thinned, I craned my neck to peek at the assembled guests sitting in the pews. The church was full—just about every available seat taken by both families plus the various friends and associates we all relied on to keep our illicit business going. From here, I could see the New York City politicians, real estate titans, and media moguls we kept on our side with bribes, favors, and blackmail. And that was just the more legitimate faces. The rest of the crowd was made of mobsters, enforcers, associates, and hitmen that made my family’s underground empire run. No doubt Enzo’s people were sitting on the groom’s side just waiting for an excuse to antagonize us.

Finally, the last of the bridesmaids and groomsmen took their places and the wedding music began to swell. That was the signal to begin my walk with Papa.

Chapter 8

Valentina

Papa offered me his arm, and I took it, making sure that I held on tight to the bouquet of red roses in my hands.

I took the first step hesitantly as emotions washed over me. Glancing at my father for strength, I tried to read the expression on his face, but I couldn’t. Papa’s face was unreadable, showing neither joy nor regret at this arrangement. Enzo was convinced that my father had sent a killer to set fire to the wood shed at the safehouse, but Enzo had no proof. Now, as I searched my father’s eyes for answers, I saw nothing that would give him away. Was Enzo right? Was my father truly capable of sending an assassin to get rid of my fiancé? Just the thought tore my heart to pieces. If my father no longer consulted me about something as important as a hit job, especially one against my own would-be husband, then Papa was running the show entirely on his own without my input.

It was as if my services as the head of his New York operations were no longer needed. My days as his most trusted confidante would be over and every scrap of power I had earned would have come to nothing. I would truly be nothing more than a mafia wife with no power to speak of. All hopes of becoming my father’s second-in-command completely dashed. Despite knowing in my head that was what this marriage was designed for—to strip me of any chance at being second—ordering a hit without my say would be such a clear message that it was tantamount to betrayal.

If Enzo could betray me, then why not my father? As I held onto my father’s arm, I tried to banish the terrible thoughts now plaguing me. For all I knew, Enzo had planted the idea in my mind to turn me against my father. It would be clever to put the Romanos at odds in order to use the chaos and division to seize power for the De Lucas.

Here I was, on my wedding day, trying to figure out if it was my father who was betraying me, or if it was my fiancé sticking the knife in my back even now. Two men I loved with all my heart, yet I didn’t know which one to trust.

With a heavy heart, I took another step, then another. I stared across the church at Enzo, desperately looking for some kind of anchor through this emotional storm. His face was just as unreadable as my father’s. There was nothing to signal what he was thinking one way or the other. If he was pleased that his plan to use me was on the verge of success, he didn’t show it.

I heard a collective gasp from the assembled crowd as everybody turned to look at me. There was approval in their eyes—even from Enzo’s parents, who didn’t take their eyes off me for a second.

Swallowing hard, I glanced around the church, searching for anyone who might be secretly working to hurt my family or Enzo’s. I thought back to all the violence and chaos that had nearly ruined us ever since I met Enzo. There had been the mole feeding information about us to law enforcement, the assassin who shot my father, the car fires at the De Luca dealership, the bank bombing, those threatening text messages sent to Enzo’s phone, the attempted poisoning at the food tasting, and finally, that awful fire in the woodshed.

Who could possibly want me, Papa, Enzo, and both families destroyed?

I turned to my cousin Frankie, standing with the other groomsmen. Frankie had every reason to want me out of the picture so he could seize power and become second. Right now, my cousin was smiling at me, seemingly trying to give me encouragement as I took my final steps to a new life.

From one of the pews, I saw Enzo’s uncle Claudio, who would want revenge for my family daring to cut off his hand in the most gruesome manner imaginable. Claudio wasn’t smiling. Instead, Enzo’s uncle was glaring at me with pure hatred in his eyes. Enzo had written his uncle off as too stupid and cowardly, but sometimes family missed things about loved ones that they didn’t want to see. If Claudio blamed my family, along with Enzo, for not protecting him from losing his hand, that might have been enough for him to come after everybody.

Finally, my eyes landed on Enzo’s valet McClain, sitting way at the back stone-faced. McClain was a military veteran with the know-how to sneak into an apartment to kill, but he wasn’t as young and in shape as he used to be. Plus, there seemed to be no motive on his part.

There I was, surrounded by men I couldn’t trust. Part of me felt trapped and helpless. At the mercy of traitors and killers hiding in plain sight. Despite being fenced in by potential enemies, though, that didn’t mean that I needed to leave everything to external forces. While my grip on power was slipping, I had my own inner strength. A strength that I didn’t get from the men around me, but from myself. This wasn’t the kind of courage that was granted by others. This power that was rising came from within. No one could give it to me or take it away.

Holding my head up high, I started walking steadily down the aisle, my heart pounding, but still refusing to shrink away from what needed to be done. Even with diminished power and betrayal all around me, I wasn’t going to give up on protecting the people that I loved.

The thought of my loved ones pushed me to look directly at Enzo. That unreadable look on his face had changed. Now, he was gazing at me with something that seemed like awe. A reverence that stunned me and left me breathless. There was no regret in his eyes. No anger. Only this adoration that was bringing me back to life.

When our eyes met, I felt my breath hitch. Had something changed between us? It seemed impossible and yet, as I gazed back at him, I could no longer will myself to pretend. All the love that I had tried to hide from him swirled inside of me with such force that I knew I must have radiated the feeling. The barbed wire of anger that had wrapped so tightly around my heart began to give, unfurling as it dislodged itself and set me free.

As I came to a stop in front of Enzo, I saw the way he refused to take his dark eyes off me.