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Chapter One

Fiammetta

Most women in the twenty-first century did not find themselves getting ready to walk down the aisle to marry a man they had never met, but then, most women were not the only daughter of the Sicilian Cosa Nostra’s mob boss. I had been raised with the knowledge that one day, not long after I came of age, I would be wedded in a strategic pairing with one of my father’s many allies to strengthen his global criminal enterprise. Far from alarming, it was actually something I fantasized about since I was a child, before I was wise enough to fear the unknown instead of romanticizing it. It was easy to picture the veil and dress I might wear, the handsome imagined face of my future Prince Charming come to take me away from my tiny world of Palermo and introduce me to the glories of the wider world and of womanhood. Not only that, but I was proud to represent my family in such a way. As a girl, my only way to contribute to the Family was to make an advantageous marriage. It was what I had been born and bred to accomplish, and I was eager to succeed.

Such a foolish young girl.

I hadn’t known what it meant to fall in love.

To meet a man and know the moment he looked into your eyes that he was the one meant to be yours.

Niccolo Malatesta was that man for me.

Only five years older than my eighteen, but already a power broker for his father’s multimillion-dollar company, with a seat at Papà’s table, he was tall, golden, and powerful enough to entice my teenage fantasies.

I loved him the moment I caught sight of his warm brown eyes when I was called to pour him a glass of red wine at his first meeting with the Cosa Nostra at our house.

“Ciao, bella,” he’d said in a low, intimate whisper, his fingers brushing mine as he accepted the glass of liquor.

I felt that touch in the soles of my feet.

At first, my father, always watching, seemed amenable to my crush.

He invited Niccolo around more often and frequently gave us excuses to interact when I was normally kept safely removed from his foot soldiers and capos.

The Malatestas were an old moneyed family in Sicily with historic ties to the Mafia nearly as elite as our own.

“Would you like to marry Niccolo?” Papà asked me one day over breakfast when I was three months out from graduating high school.

I almost hadn’t been able to speak through my excitement, choking on my apricot juice before I could form the breathy words. “Sì, Papà.”

He’d nodded firmly as if it was a done deal.

As if he was going to make my dreams come true.

He announced the engagement the next day, and Niccolo turned up at the house with a bouquet of orange blossoms, a traditional Sicilian wedding flower. Papà gave us time to walk the perimeter of our estate, and we both pretended there weren’t half a dozen eyes watching us.

When Niccolo tugged me behind a cypress tree to steal a chaste kiss, I thought my heart might float right out of my chest.

Over the next two years, we were allowed to meet with chaperones on infrequent but not rare dates that included accompanying him to charity events and enjoying expensive dinners. He never did more than kiss me chastely, only a handful of times, but I felt the zing of arousal like an electric shock to my soul each time.

He promised me everything a young woman wants to hear. That he would love me until his dying breath. That he would give me a beautiful home and children to love, with my hair and his eyes, a whole gaggle of them because I had always wanted a large family after feeling so lonely in my own childhood.

I was the happiest girl in southern Italy.

And then, out of the blue, or so it seemed to me, I woke up on my twentieth birthday—the year I was meant to finally marry Niccolo—and Papà was sitting on the end of my bed.

“You won’t be marrying the Malatesta boy,” he informed me like he was giving a weather report and not breaking my heart. “Your new fiancé is American. You start today with a new English tutor. I expect you to be near fluent by the time of your wedding in August.”

And that was that.

Papà would not talk about the reason for the change or even vaguely entertain the sound of Niccolo’s name in my mouth.

I wasn’t allowed to see him ever again, and now, on the day of my wedding to another man—a total stranger—I felt absolutely heartsick at the prospect.

“You look beautiful,” my zia Griselda cooed to me in Italian, fussing with my veil even though it lay pristinely over my coiffed hair. “Like your mother.”

I had never known my mother, so it felt like an empty compliment. All that remained of her in our huge home was a small portrait my father kept in his office, hidden inside a cupboard as if he thought the image would fade if too many people looked at it. He didn’t let me see it frequently, so I had learned where the key was and had taken to stealing glimpses when he was out of the house on business.