Chapter 3

I stared at those words until my vision blurred.

No one had protected me in three years. Not really. And now the most feared man in America was offering it to a stranger.

Before I could reply, an unknown number called. I knew who it was before I picked up.

"You think one message means Castellano wants you?" Marco laughed, low and ugly. "He was being polite. Men like him do that. You really think the Devil of Manhattan would look twice at a crying cow?"

"You bought a burner just to call me names?" I leaned back into the leather. "That's a lot of effort for someone who doesn't care."

"I'm doing you a favor. Stay home. Save yourself."

Memories flickered behind my eyes like an old film.

Marco driving four hours after a collection run so we could watch the sunrise over Montauk, because I said I'd never seen it. Marco burning his hands learning my mother's tiramisu recipe. Marco holding me on the anniversary of my father's death while I sobbed into his shirt.

My father taught me everything except one thing. He never taught me what a predator looks like when it's smiling.

So I let Marco replace my father's loyal men with his own. I called it love.

A year ago, the week I left for Europe, Gia found my funeral photo on Marco's phone. Rosie was in the next room and heard every word. Gia laughed and said, "Didn't know you had a thing for whales, Marco."

He went pale. He deleted it. I thought he was angry for me.

He was ashamed of me.

The calls got shorter after that. The texts got colder. And tonight, he finally pushed me off the cliff.

"Are you finished?" I asked.

"Too honest for you?" he sneered. "Fine. Here's honest. I only touched you because you came with your father's ring. Every time you kissed me, I wanted to throw up."

There it was. The real Marco Ricci.

Something inside my chest went very quiet. Every tear I'd saved for him froze solid.

"Since you hate me so much," I said, "I hope you're still smiling tomorrow night."

"Oh, I will be. Gia will be on my arm all night. And Sienna?" His voice dropped into something cruel. "The whole family thinks we're engaged. So tomorrow, in front of every boss in New York, I'm breaking it off. The old way. I'll tear up the betrothal and call you damaged goods. You know what that means in our world. No family takes you in. No man protects you. Your father's name dies with you. You'll be open season, sweetheart. And I'll be the one handing out the tickets."

He hung up laughing.

My fingers curled around the phone.

In our world, a woman thrown away in public was finished. Every door closed. Every friend disappeared. I had watched it destroy a cousin when I was fourteen. She never came back to Mulberry Street.

But Marco didn't know where I had really spent the last year.

Not shopping in Milan. Not drinking espresso on a terrace.

I had spent it in Monte Carlo, at the kitchen table of my mother's mother. Contessa Isabella Ferri. The woman every casino in Europe still had banned. The woman who once won a private island off Sicily in a single hand of poker.

Every morning she ran me up the cliffs until I threw up. Every night she sat me at her card table and taught me to read men. Their hands. Their eyes. Their lies.

The very first time she saw Marco's photo on my phone, she studied it for three seconds and slid it back across the table.

"That boy is bluffing, cara," she said. "He has been bluffing you for years."

I opened Dante's message and typed.

[Thank you, Don Castellano. I'll be there at midnight.]

His answer came instantly.

[Dante Castellano: Then I'll be waiting at the door.]

I locked my screen and watched the Manhattan skyline rise out of the dark.

Marco wanted to throw me away in front of every family in New York?

Good.

Because tomorrow night, he was going to find out he had never been holding me at all.