Claimed by My Ex's Mafia Father

"Smile more, darling. This is the happiest week of your life."

Eliora Aster lifted her champagne glass and smiled the way she always did at events, the smile that said everything is fine even when it wasn't.

"That's your work smile," Camille said. "I need your bride smile."

"I am smiling."

"Not really."

Eliora laughed and looked around the terrace. Candles everywhere. White flowers. A live band playing something soft. She had planned nights like this for other people her whole career. Tonight was finally hers.

It should have felt perfect.

She looked at the crowd like she always did, checking the people and the timing. Then she stopped

Aveline was missing.

Her best friend had a seat at the head table. She had a maid-of-honor dress waiting upstairs. She had no reason to be slipping through the side doors near the private part of the house.

"Have you seen Aveline?" Eliora asked.

Camille shook her head. "Not in the last few minutes."

Eliora told herself it was nothing. Aveline had been acting strange for weeks, cancelling plans, answering texts late, going quiet for no reason. Eliora had blamed wedding stress.

She didn't believe that anymore.

"I'll be right back," she told Camille, and slipped away from the party.

The hallway was quiet. Thick carpet swallowed her footsteps. She caught Aveline's perfume in the air, fresh and close, and followed it without thinking.

She passed the library. Empty.

She passed a closed door. People were speaking quitely about business, not Aveline.

At the end of the hallway, a door was slightly open. Light came through the opening. She heard voices inside, Aveline's voice, and a man's voice that she did not recognize

"You can't keep stalling them," the man said. "They want confirmation before the wedding. Not after."

"I need more time."

"You don't have more time. Neither does she."

Eliora's whole body went cold. She.

They were talking about her.

"She trusts me," Aveline said. "That has to count for something."

"It counts for as long as it's useful."

Eliora pushed the door open before she could stop herself.

Aveline spun around. Her face went pale.

The man beside her didn't move at all. He was young, well-dressed, and calm in a way that felt trained, not natural.

"Eliora—" Aveline started.

Eliora didn't hear the rest. Her eyes had already moved past them, to the second door behind them. It led to the next room. It stood open just enough to show her a chair.

A jacket hung over the back of it.

She knew that jacket.

It was Caius's.

Her stomach dropped.

"Eliora, wait—" Aveline reached for her arm.

Eliora pulled away and walked past her, toward that second door, her bare feet silent on the carpet. Her heart beats so hard she could feel it in her throat.

She reached for the handle.

Don't, said some small, hopeful part of her. Once you see it, you can't unsee it.

She opened the door anyway.

A woman laughed inside. Soft. Warm. Not Aveline's laugh.

Eliora pushed the door the rest of the way open, and saw exactly what she already knew she would.

Caius was half-dressed. He froze mid-motion, one hand still on his shirt. A second glass of wine sat on the table behind him. The bed was a mess.

"Eliora, this isn't—"

"Don't." Her voice came out steady. That surprised her more than anything else in the room. "Don't finish that sentence."

She should have screamed. She should have felt the floor drop out from under her.

Instead she felt strangely calm. Cold and clear. The same calm she used when a wedding fell apart hours before the ceremony. Handle it first. Feel it later.

"Explain what," she said. "That you've been sleeping with my best friend? Three days before our wedding?"

No one answered. The silence told her everything.

Aveline appeared in the doorway behind her, makeup already running. "Please, let me explain."

Eliora looked down at the hand reaching for her arm until it dropped.

"I loved you," she said quietly. "Sit with that."

Then she turned and walked back toward the party. She kept her back straight so neither of them could see her start to cry.

The patio was still crowded when she got there. The band was still playing. For a few seconds, Eliora let herself believe she could slip back into the crowd unnoticed and fall apart somewhere private.

Then Caius came through the doors behind her, and his shirt was buttoned wrongly.

"Eliora, wait—"

"Don't follow me." She didn't turn around. Her voice carried further than she meant it to.

"Let me explain. Please."

"You had your chance to explain." She spun to face him. The music stopped. Every head nearby turned. "You had plenty of chances. Twenty minutes ago. With my best friend."

Total silence.

Guests she'd known for years, business partners, family friends, people who had watched Caius grow up, turned to watch her world end in front of them.

Eliora felt every eye on her like heat. She thought about every wedding disaster she'd ever fixed for a client by staying calm when no one else could.

If you can survive their worst nights, she thought, you can survive your own.

So she didn't scream. She didn't cry.

She slid the engagement ring off her finger, a big diamond, custom cut, the kind of ring people photographed, and held it out to him in her open palm.

"Eliora, please. We can fix this."

"There's nothing to fix." Her hand didn't shake. She was almost proud of that. "You didn't break something we can repair, Caius. You showed me something that was never real."

She set the ring down on the nearest table. She did it quietly, like setting down a small piece of paper. The tiny sound of the stone hitting the table felt very loud on the quiet patio.

"Someone should return that," she said. "I believe it's still under warranty."

Somewhere behind her, a guest gasped. Someone else laughed, a short, shocked sound they couldn't hold back.

Caius's face twisted from shame into something colder. "You're doing this here? In front of everyone?"

"You did this here." She held his eyes. "I'm just honest enough not to pretend otherwise."

She turned to leave. That should have been the end of it.

But as she walked across the patio, she saw a man standing completely still at the edge of the crowd.

Severin Virelli hadn't moved since the music stopped. He held a glass of wine he hadn't touched. His face showed nothing, no shock, no anger, no father rushing to defend his son.

Just stillness. And something sharp behind his eyes, like he was studying her, thinking through something important.

Their eyes met across the quiet patio.

Eliora expected pity. She braced for it.

She didn't find any. What she found instead was focus, steady, careful, and impossible to read.

He didn't move toward her. He didn't say a word.

He simply watched her walk past him and out into the night, as guests whispered behind her back and her whole future fell apart in front of a room full of people she barely knew.

She made it past the front doors before her legs finally gave out. She leaned against the cool stone wall, breathing hard, alone in the dark for the first time in three years.

That was when she heard it.

An engine. Low. Steady. Coming from somewhere near the trees, exactly where no car had any reason to be waiting.

Eliora wiped her eyes and told herself it was nothing.

But some old feeling, one she hadn't felt since she was a child, made the hair rise on the back of her neck.

She turned toward the sound.

Two headlights, dark and still, stared back at her from the shadows. Then, as she watched, the engine grew louder.

It was moving toward her.