Chapter 9

CELESTINA

Aunt Josephine handled the wedding preparations with Caroline’s help. The Grecos didn’t seem to show much interest in the details of the celebration. For them it was business, nothing else. It was decided that the wedding was to take place in my parents’ mansion in the Hamptons—the place where they had been killed. My mother by my father and my father by Phoenix. It was almost symbolic that this was the place where I would lose my life as well.

On the day of my wedding, I stepped into the foyer of the mansion, a place I hadn’t set foot in

for years. It had been mostly deserted since then. My brothers had inherited the place—not me since I was a woman—and they had preferred to stay in Atlanta, away from Phoenix and away from me. They were much older, so we never had much in common anyway. They were busy making names for themselves, despite our father’s wrongdoings. My marriage to Salvatore was supposed to wash away the blemish of the past, but my secret could ruin us all.

Ove