Chapter 1 She Looked a Little Like Bianca

Elena Rossi heard her own name before she reached the door.

"Julian, Bianca's back. So what happens with Elena?"

She stopped in the hallway.

Downstairs, the Costa family's spring dinner was still going. Half the old mafia families in Miami were in the ballroom of the Miramar Club.

The lounge door was open a few inches.

"What do you mean, what happens?" Julian's voice was cool.

"You've been with her three years. Now Bianca's home. So who do you pick?"

Through the gap, Elena could see him. Julian sat in the leather armchair at the head of the room in a black suit, collar open, a glass of bourbon going warm in his hand.

"I don't want to hurt Elena," he said at last. "But Bianca just got back. She doesn't have anybody in Miami anymore. I can't leave her on her own."

"She was your first love." Nate Lombardo stretched out on the couch. "You two were the real thing. Nobody gets over that."

"Come on." That was Leo Ferraro. "Elena's put in three years with you. She's gorgeous. And you still haven't let Bianca go?"

Julian rubbed his temple. He sounded tired now.

"Elena's beautiful," he said. "But the only reason I went after her was that she looked a little like Bianca. These three years, I've been looking for Bianca in her."

Nobody said anything for a second.

"So she's a stand-in." Leo let out a breath. "Damn. I kind of feel bad for her."

"So when are you ending it with Elena?" Nate asked.

Julian looked up and frowned at him.

"End it?" he said. "Why would I end it? I've never once thought about ending it with her."

"You're not going to marry her, though."

Julian tapped his ash into the tray. He didn't answer.

"Then keep them both," Nate said. "When you feel bad about Elena, buy her something shiny. Women are easy."

Julian laughed under his breath. "Not everybody runs four girls at once like you, Nate."

In the hallway, Elena's fingers tightened on the strap of her bag until her knuckles went white.

Three years. On the nights he held her until she fell asleep, she'd thought she was the one he was holding.All along, she had been a stand-in for someone else.

She turned and went back down the stairs. Nobody in that room ever knew she'd been there.

She didn't go back into the ballroom. She walked out past the valets, down to the water, and kept going along the bay until the lights of the Miramar Club were behind her.

Three years.

Three years ago, she'd left New York with two suitcases and a residency spot at Biscayne Memorial Hospital. Her father, Vincent Rossi, was the Don of one of the oldest crime families in New York, and he had already picked out her husband: the head of the most powerful family in the country.

Elena had sworn at her mother's grave that she would never marry into that world. She wanted to be a heart surgeon. She wanted a life with no guns in it.So she ran.

In Miami, she never once said her father's name. Rossi was the most common Italian name in the phone book. She lived on a resident's paycheck, took the bus to five a.m. rounds, and let everyone assume she was nobody in particular.

Then, her first month on the job, a man walked into the ER at two in the morning with a knife cut across his palm.

He was tall and dark-eyed, his white shirt soaked with blood, and he sat on the gurney with the calm of a man who owned the building. He didn't flinch once while she stitched him. He just watched her. Two men in dark suits waited outside the curtain the whole time.

"Keep it dry for a week," she'd told him. "Come back if it gets red."

He'd looked at her badge, then at her face. "What if I just come back?"

That was Julian Costa.

Within a week, she knew what he was. The Costas were a Miami crime family. They ran the port and half the construction in Brickell, and Julian was their Don. He was everything she had run a thousand miles to get away from. She told him no.

Julian didn't hear no. There were flowers at the nurses' station every morning. His car was waiting outside after every night shift. The night she lost her first patient, he sat with her in the hospital garage until four in the morning and didn't say a word.

"Give me five years," he told her. "Five years, and the Costas are clean. Condos and a marina. No more guns, no more debts collected in parking lots. I'll take the whole family legit. For you."

She believed him.

She knew she wasn't the first woman he'd loved. Four years ago, an infection had taken his sight for five months. The same week the doctors told him it might not come back, his girlfriend left for a job in Paris. When his eyes recovered, he never said her name again. Elena had only heard it once, from Nate, after too many drinks.

Bianca.

Last Christmas, Elena had asked Julian to fly to New York with her. She'd been ready to tell him everything. Her father. Her family. All of it.

Julian had looked at her for a long moment, and she'd seen exactly what he was thinking. Meet the parents, and next came a ring. He thought she was pushing him to marry her.

"Not this year," he'd said. "Things are crazy right now."

She hadn't asked again.

It wasn't the first time. Every time marriage came up, even sideways, Julian changed the subject. She'd always made excuses for him. He was busy. The family needed him. He wasn't ready yet.

Now she knew. He hadn't been busy. He'd been waiting for Bianca to come home.

Her eyes stung. She wiped them with the heel of her hand and kept walking.

At the end of the bay walk, she stopped and took out her phone.

There was a number in her contacts she had never called. Three years ago, the night she left New York, her father had texted it to her with two words above it.

"Your fiancé."

Dante Valenti.

Everyone in New York knew that name. The Valentis were the largest family on the East Coast, the largest in North America, and Dante had been running them since he was 25. People said he didn't drink and didn't keep women around.

She had never even met him. Her father had set up a dinner the week of her graduation so they could meet. She'd left the restaurant before he got there.

She looked at the number for a long time.

If she was going to marry a man who didn't love her, it might as well be one who had never pretended to.

She pressed call.

"Who's asking?"

A man's voice. Low and even.

"Elena Rossi."

The line went quiet. It stayed quiet long enough that she checked the screen to see if the call had dropped.

"I'm calling about the marriage," she said. "I'll do it. I'll marry you."

"Have you thought it through? Once you say yes to me, you don't get to take it back. You understand that?"

"I understand."

"Then come home."

"Not yet. I need ten days."

"Why?" There was an edge in it now. "What's in ten days?"

"A surgery. I have a patient I've been following for two years. I promised him I'd be in the OR."

"I'll send someone for you in ten days."