Chapter 2: Blood on White

The garden had gone silent in a way that felt louder than screaming.

Two hundred guests stood frozen in their gold chairs, champagne glasses forgotten in their hands, watching the guards drag the bleeding man toward the altar we'd stood at only an hour before. His knees buckled against the grass. Nobody moved to help him. Nobody dared.

I noticed, distantly, that the string quartet's instruments still lay across their chairs, abandoned mid-note. It was such a small detail to fixate on, but it was easier than looking at the blood.

Dante's hand was still locked around mine, so tight I could feel my own pulse hammering against his palm.

"Don't let go," he said again, quieter this time, like the words were meant only for me.

I didn't understand why it mattered so much. But I held on anyway, because some animal part of me understood that whatever came next, being tethered to him was safer than being alone.

***

"Bring him closer," Dante said. His voice had changed. Gone was the flat, bored tone from our wedding-morning conversation. This voice belonged to someone else entirely — someone the portraits in the hallway had been painted to resemble.

The guards forced the bleeding man to his knees in front of us. Up close, I could see how badly they'd hurt him. One eye swollen shut. Blood crusted along his jaw. His hands were bound behind his back with wire, not rope.

"Marco." Dante said the name like a verdict already passed. "You've worked for the Romano family for eleven years."

The man lifted his head. What was left of his face tried to arrange itself into something like defiance, but it came out as fear instead.

"I don't know what you're talking about," he rasped.

"No?" Dante released my hand for the first time since the doors had burst open, and something in me went cold at the sudden absence of his grip. He crouched down in front of Marco, unhurried, like he had all the time in the world. "Then explain why my perimeter men found a signal device sewn into the lining of your jacket. Explain why, twenty minutes ago, three cars I don't recognize idled outside my gates and disappeared the moment my men approached."

I watched him work, and I understood, in that moment, that this was a version of Dante I hadn't yet seen — patient and precise, a man who had clearly done this before.

My father had gone very still beside the other guests, his face the color of old paper.

"I was hired," Marco said, the words tumbling out fast now. "I didn't know what it was for, I swear to God, I just—"

"Hired by whom?"

Silence.

Dante's expression didn't change, but the air around him did — a stillness more dangerous than any shout could have been.

"Whom," he repeated.

***

I don't know what I expected. Some part of me, raised on stories about the Moretti family whispered behind closed doors at every dinner party I'd ever attended, expected violence.

Instead, Dante stood.

"Take him to the east wing," he said to the guards, his tone as even as if he were ordering a car brought around. "I want answers by morning, not a body."

Two guards nodded and hauled Marco away. His cries faded as they dragged him through the garden doors, back into the house, and I realized I'd been holding my breath the entire time.

Dante turned to the crowd, and just like that, the mask slid back into place. Cold. Composed. The dutiful groom once more.

"My apologies," he said, loud enough for everyone to hear. "A misunderstanding among the staff. Please, enjoy the evening."

The quartet resumed playing, hesitant at first, then steadier. Conversation crept back into the garden in nervous little bursts. Within minutes, it was as if a bleeding, bound man hadn't just been dragged past the wedding cake.

I stared at Dante, stunned by how easily he'd folded the horror away and handed the party back its smile.

"How do you do that?" I asked quietly, once he'd returned to my side.

"Do what?"

"Pretend nothing happened."

His jaw tightened. "Practice."

Across the garden, I caught sight of Luciano again, refilling his champagne glass with the unhurried calm of a man watching a play he'd already read the ending to.

***

My father found me twenty minutes later, pulling me aside near the edge of the garden where the string lights gave way to shadow.

"Isabella." His voice was low, urgent. "Are you alright? Did he hurt you?"

"I'm fine, Papa. It wasn't me they dragged out of here in chains."

He flinched at the sharpness in my voice, and immediately I regretted it.

"That man. Marco. He's worked for our family since you were a child. I don't understand how—"

"Papa." I lowered my voice. "Do you know anything about this? Anything at all?"

The look that crossed his face lasted only a second, but I saw it. Guilt. Not the guilt of a man who had orchestrated an attack on his own daughter's wedding, but the guilt of a man who suspected something and had said nothing.

"No," he said, too quickly. "I know nothing."

I wanted to believe him. I always wanted to believe him. That had never once stopped him from lying to me before.

"If you know something," I said quietly, "you need to tell someone. Not me. Him." I glanced toward where Dante now stood at the edge of the garden, speaking low and fast with two of his men. "Before it costs someone their life."

My father's throat worked, but no answer came.

***

Dante found me an hour later, standing alone near the fountain at the far end of the garden, my wedding dress bunched in my fists to keep the hem from dragging through the wet grass.

"You should be inside," he said, coming to stand beside me.

"I needed air."

"There's air inside."

"Not the same kind."

He didn't argue with that. For a long moment, we stood together in silence, watching the water catch the moonlight, two strangers bound by paper and blood standing in a garden that had nearly become a crime scene.

"Do you always attend your own weddings expecting an ambush?" I asked, mostly to fill the silence.

"I attend everything expecting an ambush," Dante said, without a trace of humor. "It's kept me alive this long."

"Is he going to die? Marco."

"Eventually. Everyone does."

"That's not what I asked."

Dante exhaled, and for the first time all night, he sounded tired instead of dangerous. "I don't know yet. It depends on what my men get out of him, and how fast."

***

"Whoever hired him," I said slowly, "wanted something to happen tonight. At the wedding. To you, specifically, or to the marriage itself — those aren't the same target, and I don't think you've considered that they might not be."

Dante turned to look at me properly for the first time since the fountain. Something in his expression shifted — not softer, exactly, but more attentive, like he was reconsidering an assumption he'd made about me and finding it wanting.

"That's a good question," he said. "Most people wouldn't have thought to ask it that way."

"I'm not most people."

"No," he said. "I'm beginning to understand that."

The words settled somewhere in my chest I didn't have a name for yet.

"There's something you should know," Dante said, his voice dropping lower. "About why this marriage matters so much to certain people. It isn't only about the debt."

"Then what is it about?"

He hesitated — actually hesitated, the first genuine uncertainty I'd seen from him all night. "Not tonight," he said finally. "Tonight you've had enough."

"That's not fair. You can't just tell me someone tried to sabotage our wedding and then walk away."

"I'm not walking away. I'm asking you to trust me for one night." His voice softened, just slightly. "I know that's not a small thing to ask from a stranger. I'm asking anyway."

I decided, for tonight, to let it go.

***

He walked me back through the garden himself, his hand resting at the small of my back, guiding me past guests who bowed their heads as we passed.

At the door to my new bedroom, Dante paused.

"For what it's worth," he said, not quite meeting my eyes, "I'm glad you didn't run when I gave you the chance. At the altar."

"You said you wouldn't have let me."

"I wouldn't have." A pause. "But I'm still glad you didn't try."

He left before I could ask him what that meant, his footsteps retreating down the hallway, heavy and certain.

I let myself into the room alone and stood there a long moment before I could bring myself to move. It was larger than any bedroom I'd ever slept in, all dark wood and heavy curtains, a bed big enough for four people and clearly meant for one.

I sat on the edge of the bed and finally let my hands shake the way they'd wanted to since the car first rolled toward the estate that morning. It felt like a lifetime ago. It had been less than twelve hours.

I thought about Marco's ruined face, about the guilt I'd seen flicker across my father's eyes, about the cold, careful way Dante had folded horror back into a party smile like it was nothing at all. I thought about the warmth in his voice at the fountain, so unlike the man who'd walked into my dressing room that afternoon and called me a payment.

None of it made sense yet. I wasn't sure it ever would.

Whatever t

his marriage was, I understood then that it had never been simple. And it was about to get far more complicated than either of us had bargained for.

*End of Chapter 2.*