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The Bastard Bride of Saint Giovanni
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Every Christmas Eve in Port Saint Giovanni, the Camerlano family hosts the Claiming Rite at Saint Giovanni Manor. Twelve girls stand in a line. Whoever receives the white-gold signet pin becomes the heir’s publicly acknowledged bride candidate. I am Grace Sorrento, the bastard daughter of the Sorrento family. If I do not receive that signet tonight, by sunrise I will be put on a plane to Chicago and married off to a Rizzo, a man rumored to have killed two former fiancées. Adrian Camerlano, the boy I grew up with, swore to me in blood three days ago that the signet would be mine. But when the moment came, his hand turned. With a smile, he pinned it on Lucia, the orphan his family had sponsored. Then he leaned close to my ear. "Let Lucia have her moment. No one has ever really looked at her before. Don’t worry. This is my estate. No one will dare arrange your marriage without my say." I grabbed his sleeve, but he removed my fingers one by one. "Lucia has no roots and no last name. Tonight is all she has. But you are a Sorrento. Even without the signet, no one will touch you." That phrase, no last name, drew every gaze in the ballroom toward me, full of pity and quiet mockery. The next morning, I boarded a flight to Chicago. When Adrian heard, he made one call to Port Saint Giovanni Air Control. "Ground every plane. Nothing leaves today!"
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The Bastard Bride of Saint Giovanni Chapter 9
Adrian seemed about to say more, but another set of footsteps came from the terrace entrance, steady and slow, carrying a cold that did not belong in a banquet hall.Vincent stepped out of the shadows.“What are the Camerlanos worth?” he said with a faint, self-mocking laugh. “The girl I trained with my own hands has turned around and bitten me. I only just found out.”He stopped in front of me at the smallest distance two adults kept in a formal setting.“My greatest mistake was letting you leave,” he said. “I let you build enough capital to come back and fight me.”He knew.He knew I had acquired Sorrento shares, that the company swallowing the family’s business was mine, that I had spent three years laying the board under his nose.“Good methods,” he said. “You really are the best of his twenty-three children. Grace, if only you weren’t a bastard.”The words scattered in the night wind. It was not regret, only the admission of a miscalculation.There had never been warmth between us
The Bastard Bride of Saint Giovanni Chapter 8
On the day the Sorrentos came to Chicago for the banquet, the city had its first rain of the season.It was not the damp, clinging rain of Port Saint Giovanni, but something cold and clean that stung the skin. When the butler stopped the car at the hotel entrance, someone opened an umbrella over me, but I still caught the scent of dry dust turning wet. After three years in Chicago, I had grown used to it.The banquet hall was on the top floor, with floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the skyline. Light poured from a massive chandelier over hundreds of guests in evening clothes. The Sorrentos had been seated near the windows, a good position, but not the main table.Before the banquet, their butler came to summon me after ringing the bell three times. I was on the living room sofa, trimming leaves from a vase of white camellias. It was not deliberate. The Rizzo florist changed the estate arrangements every Wednesday.“Ninth Miss,” the butler said from the doorway, still using the super
The Bastard Bride of Saint Giovanni Chapter 7
I lifted my head and realized something I should have seen earlier. Being Mrs. Rizzo did not mean control over money. A monthly allowance was probably what they expected.I straightened.“Sebastian, I won’t stay trapped by the Sorrentos, and I won’t live asking for money. I want my own work. And if I can, I want what belongs to me in the Sorrento family.”He leaned back and looked at me, then reached out and slid his fingers through my hair, pushing it back slowly. I could have moved, but I didn’t.“Everything in the Rizzo family is yours,” he said.From him, it sounded like an unsigned check.He called the butler, placed a card on the table.“My account. Use it.”He watched me. I took it without hesitation.The room prepared for me was the best in the estate, filled with sunlight, the lawn outside cut into clean lines. I had never had a room with a lock in the Sorrentos’ house. I stood there a long time before unpacking.That night, for the first time since leaving Port Saint Giovanni
The Bastard Bride of Saint Giovanni Chapter 6
The stairs lifted behind me, and when the cabin door closed, the rain, the wind, and Adrian’s last words were cut off.“Don’t regret this.”I didn’t.The cabin was quieter than I expected. The seats were deep gray leather, the table matte wood edged with brass, and the carpet absorbed every sound.The white-haired butler inclined his head from the aisle.“Ma’am, the washroom is at the rear. You’ve been in the rain. Please change first.”I followed him back. The washroom was marble and brass, with clothes already laid out on the counter: a dark gray cashmere sweater and black trousers. There were no labels, but the fabric felt warm against my skin, as if it had already been worn in.The size was exact.I had lived in the Sorrentos’ house for eighteen years, and no one there knew my size. Someone who had never met me did.When I stepped out, the guards had been cleared to the rear of the cabin.“Is this Mr. Rizzo’s usual plane?” I asked.The butler looked up with a faint curve at the cor
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