Chapter 1

"You're angry?" Matteo looked down at me for a moment. He didn't lose his temper. He just sighed and took my trembling fist. "Celia, the port is too easy. It'll make you soft."

His thumb stroked the back of my hand, over and over.

"Those thugs in the slums only answer to you. Chloe wouldn't last one night down there. Do you want to watch her die?"

I looked at the face I'd known for 12 years, and my chest went cold.

He always put Chloe first.

On his birthday, Chloe threw him a huge party, so he had to cancel our date.

When I had a fever, Chloe happened to land in the hospital with an allergic reaction, so Matteo and Uncle Enzo had to stay with her all night.

The worst time was my birthday.

Matteo promised to have dinner with me. Instead, he left me waiting at Dante's for six hours.

At midnight, his right-hand man, Michael Bruno, finally showed up to apologize for him, with a diamond bracelet and some excuse about "business trouble."

The next morning, I saw a photo in the gossip column. Matteo and Chloe were at the opera house, her fingers tucked into his tuxedo pocket. The same pocket where he usually kept his gun.

My eyes stung.

"In that case, let's call off next week's wedding too."

I pulled my hand back. This time, I didn't want to wait for him anymore.

Matteo went still. His mouth pressed into a thin line.

Chloe's eyes were red. She pulled out a black card.

"Celia, I'll give you half the profits from the port. Call it a dowry from me. Just stop making a scene with Matteo."

Making a scene?

Chloe always found a way to twist what I did, turning every complaint I had into a tantrum.

Furious, I raised my hand to knock the card away.

But Matteo was faster.

He caught Chloe's wrist and tucked the card back into her purse.

"This has nothing to do with you," he said, frowning. "Save your money for your art show. Celia's just saying that because she's angry."

Standing so close together, they looked like the real couple, and I was the bully picking a fight.

"Right. I'm tired," I said coldly, then stormed toward the door.

"Stop right there!"

Uncle Enzo stood in the doorway, leaning on his cane and blocking my way.

He brought the cane down hard on the marble floor. The crack cut through the room.

"What gives you the right to call it off?" He sneered and stepped closer. "Chloe is a true-blooded Serra, the jewel of this family. The only reason you get to marry him is that she said no."

He hooked the handle of his cane under my chin and forced my head up toward the ancestral portraits on the wall.

"Without the Serra name, you'd have rotted in the streets of Sicily years ago," he said quietly. "If anything goes wrong at that wedding, I'll stop paying your men's medical bills and throw every last one of them to the fish."

I was shaking all over, my teeth clenched tight.

"They bled for this family."

"Then let them bleed dry." His voice was ice cold.

Something caught in my throat, and I couldn't get a word out. I just pressed my lips together and refused to back down.

Until Matteo stepped in.

"Enzo, that's too harsh. Celia would never gamble with her own men's lives." He smiled and added, "She's just nervous about the wedding."

I was so angry I almost laughed.

Not one of them would let me call off the wedding.

What they didn't know was that even if I couldn't cancel it, I could choose not to show up.

"Fine. The wedding goes ahead."

That night, I felt my way down the dark hallway to the door at the very end and slipped inside.

I locked the door and pulled the curtains tight. Then I reached into the hidden compartment under the nightstand and took out an old satellite phone.

I'd known the number by heart for ten years. The call connected on the first try.

The man who picked up was Jack Borg, an old sea captain I'd pulled from a pile of bodies ten years ago.

"Celia?"

"Is the route still open?"

"It is."

"Can you take someone away for good, somewhere no one will ever find them?"

The line stayed quiet for a long time.

"Celia, you're getting married next week."

"I know." I closed my eyes and spoke slowly. "On the night of the wedding, when everyone at the estate is drunk, have the boat waiting at the reef inlet below the back cliffs."