CHAPTER 1

THE BAG

Elian is three steps from the corner store, a small bag of sugar in his hand for his mother's tea, when a man slams into his shoulder and shoves something heavy into his arms.

"Hold this. Don't drop it."

The man is already running before Elian can push him off. "Hey! What the hell are you doing, I don't even know you!"

No answer. The man cuts down an alley and disappears, and Elian is left standing on the corner with a bag that isn't his, heavier than it looks, the strap still swinging.

He doesn't get a chance to set it down.

Three men round the corner at a dead run, and the moment their eyes land on the bag in his hands, all three of them stop being interested in whoever they were chasing before and become entirely interested in him.

"There he is."

Elian's stomach drops. "Wait, no, I don't know anything about this bag, some guy just…"

"Save it." The tallest of them is already closing the distance, and something about the flat, unhurried way he moves tells Elian this isn't a misunderstanding that ends with an apology.

"I'm serious, I don't know him, he just ran up and…"

They don't wait for the rest of the sentence. Elian sees it in their faces, the decision already made, and his body reacts before his brain finishes catching up. He drops the bag and runs.

They run after him.

He doesn't know these streets as well as he should for a man who's lived in this city his whole life, and every turn he takes feels like a gamble. He cuts through a market stall, knocks a crate of oranges into the path behind him, hears one of the men curse and stumble. He doesn't look back to see if it worked. He just keeps moving, lungs burning, until the streets start to look familiar again and the sound of pursuit finally, mercifully, fades.

By the time he reaches his own front door, he has no shoes, his shirt is torn at the collar, and his hands won't stop shaking.

His father is standing in the front room when he walks in. Not asleep. Not worried. Waiting.

"Coming back late like you always do." Corrado doesn't so much as glance at the state of him. "I've been sitting here waiting for you to get home and get ready for your marriage to Salvatore."

Elian stares at him. For one disoriented second the sentence doesn't even process, buried under the pounding of his own heart. "What? What are you talking about?"

"You heard me."

"That's not for me. That's Matteo's."

His father's jaw tightens. "Your brother is nowhere to be found. He's gone. And you're going to take his place, or something worse will happen to this family." He says it the way he'd read out a grocery list, flat, already decided. "You're my second son. As long as you belong to this family, I will get you married in your brother's place."

Elian looks down at himself, at his bare feet, at the torn collar, at hands that are still shaking from a chase he doesn't even understand yet. "And since when," he says, low, "have you ever treated me like I belong to this family?"

"Elian…"

"Look at me." His voice cracks and he lets it. "I walked in here looking like this and you didn't ask me a single question. Not what happened, not if I'm hurt, nothing. All you had waiting for me was that I'm being sent to marry a man everyone in this city calls a devil with no mercy. How am I even supposed to believe you're not hiding my brother somewhere so you can hand me over instead?"

His father moves like he might strike him. Elian doesn't flinch, only because he's too tired to.

"Shut your mouth," Corrado says, low and dangerous. "You are not in any position to question my decisions. This is final. Don't push me, or you won't like what happens next."

"What more could you even do?" Elian's laugh comes out thin, humorless. "Lock me in a room again? Tell the staff not to feed me for a few days? I already know the whole list, Father. There's nothing left on it that scares me anymore."

"Watch your mouth. This house is on fire, Elian, and you are the only thing standing between this family and burning down with it."

A voice from the stairs stops them both. "Then let it burn."

Elian's mother stands halfway down, one hand braced on the railing, her face pale in the low light. She isn't looking at her husband. She's looking at her son, and there's something in her expression that Elian has never once seen aimed at him before, something that looks almost like grief for a decision that hasn't even happened yet.

"Let it burn," Elian says again, steadier now, looking his father dead in the eye. "Because I'm not doing this."

He tries to run again on the day of the wedding.

Salvatore hasn't arrived yet. The house is a storm of tailors and flowers and staff pretending everything is normal, and in the middle of that storm, Elian slips out the side gate in the clothes he was wearing before anyone could dress him, and he runs.

He makes it four streets before a car cuts across the road ahead of him.

The door isn't even fully open before he recognizes the man stepping out of it, and his stomach turns to ice. Same face. Same voice.

"That's him," the man says, already moving. "Let's get him."

"No, wait…" Elian backs up, but there's nowhere to go, two more of them closing in from behind, and this time there's no crate of oranges to buy him a head start. They have him by both arms in seconds. "Let go of me, please, I don't know anything about that bag, I already told you…"

Nobody's listening. He's shoved toward the open car door, and a voice from inside the vehicle, low and unbothered, says, "Get him in."

"Sir, he's one of the thieves from the other day," one of the men says, leaning in. "We'll take him with us to the wedding and deal with him properly once we're back at the penthouse."

The man in the car doesn't respond right away. He simply looks at Elian, once, a long unreadable look that carries more weight than any shouting could, and Elian understands, without a single word being spoken, exactly how badly he's about to regret this.

He's pushed into the back seat, two men crowding in on either side of him so there's nowhere left to run to even if he wanted to try. The car pulls forward, and it's only as the streets start turning familiar again, as the car rolls toward his own family's house instead of away from it, that the full horror of what's happening finally lands.

This is the man he's supposed to marry.

He doesn't say it out loud. He can't. His mouth has gone completely dry, and all he can do is sit there, held tight between two men who think he's a common thief, and watch his own house get closer through the window.

The car stops. Elian is dragged out, one man gripping each arm, no gentler than before.

His father comes out to greet the car before it's even fully parked, already halfway into a smile that dies the instant he sees who's being hauled out alongside it.

"Salvatore, welcome. Thank you for bringing him back home." His father's voice is bright, performative, the kind of voice he uses for guests who might report back to someone important, and underneath it Elian can hear the panic, because by now Elian was supposed to be dressed, waiting, ready, not standing in the driveway held by two strangers with his shirt still torn from two days ago.

Salvatore looks at him. Genuine confusion moves across his face for the first time since Elian laid eyes on him. "Who are you talking about, Mr. Rossi?"

Corrado points, and Elian feels the word land like a blow before his father even finishes saying it. "That's my son. He ran off a little while ago and we've been searching everywhere for him, we needed to get him dressed for the wedding. Thank goodness he's here now, we can finally proceed."

Silence.

Salvatore looks at Elian again, slower this time, and something in his face shifts entirely, confusion sliding into something colder, sharper, far more dangerous. He glances once at the men still holding Elian's arms, and they loosen their grip like they've suddenly remembered whose house they're standing in front of.

"This," Salvatore says, and there's the faintest, driest edge of something that isn't quite amusement in his voice, "just got a great deal more interesting." He turns his full attention back to Elian, and Elian feels it like a weight settling directly onto his chest. "So I'm marrying you."

Elian doesn't answer. He can't.

"That," Salvatore says, low, final, "makes your situation considerably worse."