All Chapters of Three Years of Loving You, Now I Choose the Empire: Chapter 1 - Chapter 10

Evening sales at Christie's have always been theaters for power games. Every paddle raised stood for the convergence of wealth, connections, and family prestige.I sat in the third row with Marco De Luca standing behind me.My father hadn't reassigned him yet. He was still my personal bodyguard.My mother's blue diamond necklace, the one my father took years ago to cover a debt, was sitting in the auction house vault as Lot 047, waiting to go under the hammer.As the auctioneer brought down the first hammer, I noticed two people come in through the side door. One of them was Isabella Vittori.She had her head tilted as she talked to her companion, and from the moment she appeared, my personal bodyguard's attention stayed fixed on her. He seemed to have forgotten he was working.I closed my hand into a fist and looked away."Next is Lot 047, a Victorian blue diamond necklace. Opening at eight million dollars."I lifted my paddle. "Nine million.""Ten million." A sweet, soft voice came f

The wounds still ached faintly. I took a glossy black riding whip out of the cabinet, the one I'd watched my father use to lash men who failed him until their skin split open.Marco pushed the door open while I was standing at the window wiping it down."Miss Vittori.""A bodyguard's core duty is absolute loyalty. You know that.""I know.""Abandoning your principal to protect another counts as the gravest betrayal, no matter the reason. You're clear on that too?" I lifted my eyes to him. "Twenty lashes. Any objection?"Marco De Luca's pupils contracted almost imperceptibly. He was next in line to become Don of Chicago's De Luca family, a man people fell over themselves to court. Who would dare lay a finger on him?But he knew what a traitor faced. Twenty lashes was lenient.In the end he said, "No.""Kneel."His whole body pulled tight, and then one knee came down, and then the other.I looked down at him and suddenly found it ironic. For the chance to stay, for Isabella Vittori, he w

During my first week settling into New York, I spent my time adjusting to a new place and a new life and visiting Albert Castellano every afternoon in the VIP room of his family's private hospital.The first time I saw the sleeping man, he honestly took my breath away.It was a completely different kind of beauty from Marco De Luca's. If he weren't lying here asleep, he would be even more striking.Every afternoon at three I turned up on time and sat in the armchair beside the bed, reading him the finance pages of the Wall Street Journal, or a passage from a novel I thought was well written, or picking apart the wording of some work email on my phone. Sometimes I talked about my past, and about my ridiculous unrequited love.I knew nothing about him, really. His doctor said talking to him and reading to him might give him some stimulation from the outside, though the odds of his waking were low. Fortunately I didn't care whether he woke.What I wanted was to be Mrs. Castellano, so I co

In the end, Marco never opened the door to the rose hall.I don't know what he felt.What I do know is that every record he retrieved that night was later preserved in the evidence the De Luca family submitted to the Commission of the Five Families.The old house cameras had caught Isabella stealing my white dress before the party.Only then did Marco learn that the figure he had carried in his memory for years had been me from the start.He went back through my whole childhood file.Frame by frame.His own bodyguard sent me messages in secret.He said his boss had stirred up the entire East Coast, digging through every record about me.And then every night he would take it out and read it word by word.I told him not to tell me any more.Reading all of it gave me no satisfaction at all.The truth didn't give me back three years, and it didn't take ninety-nine marks off my back.He finally saw me, not because he had learned how to love someone, but because Isabella tore off her own mas

On the wedding day I stood in the dressing room in a custom-made ivory gown, and Mrs. Castellano came in to fix my veil herself.Her eyes were red, and she fussed with my skirts while she talked. "If only your mother were here. She would be overjoyed."I reached out and hugged her. "Thank you.""Silly girl." Mrs. Castellano patted my back. "From today you're one of the Castellanos. And if anyone dares mistreat you..."She drew a finger across her throat.I couldn't help laughing, and a tear slid out of the corner of my eye.I had no father to walk me down the aisle that day, but Albert said he would come in with me."In case you're nervous, we won't come in separately. I'll walk in with you."He stood at the door in a black suit looking at me, and I noticed for the first time that his eyes were a very deep hazel green, like a forest after rain, still and clear.I had always thought his eyes were black. Now I could see it was only that the light had been too low, and I hadn't dared look