Todos los capítulos de My Family Gave My Fiancé to My Sister: Capítulo 1 - Capítulo 9

Champagne flutes chimed beneath the chandeliers as Chicago’s most dangerous families gathered at the Blackstone Hotel for the wedding of Adrian De Luca and Bianca Moretti.Bianca lifted the skirt of her ivory gown and came toward me with the glowing smile of the evening's rightful hostess. "Elena, you finally made it. Tell me the truth. Doesn't this dress look perfect on me?"Of course it did. The designer had measured my shoulders and spent three months dyeing silk to the exact shade of ivory I wanted. Someone had simply taken in the waist for Bianca before letting her wear it.She raised her hand so the black onyx at her wrist caught the light. "And look at this. Adrian said that if I fell in love with something, he'd make sure I got to keep it."The bracelet wasn't jewelry anyone could simply fall in love with. It carried the De Luca crest, and for five generations it had belonged to the woman who would stand beside the next head of the family.Three weeks earlier, Adrian had fasten

I checked into a business hotel downtown under the first available corporate rate. It wasn't beautiful, but the lock recognized my key, the closet was empty, and no one expected me to sleep in the basement.By two in the morning, I had finished the handover index. I placed my company laptop, port credentials, and encrypted family phone in a document bag, then booked an appointment with my attorney for the next morning.My cell stayed quiet for less than ten minutes before Adrian called."Where are you?" His voice was low and rough. "I went upstairs and realized you'd actually left.""I'm at a hotel.""Send me the address. I'll come get you.""No."Silence stretched between us. "I didn't approve tonight's seating plan. Your mother brought out the bracelet at the last minute. I was going to stop the whole thing, but-"Bianca's voice drifted through the phone. "Adrian, my head hurts."His answer came at once, gentle and attentive. "Your medication is beside the bed. I'm coming."When he r

Long after the plane vanished into the clouds, Adrian remained at the window. His fist tightened around the engagement dissolution until the edge of the paper sliced his palm.Elena's attorney cleared his throat. "Miss Moretti revoked your access to her personal accounts, medical decisions, and private residence. Legally, you no longer have any relationship to her."Adrian stared at her signature. The strokes were clean and decisive, with none of the hesitation he had spent nine months imagining she would feel.He saw her again at the ballroom entrance, alone in a black dress while her family posed beneath the lights. He had seen the hurt in her face and still offered his hand to Bianca.He had assumed Elena would wait because she always had. He had mistaken her patience for permission to keep hurting her.By the time Adrian returned to the lakefront safe house, the Morettis had gathered around Bianca as if the previous day had changed nothing. Francesca tucked a blanket over her legs.

Restoring the lakefront safe house took three days.Workers stripped the pale gold wallpaper and hauled away Bianca's furniture, but they couldn't recover the vinyl records that had been sold or discarded. The white hydrangeas in the conservatory had already taken root. Tearing them out would only destroy the beds Elena had built.Francesca stood in the empty main bedroom and realized how little evidence remained that her older daughter had ever lived there. An old winter coat hung behind the closet door. Two books on maritime law leaned against a shelf, and a chipped coffee mug sat at the back of a cabinet.Elena didn't even drink coffee. She had used the mug every morning when she made Vito's coffee before the drive to the office.Matteo found a sealed wooden crate in the storage unit. Inside were the belongings the family had removed over the previous nine months: Elena's university awards, a set of her grandmother's dishes, photographs she had taken of Lake Michigan, and a stack of

My mother's eyes reddened as soon as I approached. She moved as if to embrace me, then stopped when I stepped back half a pace."Elena, I'm sorry."My father held out a slim document case. His hands looked unfamiliar without a phone or a contract in them. "Your shares have been restored. The company needs you, but you don't have to come back or work for us. These were always yours."Matteo offered me an inventory from the storage unit. "The safe house will never be exactly the way it was. I know replacing something isn't the same as returning it, but I'll keep looking for the missing records and photographs."For once, none of them mentioned that Bianca had saved me at the docks. No one appealed to blood or told me that family forgave family. They didn't ask me to understand their intentions.They had finally found the right words. The trouble was that right words could still arrive too late."Send the corporate papers to my attorney," I said. "You can ship the personal things to Londo