Chapter 1

Minutes before my wedding, my brother tipped a full glass of red wine over my head.

"You've known for years how Bianca feels about Luca," Dante said, his voice like a slammed door. "And you still had to turn it into a three-ring circus."

My fiancé lounged in the doorway and watched, as bored as a man waiting for an elevator.

"Simple," Luca said. "You go out there dripping, or you pick up the phone and apologize to Bianca. Calm her down, and I'll let the guests know we're pushing the date."

I said no to both.

Instead, I walked into that ballroom with Merlot drying on my lace, faced two hundred guests, and told them the engagement between Luca Ferraro and me was finished.

Dante. Luca. And the girl my father led into our house the winter my mother died. I was through with all three.

Much later, I heard that the sons of two of Chicago's oldest families had chased a stained gown from one atelier to another, begging anyone who could hold a needle to make it white again.

By then, I was an ocean away.

At ten past two, Dante kicked the bridal suite door so hard it bounced off the wall.

I'd had my mother's gown on for maybe sixty seconds. I hadn't even turned toward the mirror yet.

"Elena, what is wrong with you? I told you to cancel this. I told you a dozen times!"

"Bianca's been sobbing since last night. Does that mean anything to you?"

For one ridiculous heartbeat, I'd imagined he'd come to hold me. To say Mom would have cried, seeing me like this.

Then I saw his face.

Right.

Every road my brother walked ended at Bianca's door.

The dress pressed on my shoulders like a hand. I kept very still, as if stillness could hold the day together.

"Please, Dante. Just today. I'm getting married. Let me have this one thing."

A muscle jumped in his jaw.

"Is it always about you? It's a reception, Elena. Flowers and a band. That matters more to you than Bianca falling apart?"

"She's breaking inside, and she still puts on a smile for you and Luca. All she wanted was something quiet. Dinner at home, just us. And you went and rented the biggest ballroom on the Gold Coast and invited half the city."

My hands knotted in the lace.

"It's my wedding. Am I not allowed to want it for myself? Whatever Bianca's feeling, she can feel it on her own time. Her heart isn't my job."

"She's your sister! Protecting her is your job!"

Something in me split down the middle.

"She is not my sister! She's yours. My mother had exactly one daughter, and you're looking at her!"

"Shut your mouth!"

The cold came before I understood what he'd done.

Wine sheeted through my hair, slid down the back of my neck, and spread through the white lace over my heart like a wound opening.