Chapter 2
For a long moment, the only sound in the suite was wine dripping onto the carpet.
Dante looked at the empty glass in his fist like it belonged to a stranger.
"Ellie— Elena. I didn't— that wasn't—"
He snatched a napkin off the vanity and lunged for my face. I turned my head away.
Then I made myself look down.
The red was still moving. It crept across the bodice, sinking into lace my mother had chosen thread by thread, turning ivory into the color of a bruise.
My throat had closed. Nothing could get out.
A drop gathered at the hem, fell, and darkened the carpet. Dante made a small, helpless noise and dabbed at my forehead anyway, as clumsy as when I was seven and had skinned both knees on the driveway.
Laughter drifted in from the hall.
"Save your energy, Dante."
"Months ago I told her I didn't want this. So she went around me to my parents and got her wedding anyway. And then she made Bianca cry. Let her be embarrassed for once. She's earned it."
We both turned.
Luca was propped against the doorframe, arms folded. I couldn't have said how long he'd been watching.
No tux. Instead he wore a faded gray hoodie with a lopsided cartoon fox stitched across the chest.
A birthday present. From Bianca. Last spring.
He cocked his head, and a slow smile spread across his mouth, mean as a paper cut.
"Elena Moretti. You win over my mom and dad and decide you get to steer my whole life? Plot all you like. You'll never be Bianca."
He looked at me with such pure disgust it nearly made me laugh.
Nobody had ambushed anyone with this engagement. Our parents had been planning it since we were in grade school.
And Luca never objected. Not one time.
Even after his attention drifted, then poured entirely into Bianca, he never once asked to call it off.
If anything, his own family was the one rushing the date.
When Bianca heard it was official, she cried for three straight days and wouldn't touch food. Dante and Luca traded shifts at her bedside. Not one phone call came my way.
The last time I called Luca, I asked a single question.
"Do you actually want to marry me?"
Silence stretched down the line. Then, faint and tearful behind him: "Luca? Who's that? Is that her?"
And Luca, flat and irritated: "Finished? It was settled when we were kids. Quit calling me about this."
The week before the wedding, his father bought me lunch and patted my hand across the tablecloth. Leave it to me, Vittorio said. I'll take care of everything. My son will come around.
Now it made sense. Vittorio had chewed his son out, and Luca had come to collect the debt from me.
A breath of laughter escaped me. I plucked the napkin from Dante's fingers and, very slowly, wiped my brother's wine off my own face.