Chapter 3

The door banged open a second time.

"Elena, the officiant needs you two in five minutes, so— oh, God. Your dress."

Tess stopped dead on the threshold. Her gaze jumped from me to Dante to Luca, and I watched her do the math.

"You two absolute— Are you tag-teaming her again?"

She launched herself at Luca. I caught her wrist before she got there.

Tess's father was a senior vice president at Ferraro Group. She had a promotion coming, a thirty-year mortgage, a whole life built in this town. I wasn't letting her torch it for me.

Luca read my hand on her wrist as something else. He hesitated, then lowered his voice, magnanimous, a man tossing a coin to a beggar.

"Here's what's on the table. You go out there as you are and we get this over with. Or you call Bianca and grovel. Once she's settled, I'll announce a postponement and have somebody sew you another dress."

On the table. His eyes said go ahead, scream. Prove me right.

Tess was shaking, tears of pure fury on her cheeks.

Me, I'd gone strangely quiet inside. The eye of a storm.

I lifted my chin.

"Don't trouble yourself, Mr. Ferraro. My mother sewed this for me before she died. Nobody you could hire would come close."

Behind me, glass shattered.

Dante had stumbled back into the vanity. A perfume bottle lay in pieces at his feet, and he was gaping at me as though I'd struck him.

I turned back to Luca.

"So, thank you, but no. I'll pass on both."

I picked up my bouquet and went out to the ballroom by myself.

At the altar stood Luca's parents. No one else.

I was twelve when cancer took my mother. Six years later, my father followed her. Other than the brother who had just christened me in Merlot, I had no blood left in that room.

Two hundred heads turned.

I lifted the microphone out of the officiant's hand. My voice came out level, which surprised me more than anyone.

"Good afternoon. I realize what I look like. Before anything else, I owe every one of you an apology for it."

That finally got Luca moving. He took the stage steps two at a time and clamped a hand around my elbow.

"Elena. What the hell is this?"

"Exactly what you asked for."

Then I faced the room.

"As you may have noticed, the groom, Mr. Luca Ferraro, didn't think today was worth a suit."

"He's told me this wedding is a trap I built for him. Fine. Consider him released. There's no ceremony today. As of right now, Luca Ferraro and I mean nothing to each other."

I let the microphone drop with a squeal of feedback, tugged my arm free, and walked back up the aisle the wrong way.

I didn't know yet that the worst part of the day was waiting for me at home.