Vows and Debts

Chapter 5:His Family

MIA

The judge took eleven minutes. I counted because counting gave me somewhere to put my attention that wasn't the man standing a foot away from me, signing his name on a piece of paper that would change what I was called for the rest of my life.

He asked if I took Vincent Sabbatini as my husband. I said yes, and the word came out smaller than I meant it to, swallowed halfway by the dry air conditioning of a county courthouse that smelled like printer toner and old coffee. Not the wedding I'd planned with Nathaniel, with its orchids and string quartet.

No flowers. No guests. Renzo signed as witness and didn't smile once, and somehow that felt more honest than if he had.

Vincent drove us back to the house himself. No driver, no radio, no conversation, just the sound of tires on wet pavement and my own pulse, which hadn't fully settled since the moment I'd said yes out loud and made it real. When we finally pulled through the gates, he spoke for the first time in twenty minutes.

"My brother and sister live here too. You'll meet them tonight."

"Nobody mentioned siblings." My voice came out flatter than I felt. Inside, something had lurched, the particular feeling of realizing a stranger's whole life came with people in it, people who'd be watching me from now on, deciding what to make of me.

"Nobody mentioned a lot of things to you this week." He didn't look at me when he said it. "Sofia and Dante. Twins. Twenty-two. They're the only family I have left that matters. Whatever you decide to think of me, keep it separate from them."

I didn't answer.

The house was quieter than I expected for somewhere with this much money sitting inside it. Vincent led me down a long hallway lined with photographs, all of them old, all of them carefully spaced. Two gaps interrupted the pattern. Faint outlines on the wallpaper where frames used to hang, a slightly different shade of cream where the sun hadn't faded the wall the same way for years.

I didn't ask what used to be there.

A door burst open before we reached the end of the hall.

"You're back. Finally." A young woman appeared first, dark hair loose around her shoulders, eyes already narrowed at her brother before they'd even landed on me. "I had to hear from Renzo that you got married today. Renzo, Vincent. You didn't even tell us you were seeing someone, let alone marrying her in a courthouse."

"Sofia."

"I'm just saying. Most people get a cake." She turned to me, and her whole face shifted, curiosity replacing irritation so fast I almost laughed despite everything. "Hi. I'm Sofia. I'm the only person in this house who'll actually tell you the truth about things, so hang onto me."

Behind her, a second figure leaned in the doorway, taller, quieter, watching me with an expression I couldn't place yet. Something between assessment and suspicion.

"Dante," he said. Nothing else.

"Mia."

"I know who you are." Not cold exactly. Careful. He looked past me, at his brother. "Renzo says her father owed a debt."

"Renzo talks too much," Vincent said.

"Renzo's usually right, though."

The room went tense in a way that landed somewhere familiar in my chest. I'd grown up fluent in that silence. I recognized its shape immediately, even in a house I'd never set foot in before today.

Sofia broke it before it could settle any further. "Okay, interrogation later. Mia just married my emotionally constipated brother this morning, the least we can do is feed her before we traumatize her further." She looped her arm through mine, easy, like we'd known each other for years instead of minutes, and the casual warmth of it nearly undid something in my throat I'd been holding together all day. "Come on. I'll show you your room, and on the way I'll tell you everything Vincent will never admit about himself."

I looked back once before we turned the corner. Vincent was still watching me, his face unreadable again. Dante hadn't moved from the doorway.

Whatever I'd just married into, it was bigger, and older, and more established beyond just one man.

VINCENT

Dante waited until their voices faded down the hall before he said anything else.

"You didn't tell us."

"I'm telling you now."

"You married a woman this morning over a debt her father owes you, and the first either of us hears about it is from Renzo." His voice stayed low and even, which was worse than if he'd shouted. Dante only got quiet like that when he was genuinely angry, a habit he'd picked up from me. "That's not how we do things. Not with each other."

"I don't owe you an explanation for every decision I make."

"No. But you used to make them with us in the room, not after the fact." His jaw worked once before he asked the question I'd been waiting for since the moment he opened that door. "Was this Dominic's idea?"

"No."

"Because it sounds exactly like the kind of move he's been pushing for. Leverage instead of an alliance. Father would never have done it this way."

Something in my chest went rigid at the mention of our father.

"This has nothing to do with Dominic," I said. "Or with Father."

"Then what does it have to do with."

I didn't answer.

Dante studied my face the way he'd studied it since he was a boy, hunting for the one c***k I usually managed to keep hidden from everyone but him.

"You're not protecting her because of a debt," he said finally. "I've watched you collect on debts before. You don't look at people like that when it's just business."

"Careful."

"I'm not trying to start anything, Vincent. I'm trying to understand what you just brought into this house." He pushed off the doorframe, unhurried. "Because if it's more than a transaction to you, that changes things. For all of us. Especially with the Volkovs circling again."

That landed harder than I wanted it to, and I hated him a little for saying it before I'd had the chance to think it through myself, alone, the way I usually preferred to carry things.

"I'll handle the Volkovs the way I handle everything."

"You always say that." He started toward the stairs, pausing once at the top. "I hope you're right this time."

I stood alone in the hallway of photographs, in front of the two gaps where our parents used to hang, and felt the old, familiar weight settle back onto my chest, the one I'd carried since the night I became the only thing standing between my brother and sister and everything our family had already lost once before.

I had let someone new through the front door today.

I hadn't done that in a very long time, and some part of me, the part I kept locked furthest away even from myself, already knew exactly how much that was going to cost me if I was wrong about her.