HOW TO KILL YOUR BRIDE

The rain whispered secrets against the penthouse windows as Selena Cabrera waited for death to come for her. Not the slow, civilized death of champagne and old age that mafia princesses were supposed to die, but the violent, gasping kind. The kind that came in the dark with a knife's kiss. Her fingers traced the rim of the whiskey glass, leaving smudges on the crystal. The ice had melted hours ago. On the security monitor to her left, static flickered across the feed from the service elevator. There one second, gone the next. Just like they'd said he would be. The Ghost. The most expensive assassin in the city. The only man her father hadn't been able to buy or bury. And now he was coming for her. Selena smiled and reached for the lipstick on her vanity. Not the soft pink her maids always tried to make her wear, but the deep crimson that matched the scar along her collarbone. She applied it slowly, watching the elevator numbers climb in the mirror's reflection. 45... 46... 47... Her pulse remained steady. They'd trained that out of her by fourteen. A Cabrera didn't flinch. A Cabrera didn't fear. A Cabrera waited, weapon in hand, smile in place, even while death came calling. The lights blinked. Selena set down the lipstick just as the air pressure in the room changed. That was her only warning before cold steel pressed against her throat and a gloved hand clamped over her mouth. "Make a sound and I'll carve the scream from your lungs," a voice like crushed velvet whispered in her ear. The scent of gunpowder and winter mint filled her nostrils as the knife bit deeper. "Nod if you understand." She didn't nod or blink. She just stared at their reflection in the vanity mirror, her in her blood-red silk robe, him in all black like the shadow he was named for. His eyes were the color of a winter morning, all frost and no sun. When she didn't react, the knife twitched. "Last chance, princess." Slowly, deliberately, Selena raised her hands, not in surrender, but to finish fixing her hair. She watched his reflection's eyebrows lift as she pinned up the last loose curl. "You're late," she said, voice steady as if there wasn't a blade at her throat. "I was beginning to think the legendary Ghost was just that, a ghost story." His grip tightened. She could feel the exact moment he registered the weapons hidden around her bedroom. The throwing knives masquerading as hairpins. The pistol tucked between the mattress and box spring. The garrote wire strung across the balcony doors. Smart man. "Who else knows I'm here?" he demanded. Selena smiled at their reflection. "Just me and my father. And his twelve best men currently waiting outside that door." She tilted her head, exposing more of her throat to his blade. "But by all means, Ghost, finish what you came for." The knife didn't move. She'd known it wouldn't. Because Selena Cabrera didn't hire assassins to kill her. She hired them to test her father. The doors exploded inward before Dante could respond. Wood splintered. Glass shattered. And suddenly the room was full of shouting men and c****d weapons. Her father stood framed in the wreckage, signature silver-plated Desert Eagle aimed steadily at Dante's head. "Kill her," Don Cabrera said calmly, "and I burn your guild to the ground before sunrise." A thick contract landed on the bed with a thud that shook the whiskey glasses. "Marry her, and you both walk out of here alive."