Married to the Wrong Moretti

Ten years. That's how long it took me to learn how to smile at people I wanted to strangle. I stood at the top of the staircase in a gown the color of dried leaf, looking down at a ballroom full of people who had never once wondered where I disappeared to for a decade. Crystal chandeliers. Marble floors polished until they looked wet. Money wearing itself like skin. Be looked at. Be admired. Be exactly what they expect. I kept repeating in my mind when a figure smoothly walked beside me. "You look radiant, my dear." My grandfather appeared at my elbow. Salvatore De Luca wore seventy years like a tailored suit. Silver hair combed back. Eyes warm enough to fool almost everyone in this room. Almost. "Thank you for your kind words, Grandfather," I sweetly replied, and meant none of it. His gaze swept over the crowd, which was watching us like hawks, and then he continued with a smile that never touched his eyes, "Tonight you become what you were always meant to be. The eldest daughter of this family." Then his face came closer as he whispered in a voice that only I could hear, "Do try not to embarrass us, my sweet Neisa." Do try not to embarrass us. That's what I was in his eyes. An embarrassment. Not that I cared enough about his opinion, not after he had ruined my entire childhood. He led me down the staircase to applause that meant nothing, past faces I was already cataloguing without meaning to. Who deferred to whom, who watched me with curiosity, lust, and jealousy. My cousin Isabella stood near the champagne fountain in emerald silk, clapping with a smile stretched so tight it had to hurt her botox face. Careful, my mother used to say, before the accident took her from me in every way that mattered. Smiles like that always mean the knife is close. I had not understood then. I did now. "Tonight...I have the honor of introducing my granddaughter, Neisa De Luca, as the eldest daughter of our family." He announced, raising his glass, and the room went quiet the way rooms always did for him. Applause. Isabella's smile didn't move but something behind her eyes did. And I did notice that, but it was not the right time to act on my instinct. Little did I know it was going to cost me hell. Across the room, a crowd of people started collecting at the entrance. I looked around and saw Grandfather walking toward the crowd with a big, happy smile. The crowd near the entrance parted, and then I saw why. Tall. Dark suit that probably cost more than my entire education. He walked like he owned the floor he was standing on. Somebody near me whispered "Adrian Moretti" like they were telling a ghost story, and my brain filed it away fast. Rival family, dangerous, do not engage. But that rule did not apply to the old man, because the next second he closed the distance between himself and that man. He reached him first and extended his hand, warmth in his eyes. "Adrian. So glad you could make it." The man shook his hand with exactly the right amount of pressure. Not too eager, not too cold. Something about the way his eyes moved across the room felt a beat too unfamiliar, though, as if he were reading exits instead of guests. Then his gaze drifted past my grandfather. And landed on me. What the f*ck! I didn't choose that. My heart skipped, just once, before I could stop it, and for a second neither of us looked away. I grabbed the nearest glass of champagne off a passing tray, mostly to have something to do with my hands. I turned my attention to other people's chatter and whispered gossip, anything but him and how cold his eyes had been on me. "Nervous?" Isabella appeared at my side, way too sweet, watching me over the rim of her own glass. "Just thirsty," I said, and drank half of it in one go. "Big night for you." She tilted her head, studying me the way you would study something you were not sure was real yet. "Not for you, clearly." "Oh, I always thought you would come back eventually. I just didn't think Grandfather would actually hand you a title for it." She smiled wider. There it was. "Careful, Isabella. You will strain something smiling that hard." "I could say the same to you. You should be careful too. People are already talking." Her eyes flicked, quick and deliberate, toward the terrace doors. Toward him. "People are always talking. I stopped caring what about." "Mm." She didn't believe me, and honestly, neither did I. "Well. Enjoy your night, cousin." She drifted off before I could answer, champagne in hand, smile still in place. I told myself it did not mean anything. I did not know how much time had passed, but... What I did know, an hour later, holding my own champagne and half-listening to Isabella's mother, Rose, describe some tedious wedding in Capri, was that the room had started to feel wrong. Warm. The edges of things blurring a half-second behind where they should be. I set the glass down. What is happening to me? Was it the drink? "Neisa, darling." Isabella again appeared at my side, that same stretched smile in place. "You look flushed. Let's get you somewhere quiet." Her sweet voice felt like a sharp, venomous edge stabbing my brain again and again. Somewhere quiet. Even drugged, some distant, disciplined part of my brain recognized those words for exactly what they were. A door opening onto a trap. Of course, she was not happy with my return. And of course, she had to pull some stunt, so that the old man could send me into exile for another decade. My legs moved away from her. I should have fought it. Ten years should have counted for something. Instead, the hallway tilted under me, and a door opened, and I stumbled into a dim room lit by a single lamp and stopped. A man stood by the window, shirt discarded somewhere, skin damp with a heat that had nothing to do with the room. He turned at the sound of the door and for one long, stupid moment, neither of us moved. I should have recognized my own mistake immediately. Should have turned around, walked back into that hallway, and let Isabella have her small, spiteful little victory...an empty room, a rumor that went nowhere. Instead, my eyes moved over him. The line of his shoulders. A scar near his jaw. A body coiled like violence even at rest. Something in my blood roared awake in answer. "You shouldn't be here," he said. Rough. Strained. A man losing a fight I couldn't see. "Neither should you," I managed to say back in the same stern tone. Neither of us moved toward the door, and then he took a step closer, and my brain just... stopped doing its job. I want to say I thought about it. Weighed my options. Remembered I was supposed to be smart about things like this. I did not. He reached out, slow, like he was giving me every chance to say no, and when I didn't, his hand found my jaw, tilting my face up toward his. Up close he didn't look so untouchable. Just human. Hot. Way too hot, actually, and so was I, and none of it made any sense and all of it felt inevitable anyway. "This is a terrible idea," he murmured, like he was talking himself out of it and failing in real time. "The worst," I agreed, and closed the last of the distance myself. I'm not going to walk through the rest of it. What I will say is this: whatever was in my blood that night, it wasn't the only reason I stopped thinking straight. And somewhere between the door and the bed, I stopped caring whose fault that was.