Blood vow

Chapter 2

Elena didn't sleep.

She sat on the edge of her narrow bed above the bakery with the ring on the nightstand, watching the diamond throw tiny rainbows across the ceiling as the sun came up. It was beautiful. She hated it.

At 8:58 a.m., a black car pulled up outside. At 9:00 exactly, someone knocked.

The driver was a heavy, silent man with a scar through one eyebrow. He took her single suitcase without a word and held the door open. Elena didn't move.

"Where's my brother?"

He glanced at her in the mirror. "Private clinic, Miss Marchetti. Doctor's been with him since midnight. He's alive."

"I want to see him."

"Mr. Moretti said you would. After the papers."

After the papers. Of course. Nothing in this world came free.

She slid the ring onto her finger. It fit perfectly, and that frightened her more than the bruises on Marco's face. He had known her size before he ever walked into her shop.

The Moretti house sat behind iron gates in Dyker Heights, a stone mansion with dark windows and a driveway long enough to hide a body in. Two men with earpieces watched the car roll in. Neither of them blinked.

Inside, everything was marble and quiet. Elena's sneakers squeaked against the floor, the only honest sound in the entire house.

"This way," said a woman in a gray dress who introduced herself as Rosa, the housekeeper. She had kind eyes and the careful face of someone who had learned to see nothing. She led Elena down a long hall and through a set of carved doors.

Dante sat behind a desk the size of a car. He wore a white shirt with the sleeves rolled to the elbow, and a thin scar ran along his left forearm. Elena looked at it a second too long.

Beside him stood a gray-haired man in a three-piece suit, holding a folder.

"Miss Marchetti," Dante said. "Sit."

"I'd rather stand."

"I'd rather you sat." His tone didn't rise. It never did. "This will take a while."

She sat. He almost smiled, and she hated that she noticed.

"Mr. Giordano is my attorney," Dante said. "He'll explain the terms."

The old man cleared his throat and opened the folder. "The agreement runs for twelve months from the date of the wedding. During that time, Miss Marchetti will reside at this address and appear publicly as Mr. Moretti's wife."

"Wedding," Elena repeated. "When?"

"Saturday," Dante said.

"That's four days from now."

"Yes."

She stared at him. He stared back, perfectly calm.

Giordano continued. "The debt of two million dollars owed by Marco Marchetti is cancelled in full upon signature. His safety is guaranteed by the Moretti family for the duration of the agreement and after. Upon completion of the twelve months, Miss Marchetti will receive one million five hundred thousand dollars and the full title to her bakery, free of any claim."

One and a half million. A year of her life for more money than she'd see in a lifetime of cannoli. The number should have made her feel better. Instead it felt like a price tag.

"There are conditions," Giordano added. He turned a page. "Miss Marchetti will not leave the property without an escort. She will not discuss the family's business with anyone, inside or outside the home. She will not contact any associate of the Rossi family. And she will..."

"Wait." Elena held up a hand. "I can't leave without an escort?"

"For your protection," Dante said.

"Whose protection?"

His eyes lifted to hers. "Both."

It was an honest answer, and that was the worst part. She got the feeling he rarely told any other kind.

"I have conditions too," she said.

Giordano blinked. Dante leaned back in his chair.

"Go on."

Her heart hammered so hard she thought they could hear it. "One. I see Marco every week, alone, with no one listening. Two. When he's healed, he leaves the city if he wants to, and nobody follows him. Three. My bakery stays open. I hire someone to run it, and the staff keeps getting paid."

"Done," Dante said, before she'd finished the sentence.

She faltered. "That was fast."

"They're reasonable." He tapped the desk once. "Anything else?"

She had a fourth demand, and it was the one that mattered. She took a breath.

"You don't lie to me about Marco. Ever. If something happens to him, I hear it from you. Not from a stranger, not from the news."

The room went still. Giordano looked at his shoes.

Dante studied her for a long moment, and for the first time she saw something flicker in his face, not quite surprise, more like a man seeing a door he hadn't known was there.

"Add it," he said quietly. "Clause fourteen."

Giordano scribbled. Dante pushed a pen across the desk, a heavy black one that looked expensive enough to buy her shop.

"Read before you sign," he said. "I'd think less of you if you didn't."

So she read all eleven pages, line by line, while the two men waited in silence. Nothing in it was a trap. That was what unsettled her. It was fair, clean, almost honorable. Somehow that made it worse. A cruel contract she could have despised.

She signed.

The pen scratched. The sound seemed to echo.

Dante signed beneath her name in a hard, slanted hand, then looked up. "Welcome to the family, Elena."

"I'm not part of your family."

"You will be," he said. "Whether you like it or not."

Marco looked smaller in the hospital bed.

The clinic was private and spotless, and it smelled of antiseptic and money. Her brother lay propped on pillows with a bandage on his ribs and a purple bruise spreading across his jaw. When he saw her, his whole face crumpled.

"Lena."

"Don't." She sat on the bed and took his hand. "Don't apologize again. I can't hear it."

"I should have told you."

"Yes. You should have." Her voice cracked. "I signed, Marco. I'm marrying him on Saturday."

He closed his eyes. "I'll fix it. I swear I'll fix it."

"There's nothing to fix. It's done." She squeezed his fingers. "But I need you to tell me the truth. Last night you said I didn't know what he was. What did you mean?"

Marco's eyes snapped open. Fear flashed across them, raw and immediate, and he glanced at the door.

"Not here," he whispered.

"Marco..."

"Not here, Lena. Please."

The guard outside the room shifted his weight. The floorboard creaked. Marco let go of her hand, and the conversation ended as surely as if a door had slammed shut.

Elena sat very still, a cold feeling crawling up her spine. The debt wasn't the only thing her brother was hiding. And whatever it was, he was more afraid of it than he was of Dante Moretti.

By the time the car brought her back to the mansion, the sun was setting. Rosa showed her upstairs to a bedroom bigger than her whole apartment. There was a canopy bed, a balcony, and a bathroom with a tub she could have swum in.

"Mr. Moretti's room is through there," Rosa said, nodding at a door set into the far wall.

Elena stared at it. "There's a door."

"Yes, miss."

"Between our rooms."

"He asked for you to have this one." Rosa kept her eyes carefully on the carpet. "It's the safest in the house."

When Rosa left, Elena crossed the room and tried the handle. Locked. She felt a stupid wash of relief.

Then she noticed the key. It sat on her side of the lock, small and brass, waiting.

Only her side.

She stood there a long moment, the weight of what that meant settling over her. He hadn't locked himself away from her. He'd given her the choice, and the power to keep him out.

Why would a man like that do that?

A knock sounded at the main door, and she jumped.

"Come in."

It wasn't Rosa. A man stood in the doorway, grinning, young and handsome in a rumpled way, his tie loose and his smile warm enough to melt snow. He looked like someone's favorite cousin.

"So you're the girl who finally got Dante to propose," he said, and held out a hand. "Luca Moretti. Welcome to the family, cugina."

Elena shook it. His grip was friendly, his smile was easy, and it didn't reach his eyes at all.

"I'll be seeing a lot of you," Luca added softly.

It sounded like a promise. It sounded like a threat. Elena couldn't tell which, and that, more than anything else that day, made her skin crawl.