THE MAFIA BOSS CATERED MY WEDDING

Chapter Three — What He Knew

I didn't sleep.

I tried, briefly, around midnight — lying on top of the covers in my rehearsal dinner dress because changing felt like a concession to normalcy I wasn't prepared to make. I stared at the ceiling and listened to the hotel's particular nighttime silence and reconstructed everything I thought I knew about the last two years of my life.

It took until 4 a.m. and I still didn't have all the pieces.

What I had: a catering company that wasn't one. A federal document with my name on a series of accounts I'd never opened. My father's signature on financial records I didn't understand. Daniel, in the corridor, telling someone I didn't know anything yet. And Marco Ricci — standing in my reception hall with an earpiece and a timeline that had nothing to do with cake.

What I didn't have: any version of this that made sense.

At 4:15 I got up, washed my face, made terrible hotel coffee, and decided that sitting with questions I could answer was more useful than sitting with ones I couldn't. I could answer at least one of them. I knew where Marco was staying — the venue had a staff accommodation wing, and Ricci and Sons was listed on the vendor sheet as utilizing it.

I would wait until a reasonable hour.

I lasted until 7 a.m.

The side garden was empty except for him.

He was standing near the stone wall at the garden's far edge, jacket off despite the October cold, phone in hand, looking at something in the middle distance that I suspected wasn't actually there. Thinking. I had forgotten that about him — the quality of his stillness when he was thinking. Like the room, or in this case the garden, was simply waiting for him to finish.

He heard me coming and put the phone away.

He didn't look surprised. I was beginning to understand that Marco Ricci never looked surprised because he was rarely actually surprised, and the distinction mattered.

"You didn't sleep," he said.

"You knew about Daniel," I said. "Before I did. How long?"

He looked at me for a moment. Then he said: "Three years."

"Three years." I let that sit. "Daniel and I have been together for two."

"I know."

Something cold moved through me — not shock, I was past shock, but the specific feeling of a floor you trusted turning out to be temporary. "He approached me," I said slowly. "We met at a gallery opening. He said something intelligent about a piece most people walked past. I thought it was accidental."

Marco said nothing.

"It wasn't accidental."

"No."

"He targeted me."

"Yes."

I had known this was coming — I had assembled enough pieces through the night to see the shape of it — but knowing something is coming still doesn't fully prepare you. I took a breath that was steadier than I expected. "My father sent you here."

"Yes."

"He knew about Daniel."

"He suspected. Late enough that he couldn't move directly without exposing himself." Marco's voice was even, careful — not cold, but the specific quality of a man delivering difficult information as cleanly as possible. "He asked me to make sure you weren't in the building when it came apart."

"When it came apart," I repeated. "You mean the wedding."

"I mean everything Daniel built around you."

I looked at him across the garden. The October light was doing something sharp and unhelpful to the clarity of his features — making it difficult to look at him directly and equally difficult to look away. He was watching me process and not rushing any of it, which was either considerate or strategic and I wasn't sure it mattered which.

"Why you?" I asked. "My father could have gone to the police. He could have hired a lawyer, a private investigator, anyone operating inside a legal framework. Why you?"

Marco held my gaze steadily. "Because the situation wasn't inside a legal framework. And because your father has known my family for a long time."

"How long?"

"Longer than you know."

That answer was a door he wasn't opening yet. I filed it away.

"The federal document," I said. "My name on those accounts. Did you put it there?"

"No. Those accounts existed before I was involved."

"Then who — " I stopped. Recalibrated. "My father."

"Your father's arrangement. Yes."

There were more questions behind that — many more, the kind that would take more than a garden conversation to answer — but before I could select the next one, his phone buzzed.

He looked down at it.

His expression changed. Not dramatically — Marco Ricci didn't do dramatic — but something moved behind his eyes that hadn't been there a second ago. Sharper. More alert.

He looked up at me.

He said, quietly: "They moved the timeline up."

"What does that mean?"

He was already moving — jacket retrieved from the wall, phone at his ear, the unhurried efficiency of a man shifting from one operational mode to another.

"It means," he said, "that you need to stay close to Lena today. Don't go anywhere in this venue alone."

"Marco." I said his name like a door I was holding open. "What timeline. Whose timeline."

He looked at me for one moment — just one, the specific quality of someone deciding how much truth the next few hours could hold.

"Not Daniel's," he said.

Then he was gone.