Chapter 1 - The Woman Who Grabbed the Mafia Boss by His Tie
I tripped over the rug and grabbed a stranger’s necktie with both hands.
“If you’re going to murder me, Mrs. Carter, wait until after the wedding.”
Lorenzo Duca caught my waist while a brass key slipped from his pocket.
Three letters were scratched into it.
A.C.C.
The key had been made for me before we ever met.
“I’m not murdering you,” I gasped. “I’m falling.”
“There’s a difference?”
“Legally, I hope so.”
Nobody moved.
That was the first thing I noticed after recovering enough dignity to look around.
Six armed security men stood throughout the enormous foyer. Two women in evening dresses had stopped near the front doors. Marco Bellini, Lorenzo’s right-hand man, was staring very intently at a chandelier.
His shoulders shook.
He was laughing.
“Glad somebody’s enjoying this,” I muttered.
Lorenzo looked down at me.
At six-foot-five, he seemed less like a man and more like an architectural problem.
His black suit fit shoulders wide enough to make his tailor deserve combat pay. Dark hair curled slightly above his forehead. A trimmed beard sharpened an already severe face.
And those eyes.
Dark.
Steady.
Uncomfortably calm.
I released his tie.
He loosened it with one finger.
Then he looked at the hand he still had around my waist.
He removed it immediately.
Not slowly.
Not suggestively.
Immediately.
“Are you hurt?”
“My pride.”
“I don’t have a doctor for that.”
I stared.
Marco coughed.
“That was a joke.”
“No.”
“You people are going to have to stop lying about your facial expressions.”
Something almost happened around Lorenzo’s mouth.
Almost.
Then his gaze dropped.
The brass key was lying between us.
I bent for it.
So did he.
Our hands reached it simultaneously.
Lorenzo froze.
For one strange second, the atmosphere changed.
I picked it up.
A.C.C.
My initials.
Amelia Claire Carter.
I looked at him.
“You had my room key engraved?”
“No.”
“Then either you have another Amelia Claire Carter arriving tonight, which would be awkward, or somebody did.”
He took the key.
His expression hardened—not at me, but at the object.
“Marco.”
The laughter vanished from Marco’s face.
He approached.
“Boss?”
“Who prepared Miss Carter’s room?”
“Mrs. Duca supervised it personally.”
Lorenzo glanced toward the staircase.
Before he could say anything, a small voice came from above.
“I did.”
Rosa Duca descended as if she owned gravity.
Seventy-nine years old.
Five feet tall.
Black dress.
Silver hair.
Walking stick she clearly didn’t need but probably enjoyed pointing at people.
She reached the bottom step and looked at Lorenzo’s tie.
Then at me.
Then back at his tie.
“I heard you nearly killed my grandson.”
“I tripped.”
“Marco said his face changed color.”
“Marco exaggerates.”
“I saw purple,” Marco said.
Lorenzo turned his head.
Marco immediately became interested in security.
Rosa smiled at me.
I liked her instantly.
That should have worried me.
Three months earlier, a cream-colored envelope had appeared at my bakery in Milwaukee.
Inside was the strangest proposition I had ever received.
Ninety days.
Live at the Duca estate.
Separate bedrooms.
No obligation.
No intimacy requirement.
No financial punishment for leaving.
At the end of ninety days, Lorenzo and I would decide whether we wanted to marry.
I assumed it was a scam.
Then Rosa called.
“What’s wrong with your grandson?” I asked her.
“Mostly his personality.”
I laughed.
She didn’t.
That made me laugh harder.
Then I researched Lorenzo.
That stopped the laughing.
Duca Shipping.
Duca Construction.
Nightclubs.
Warehouses.
Real estate.
Charitable foundations.
And newspaper articles filled with carefully chosen phrases such as alleged connections, suspected associates, and declined to comment.
Nobody called Lorenzo Duca a mafia boss in print.
People apparently enjoyed remaining alive.
But there was another story surrounding him.
Six women had agreed to arrangements similar to mine.
Six had left.
One called me three days before I traveled to Illinois.
“You have no idea what you’re agreeing to.”
“Then tell me.”
Silence.
“Just don’t say nobody warned you.”
Then she hung up.
Her name was Bianca Romano.
She was standing twenty feet away from me now.
Tall.
Blonde.
Beautiful.
Black gown.
Watching Lorenzo and me with an expression I couldn’t read.
Lorenzo followed my gaze.
Something cold passed between them.
Interesting.
“I’ll take your suitcase,” he said.
“I can manage.”
“You almost died carrying nothing.”
Fair point.
He lifted my suitcase with one hand.
I followed him upstairs.
Halfway up, I glanced back.
Bianca was still watching.
But she wasn’t looking at Lorenzo anymore.
She was looking at me.
And she looked frightened.
My bedroom was larger than my apartment.
Lorenzo placed my suitcase beside the bed and handed me the brass key.
“This locks the bedroom.”
“One key?”
“Yours.”
“Housekeeping?”
“They knock.”
“Marco?”
“He knocks.”
“You?”
“I knock.”
I turned the key over.
“And if I lock it?”
“Nobody enters.”
The answer came instantly.
That shouldn’t have affected me.
It did.
My former fiancé, Ethan Cole, had once copied my apartment key without telling me.
He called it trust.
Apparently trust meant inspecting my drawers and reading my messages while I showered.
Lorenzo Duca—the man half of Chicago supposedly feared—was giving me the power to lock him out of his own room.
“You look surprised,” he said.
“I’m adjusting.”
“To what?”
“Contradictions.”
Something guarded entered his eyes.
“You’ll find many here.”
Then he left.
He knocked before returning ten minutes later to tell me dinner was ready.
That tiny detail bothered me more than it should have.
Dinner was an interrogation disguised as pasta.
Rosa asked about my bakery.
Marco asked whether I had siblings.
I asked Marco whether carrying a gun indoors made sitting uncomfortable.
He nearly inhaled a breadstick.
Lorenzo mostly listened.
Then Rosa said, “You know about the other women.”
Silence.
I put down my fork.
“Yes.”
Lorenzo’s shoulders became rigid.
“Does that concern you?” Rosa asked.
“Should it?”
“Most people think so.”
I glanced at Lorenzo.
He wasn’t looking at me.
He was waiting.
I suddenly understood.
He expected disgust.
Or fear.
Maybe both.
“I’ve heard rich people gossip,” I said. “Turns out they’re just church ladies with better alcohol.”
Marco laughed.
Rosa smiled.
Lorenzo slowly lifted his wineglass.
His shoulders relaxed.
Barely.
But I saw it.
Later, he found me standing beside the windows overlooking the grounds.
“You can leave tonight.”
I turned.
“That bad?”
“I’m serious.”
“So am I. Did I insult the pasta?”
“A car can take you home. The agreement remains valid. You lose nothing.”
I studied him.
This wasn’t a threat.
He expected me to run.
That was different.
“If I leave,” I said, “it’ll be because of something you do. Not because somebody whispered about you into a martini.”
Then I walked away dramatically.
Three steps later, I discovered I had chosen a dead-end corridor.
I returned.
Lorenzo silently pointed left.
“Not one word.”
“I said nothing.”
“You’re thinking loudly.”
His mouth twitched.
I pointed at him.
“You smiled.”
“No.”
“You absolutely did.”
I walked away before he could answer.
I had almost reached my bedroom when I heard voices below.
Bianca.
And Lorenzo.
“You shouldn’t have brought her here,” Bianca said.
“I didn’t.”
“Your grandmother did.”
“That changes nothing.”
“She doesn’t know.”
“She won’t.”
My hand stopped on the banister.
Bianca lowered her voice.
I could barely hear her.
“You said that about the others.”
Lorenzo answered even more quietly.
“They left alive.”
My stomach tightened.
Then Bianca said something that made every hair on my arms rise.
“You still don’t understand, Lorenzo. One of them never left.”
A door opened downstairs.
May you like
Someone stepped into the foyer.
And Lorenzo whispered a name I had never heard before...
