Chapter One: The Terms of Custody

The walls were the color of old blood.

Isabella Marchese had been sitting on a velvet settee for three hours and seventeen minutes. She knew the exact count because the grandfather clock in the corner had a loud, relentless tick—like a doctor counting down the last seconds of a life. Her life. The one she'd had before tonight.

Ten floors below, the city of Verona Bay glittered like a spilled tray of diamonds. She could see the harbor bridge, the lights of the financial district, the distant smudge of the ocean. What she couldn't see was the street. The windows were reinforced with something thicker than glass—laminated, maybe, or layered with film. The balcony doors had no handles on the inside. The gate she'd been escorted through had required a code and a thumbprint and a man with a rifle watching from a booth.

She was not a guest here.

She was inventory.

The man standing by the fireplace hadn't spoken in forty-five minutes. He was reading something on his phone, his face unreadable, one hand resting casually in the pocket of his trousers. The other hand—his left—hung at his side. Close to the gun she'd noticed the moment she walked in. A compact Sig Sauer, tucked into a waistband holster beneath his jacket.

His name was Dante Rosetti. Underboss to the Rosetti crime family. Her new husband, according to the document she'd signed with a shaking hand three hours ago, witnessed by a priest who smelled of cigars and a man she later learned was a made capo with three homicide charges pending.

She hadn't even been allowed to read the whole contract. Just the first page. The rest had been summarized by a lawyer who never once looked her in the eye.

You will cohabitate with Dante Rosetti as his lawful wife.

You will not disclose the nature of this arrangement.

You will not seek legal recourse against the Rosetti family or its associates.

You will bear any children resulting from the union without contest.

That last line had made her stomach turn. Dante had glanced at her when she'd read it, and something in his face had shifted—guilt, maybe, or simple distaste. He hadn't apologized. He'd just nodded at the lawyer to continue.

Now they were alone in the penthouse, and she was supposed to be grateful.

“You're staring,” Dante said without looking up from his phone.

“You're in my apartment.”

“It's our apartment now.” He pocketed the phone and finally turned to face her. Up close, he was younger than she'd expected—maybe thirty-two, thirty-three. High cheekbones, dark hair brushed back from his forehead, a jaw that could have been carved from marble. Handsome in the way a blade is handsome. Elegant and dangerous and utterly devoid of softness.

His eyes were the worst part. They were black in this light, flat as river stones, and they held no cruelty. That was what scared her. If he'd been a monster, she would have known how to hate him. But he looked like a man who'd once been something else—a brother, maybe, or a son, or even a lover—and had simply forgotten how.

“Three days ago,” she said, “I was teaching a six-year-old how to plié. Now I'm sitting in a penthouse married to a man who carries a gun to breakfast. Do you want me to pretend that's normal?”

Dante moved to the sideboard and poured two fingers of whiskey into a crystal glass. He didn't offer her any.

“Your brother stole three hundred thousand dollars from my family,” he said quietly. “He bet it on a horse named Golden Boy at Santa Anita. The horse came in last by six lengths. Then your brother disappeared. He left you holding the bag, Isabella. Literally. The cash was found in your apartment, under your bed, in a duffel bag with his fingerprints all over it.”

“I didn't know.”

“I believe you.”

The admission startled her so much she forgot to breathe for a moment. She blinked, and the room swam back into focus. “Then why am I here?”

Dante set the glass down without drinking. He walked to the window, his back to her now, and she saw the way his shoulders tightened beneath the tailored suit. A scar she hadn't noticed before ran along his left knuckle—pale and raised, like a knife had opened him there years ago.

“Because he's still out there,” Dante said. “And because my uncle—the man who actually runs this family—doesn't believe in loose ends. He wanted you dead. You, your mother, your landlord, the teenager who works the front desk at your studio. Everyone who ever knew your brother's name.”

Isabella's blood went cold. “My mother—”

“Is fine. For now.” He turned, and his face was hard again, but she saw the flicker underneath. Exhaustion. Maybe even shame. “I negotiated. You live, you marry me, you become a Rosetti. In exchange, my uncle's temper cools. Your mother gets a monthly stipend. The landlord and the teenager never existed.”

“You negotiated me.”

“I negotiated a marriage contract.” He said it flatly, like a man reciting terms of surrender. “It's not the same thing.”

Isabella stood up. Her legs shook, but she forced them straight. She was twenty-six years old. She'd been a dance instructor two weeks ago, living in a small apartment above a bakery, saving up for a trip to Italy she'd been planning since she was fifteen. Now she was the bride of an underboss, locked in a penthouse overlooking a city that might as well have been on another planet.

“What are the rules?” she asked.

Dante seemed surprised by the question. He studied her for a long moment, then nodded, as if she'd passed some small test.

“You live here. You have staff, a car, a security detail, a credit card with no limit. You will not leave without an escort. You will not contact law enforcement. You will not speak to anyone about what you see or hear. In public, you smile. You play the devoted wife. You wear what I buy you and go where I take you.”

“And in private?”

“In private, you're safe.” He said it like a promise. Like a threat. “You eat what you want, sleep when you want, use the pool, the gym, the library. You don't have to pretend with me. But you also don't get to leave.”

“What if I try?”

Dante walked toward her. Not fast. Not slow. Just a steady, measured approach that made her instinctively step back until her shoulders hit the wall. He stopped a foot away—close enough that she could smell his cologne, something cedar and smoke, close enough that she saw the faint scar above his eyebrow.

“Then I'll find you,” he said, his voice low. “And the next room won't have a window.”

For a long, terrible moment, neither of them moved. The clock ticked. Somewhere far below, a car horn blared, and the sound was almost normal. Almost human.

“What do I call you?” she asked.

“My wife.”

“No.” She forced herself to hold his gaze, even though her heart was slamming against her ribs. “When it's just us. When there are no cameras, no staff, no family. What do I call you?”

Dante Rosetti looked at her like she'd just asked the first intelligent question he'd heard in years.

“Dante,” he said. “You call me Dante.”

Then he stepped back, walked past her, and disappeared through a door she hadn't noticed before. It closed with a soft click, and then there was only silence and the clock and the blood-colored walls.

Isabella stood alone in the gilded room.

On the wall beside the fireplace, there was a painting of a birdcage. Empty, the door slightly open, the metalwork picked out in gold leaf.

She wondered if the artist had known, or if it was just a joke the universe was playing on her.

Three days, she thought. Three days ago I was free.

She sat back down on the settee, folded her hands in her lap like a good hostage, and began to count the seconds until morning.