Chapter 1 - The One Sentence
“From what?” I asked again, my voice trembling despite my best efforts to keep it steady.
For the first time in my life, James Hart looked terrified.
And then he said the one sentence that made me understand this marriage had never been about money.
“If you don't marry Nicholas Caruso by Saturday,” he whispered, “they are going to kill me, Evelyn.”
The silence in the office was deafening.
My father, the untouchable titan of New York real estate, was suddenly a fragile man bargaining for his life with his daughter's freedom.
He had crossed the wrong people.
He had made a mistake he couldn't buy his way out of.
And Nico Caruso was the price.
I didn't argue anymore.
I couldn't.
Two days later, I stood in a private room at City Hall wearing a white silk dress that felt like a shroud.
Nicholas Caruso was taller than the rumors suggested, and far more lethal up close.
He wore a dark suit that probably cost more than my first car, and his eyes were a cold, calculating gray.
He didn't look like a man forced into a marriage.
He looked like a predator who had finally cornered his prey.
“You’re trembling,” he murmured as we signed the marriage license.
“It’s cold in here,” I lied, refusing to meet his gaze.
He chuckled softly, a sound that sent shivers down my spine.
“I prefer a wife who isn't afraid of me, Evelyn.”
“I prefer a husband who isn't a mobster.”
His hand tightened around the pen, the only sign that my words had landed.
When we were pronounced husband and wife, he didn't kiss me.
He simply turned to his men and nodded.
We left City Hall in a fleet of black SUVs, heading not toward his estate in the Hamptons, but deep into Brooklyn.
The car ride was suffocatingly silent.
I stared out the window, watching the familiar Manhattan skyline disappear, replaced by a gritty industrial landscape I didn't recognize.
When the car finally stopped in front of a heavily guarded warehouse, I realized with a jolt of panic that this wasn't a wedding reception.
This was an interrogation.
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And as Nico’s men pulled a bruised and bloody figure from the trunk of the car ahead of us, I recognized the gold watch glinting on the man's wrist.
It was my father’s.
