The Mafia Boss's Silent Bride

er'

letting my mother pin it tighter against my spine like tha

ng, and for the last six months this dress had been fitted and re-fitted to her body in three separate appointments I wasn't invited to. Now I was standing in the mirror wearing it instead, watching my mother's hands move fast and sh

p from the pins. "If this seam puckers in the phot

ears teaching me how to disappear, and I thought that if anyone in this hotel was goi

hours since Isa

the service entrance with a bag over her shoulder, since my stepfather had finally stopped shouting into his phone long enough to actually look at me. I still remembered the e

standing beside me like I wasn't even in the room, like I was something

ears old, in a hospital hallway that smelled like antiseptic and fear, with my mother's hand wrapped so tight around mine that it left small purple bruises I didn't notice until the next morning. My stepbrother was two rooms down, already gone, a

so much as a scar, and my mother knelt down in front of me right there in that hallway and told me, ve

and somewhere in there the lie became so old it started to feel almost like the truth. Even now, three years into my step

d without anyon

t of me that sat up straighter without being told to. He stood just inside the doorway in a black suit that probably cost more than this entire wedding, and his face did the t

n, and straightened up too fast t

. We're almo

ave

quiet, and my mother was gone be

gle word to do it. I lifted my hands to sign something sharp at him, something about how if he was here to make sure I didn't run, he really hadn't needed t

s slowly starting to realize almost everything about him was certain, like he

ed for," he said, quietly enough

t very

rent woman than the one whose name is on the contract." His thumb moved once over the inside of my wrist, barely

n't stopped the wedding planner or pulled my stepfather aside or done anything except stand in the lobby with hi

tarted to sign

to me today. It only matters that a Kovalenko-Reyes daughter does, and that a ring goes on her hand before sundown." His eyes moved over my face slowly, like he was

wife who keeps her mouth shut. I get a mother who finally stops threatening

to it that I noticed, and I think he noticed that I noticed. Nobody in my family had ever a

t's the most honest thing anyone in your family has told m

h. I never meant to say that much. It was the one rule I'd kept perfectly since I was nine years old, and somehow this cold, u

t go of something you weren't sure you

businesslike tone, like he'd remembered, a little too late, that he wasn't supposed to let it slip in the first place. "Wear whatever face you

he room felt strangely emptier tha

a man who had caught her in a lie within four minutes of walking into a hotel lobby, and married her anyway. For the first time since this

er. And was anyone act