Serena Valente. Dominic Bellandi. SV & DB.

That was when I recognized the initials engraved on the gift set. It should have been mine—BR, for Bianca Romano. Dominic had told me the jeweler made an error, swore he'd ordered the correct monogram. When I suggested calling the shop to hold them accountable, he dismissed it with a wave of his hand, told me I shouldn't be so uptight about a couple of letters. I believed him. I believed him the way anyone raised inside the rules of an arrangement believes the man chosen for her—because the alternative was admitting the whole foundation was rotten. Until I pulled up the surveillance footage from the compound's hallway camera, the kind of tape nobody bothered to erase because nobody expected the promised bride to check. There she was: a girl with cropped dark hair, perched on Dominic's lap in the private study, snatching his phone from his hand to place the order herself. Her crimson nails caught the low light as she typed. In that moment I understood how foolish I had been—not naïve the way a sheltered girl is naïve, but willfully blind, the way a woman becomes when her father's illness has already swallowed every ounce of fight she has left.

Lost in my thoughts, I didn't notice Dominic had already grabbed his overcoat and moved toward the door. The heavy fabric settled over his shoulders the way authority settled over a room when he walked in: effortlessly, as though the world had been cut to fit him.

"I won't be back tonight. I'm meeting your parents for dinner tomorrow. Send me the address," he said, the words tossed behind him the way a man flicks ash from a cigarette—nonchalant, already half gone. As if he had forgotten that tomorrow was supposed to be my day to try on wedding gowns. As if the alliance ceremony the two Families had spent months negotiating was just another line item in a schedule he kept loosely at best.

My thumb found the inside of my ring finger, pressing into the groove the betrothal ring had worn there, and I said nothing. The front door closed. The silence it left behind was louder than anything he'd said.

The next day, I decided to go to the bridal atelier alone. I had the address on a card Theo Bellandi's personal aide had sent weeks ago—an old-money establishment on the upper stretch of Via Seta, the kind of place where Mafia wives had been fitted for generations and where discretion was stitched into the curtains as tightly as the beading on the gowns. I stepped outside, and a sleek black BMW with tinted rear glass pulled up to the curb before I'd taken three steps.

Dominic rolled down the window. His gaze swept over my face, lingering on the careful makeup I had applied that morning—foundation to hide the sleepless bruising under my eyes, a muted lip color that the Bellandi matriarch would find acceptable. His brow furrowed. "What's with the makeup? You look weird." A chuckle of discontent, the kind that sat right on the edge of cruelty, and then a flick of his head toward the passenger side. "Get in. We're going together."

I kept my eyes on the ground, trying to avoid any confrontation. My fingers clenched tightly around the transit pass in my coat pocket—a small, provincial habit I hadn't shaken, because where I came from, in the coastal enclave where my father had run a quiet shipping front for allied Family interests, women still rode the local bus without apology. But as I started to open the passenger door, the window slid down, and there was Serena Valente.

She beamed, reaching her hand out enthusiastically. "Hey! You must be Bianca! I'm Serena, Dominic's friend," she said, the warmth in her voice almost aggressive in its brightness. "Hope you don't mind me tagging along! He's about to make the biggest decision of his life, and, well, knowing him since we were kids, he's got a knack for messing things up. I just don't want him to pick some ugly dress and ruin it for you." She laughed, leaning into Dominic and throwing her arm around his neck with the ease of someone who had been occupying that space for years. "If it weren't for this idiot sending me a last-minute invite with gifts, I wouldn't even be here. My father almost wouldn't let me come."

Instead of taking offense, Dominic grinned. "Oh, I could just send your father a tribute too. I know exactly what he likes. But you actually love going out with me, don't you, Miss Valente?"

Their playful, almost flirty exchange twisted my stomach, leaving me queasy. Every note of easy intimacy between them was a blade drawn slowly across something I was still pretending was whole.

Noticing my discomfort, Serena quickly explained, "Oh, I'm sorry! Don't get the wrong idea. Dominic and I have been friends forever. This is just how we are."

"If anything were going to happen between us, we'd have been married years ago," she added with an exaggerated grin.

I turned to Dominic, hoping he'd have the same playful expression as Serena, but instead his face showed a hint of something like regret—a flicker so brief it might have been a trick of the morning light sliding off the windshield. Just as quickly, his expression turned stern, his jaw tightening the way it did before he gave an order he expected obeyed without repetition.

"Can't figure out the back seat?" he snapped. "Get in. We don't have all day."

As I slid into the back, Dominic barely glanced in the rearview mirror, his face hardening into an expression I barely recognized. Serena settled comfortably in the passenger seat, one hand resting on the center console as though she belonged there—as though the arrangement between our Families was an inconvenient detail she had long ago decided not to take seriously. I closed my eyes, brushing off the unease weighing me down, and pressed my thumb against the inside of my ring finger until the pressure stung.

Then my favorite love song from decades past started playing through the speakers—a melody that had been popular long before I was born, one I'd often heard drifting through the windows at community festivals along the waterfront, and even at weddings held in the small stone church near my father's villa.

"Oh my God, you listen to this?" Serena scoffed, reaching for the console and killing the music with a sharp tap. She cast a look of undisguised disgust toward Dominic. "Only people from nowhere listen to this kind of thing. We're supposed to have taste. This is the opposite of taste. Ever thought about something from this century? Anything?"

Dominic chuckled. "Bianca picked everything in there," he replied, his voice laced with sarcasm. "She's a coastal girl, anyway. Doubt she'd know what passes for taste in the city."

My nails dug into my palms. Yes, I was a coastal girl, raised in the simplicity of salt air and fishing boats and a father who kept honest books for powerful men. I didn't have a grasp on the rituals of the main city territory, its private clubs and velvet-rope restaurants and the particular cruelty of people who had been rich long enough to make elegance feel like a weapon. I remembered how people had laughed at me during the university dinner hosted by the Bellandi network when I used a spoon to eat my salad. Dominic had taken it from me quietly, replaced it with a fork, and told me not to care what people thought. He'd said that the way a person eats has nothing to do with character. That night, I'd learned just how cruel the world could be. But I hadn't cared back then, because I believed I could be myself around him.

Now I was being myself, and the words coastal girl rolled off his tongue like an accusation. I didn't blame him for feeling differently. I only resented how time could twist things so easily. His protection had once felt real, and now, so did his betrayal.

Maybe I'd stayed silent for too long.

Dominic's lips pressed together in irritation. He caught my eyes in the rearview mirror, and for one instant the glass held both our reflections—his hardening, mine already hollow. "What's with the attitude? You're mad again just because of a song?"

Serena pretended to defend me, her voice dipped in honey and rehearsed concern. "Oh, come on, that's not nice. Girls' hearts are delicate. Even the simplest thing could make them upset. You should've said that to your promised bride."

"You're a girl. But you don't get upset so easily. What was the deal?" Dominic replied, his tone carrying the faint amusement of a man who had never once worried about the damage his words left behind.

Serena covered her mouth, laughing quietly. Her eyes gleamed with a smug satisfaction as she glanced at me, savoring her small victory. One crimson nail tapped three quiet beats against the clasp of her handbag before that smile settled into place, the kind of smile that could cut without ever breaking skin.

I let it go, not wanting to bother exposing her. I didn't even feel the need. This alliance ceremony, this whole thing, was just to fulfill my father's last wish—to see me settled, happy. As for Dominic and whoever he wanted to keep close? I couldn't bring myself to care anymore. My thumb drifted toward the inside of my ring finger, pressing once against the bare skin where the betrothal band sat, then falling away. There was nothing left there worth steadying myself for.

The old-money bridal atelier was nearly empty when we walked in, the scent of garment-steamed silk and white peonies thick in the air. A pair of Dominic's soldiers had swept the entrance minutes before we arrived—standard protocol whenever a Bellandi heir moved through territory businesses—and now stood like marble pillars flanking the glass doors. The assistant rushed over to greet us immediately. But instead of me, the promised bride, she focused on Dominic and Serena, reading the body language the way anyone in the Bellandi orbit learned to read it: whoever stood closest to the heir mattered most.

"What kind of gown would you like, miss?" the assistant asked eagerly.

Serena burst out laughing. "Oh, no, you've got the wrong person. I'm not the bride; I'm his best friend. She's the one he's marrying." She pointed back at me, a few steps behind them, standing alone in the pale light that fell through the atelier's arched windows.

The assistant's expression turned awkward, as if trying to make sense of why Serena was attached to Dominic's arm while I lingered in the background. Dominic cleared his throat, sensing the awkwardness. He tried to gesture for me to join him, but I subtly stepped aside, evading his hand that hovered mid-air, uncertain.

"I'll go look around," I said, shrugging casually.

Dominic looked a little caught off guard, like he was about to say something, but then Serena took his arm and led him to sit down on the velvet settee near the fitting mirrors, settling beside him with the ease of someone who had always belonged there.

I picked a dress quickly. Whatever the associate said was popular among the old-Family brides this season, I chose without a second thought.

As soon as I got into the fitting room, I could hear movement from the stall next to mine. I took a deep breath, feeling a strange mix of anticipation and unease. It was a little silly, really, to feel nervous over this moment after four years together. Dominic and I had passed by this bridal atelier so many times, back when the Bellandi compound still felt like a place I might one day call home. He used to say that when he finally saw me in a wedding dress, he'd be so moved that he might cry.

But now, as I stepped out in a diamond-studded gown, the fabric catching the chandelier light and throwing small bright fragments across the atelier's marble floor, he only gave me a quick glance, his expression unchanging. "So tacky," he muttered. "You're not a teenager anymore. Why would you pick something so gaudy?"

I didn't bother arguing, already reaching for my phone to get a picture taken.