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.

The curtain next to me opened, and Serena stepped out wearing an off-the-shoulder gown with a low-cut back. Her dress sparkled twice as much as mine. The associate went still, and even one of the soldiers near the entrance shifted his gaze before catching himself.

And Dominic—he was speechless, unable to tear his eyes away from her, his gaze growing almost misty. Serena, sensing his reaction, smirked and put on an act. "What's the matter? Did I surprise you? Tell me, who looks better—me or your promised bride?"

Only then did Dominic's eyes drift back to me, as if remembering my existence, and he blurted without hesitation, "You look better."

Serena playfully slapped his arm, scolding him. "Idiot! You're supposed to compliment your bride at a time like this. You really have no charm, do you?"

Realizing his blunder, Dominic looked at me, a bit embarrassed. I just lowered my gaze, focused on sending a picture of the dress to my parents. My father would be in the old armchair by the window of the coastal house, my mother smoothing the bedsheet flat beside him while they waited for news of the fitting—news that was supposed to be joyful. Once I got their response, I didn't bother saying anything more and turned back to the fitting room to change.

When I came out, Serena was pulling Dominic into selfies, giggling as he posed in an absurd tuxedo with a dramatic tailcoat. He'd always been averse to dressing up. Even during our trips through the shops along the Bellandi waterfront, he'd never tried on anything, not even once. But now, here he was, fully dressed up, laughing like a carefree teenager while a daughter of a silent partner leaned into his shoulder as though the betrothal ring on my finger meant nothing at all.

Four years together, and he wouldn't even try on clothes for me. So that was it—his so-called rules applied only to me. With that realization, I grabbed my purse, ready to leave. Just as I reached the door, Dominic called after me.

"Bianca, I don't have all day for dress-fitting. We can't go to check on another shop."

"I'm fine with the last one," I replied quickly.

He frowned. "I wasn't saying you can't try another one. Go look around. Take your time."

I shook my head. "No need. I'm good with this one."

We wouldn't be having a real wedding, anyway. Why waste any more time?

He tossed his tie at me the way a man discards something that has already served its purpose, the silk landing across my forearm with a whisper of expensive fabric against skin. His eyes held nothing. Not anger, not frustration—just the flat, practiced coldness of someone who had learned early that indifference was its own kind of weapon.

"You're still mad because I didn't meet your parents?" The words came out clipped, rehearsed, as though he had been turning them over in his mouth the entire drive back from the atelier. "You've been giving me attitude ever since. Seriously, is it necessary?"

The penthouse study where he stood smelled of cedar humidor wood and the faint residue of whatever bourbon he and his father's capos had been drinking before we left. Beyond the floor-to-ceiling windows, the city's skyline glittered—Bellandi territory from the waterfront to the financial district, every building either owned, leveraged, or owed. Dominic moved through that view the way he moved through every room: as if the walls existed only because he permitted them to stand.

"You should be grateful I'm here today at all." He unfastened one cufflink, then the other, setting them on the obsidian console with two deliberate clicks. "What more do you want?"