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?"

I tried to keep my expression neutral. Tried to stop my brows from furrowing, to arrange my face into something polite and blank—the mask every woman raised in the orbit of Family power learns to wear before she learns to read. I wanted to tell him it was fine. That none of this mattered anymore. But then I thought about my father, about the soft rasp of his breathing when I had called the coastal house that morning, about the way Theo Romano's voice had cracked for half a syllable before she smoothed it flat again and told me everything was under control. About the little time he had left.

My thumb found the inside of my ring finger—the place where the betrothal band sat, the blood-bound token I had not yet removed. I pressed against it once, hard enough to feel the metal bite, and took a steadying breath.

"Don't worry about meeting my family." My voice sounded foreign to me, too level, too still, like the surface of water just before something breaks through from underneath. "Let's move the ceremony up. How about three days from now?"

If we did that, I could leave as soon as possible. Sign what needed signing, stand where the Family protocol required me to stand, and then drive south to the coastal enclave where my father was folding his handkerchief into perfect squares so I would not see the tremor in his hands. I could be with him before whatever remained of his time ran out like sand through a cracked hourglass.

Dominic let out a mocking laugh—low, certain, the sound of a man who believed the world rearranged itself around his schedule. His signet ring caught the overhead light as he rolled it once against his knuckle, a single rotation that said he found my urgency amusing and slightly beneath him. "Fine, if that's what you want. But don't expect anything fancy."

"Alright."

"We'll do it at my place." He turned toward the wet bar, pouring himself two fingers of something amber without offering me a glass. The crystal decanter caught the city light and threw fractured rainbows across the dark marble. "You know my parents aren't exactly thrilled about you. And your parents? Better if they don't come."

Better if they don't come. The sentence landed in the quiet room and sat there, ticking like a device with a timer no one could see. In the world we inhabited, a Family wedding without the bride's blood present was not simplicity—it was a message. It told every capo, every associate, every old-blood wife adjusting her pearl bracelet in the front pew that the bride's people were not worth the chairs they would have occupied. That the coastal Romanos, for all their decades of loyal bookkeeping and legitimate fronts, ranked somewhere below the floral arrangements.

"Fine by me."

No matter what conditions he set, I agreed calmly. Each concession cost me nothing now, because there was nothing left in the account. His expression shifted, a flicker of confusion crossing his face the way a crack appears in plaster before anyone notices the foundation has moved. He set the glass down and turned to look at me—truly look, perhaps for the first time that evening.

"Bianca, what's wrong with you? You're not acting like yourself."

Not acting like myself? I almost laughed. The sound built somewhere behind my sternum and I held it there, a breath that could have become something wild if I had let it loose. That was probably because he didn't know me anymore. Perhaps he never had. Perhaps the version of me he recognized was only the one who flinched, who accommodated, who pressed her thumb against a ring and swallowed whatever sharp thing threatened to surface.

There was a time when I would have trusted him without question. He used to tell me that his relationship with Serena was purely proper—a bond between allied families, the Bellandi heir and the Valente silent partner's daughter, a friendship that had lasted for years and carried no heat beneath its surface. I believed him. He used to sit across from me at Sunday dinners and say the words the way a man recites a prayer he has memorized but no longer means, and I took every syllable into my chest like communion wine and let it warm me. He promised he would marry me, that I could always be myself around him, that the alliance between our families would become something real—something chosen. I believed that too.

And what did I get for believing in him? Night after night, he didn't come home, the penthouse echoing with his absence while the city hummed outside like a machine that never stopped counting. He crossed boundaries with Serena as if they didn't exist—private dinners at Family-owned restaurants where the staff knew not to mention her name to me, late arrivals smelling of her jasmine perfume beneath the tobacco and leather, text messages that made his mouth curve in ways I had stopped being able to provoke. He refused to meet my parents, using the excuse of a stripped-down ceremony to pressure me into isolation. He made fun of my taste, mocked the coastal town I came from as though the salt air and fishing boats were something to be ashamed of rather than the honest labor that had kept allied supply lines running for a generation.

Whoever I had fallen in love with—whatever I had once cherished in him, the rare gentleness, the way he had once pressed his forehead to mine in the back seat of a Town Car and whispered that I was the only thing in his life that the Family hadn't chosen for him—had vanished long ago. Now there was nothing left but an empty shell wearing a tailored suit and a signet ring that meant more to him than any vow ever would.