The Sweet Oblivion

Seven days before my sister's wedding, her fiancé put his hand over my mouth in the dark and told me not to scream.

The lights had gone out in the middle of the toast. One second my father was raising his glass to Adriana and Nico Marchetti, the next the whole ballroom was black and someone near the kitchen doors was shouting in Russian.

I didn't see Nico move. I only felt him. An arm around my waist, a wall of warm suit against my back, and then I was being pulled through a door I didn't know existed into a room that smelled like cedar and fur coats.

"Quiet," he breathed against my ear. "They're not here for your father. They're here for you."

I should have fought him. Every girl in this family is raised knowing exactly what men like Nico are. The youngest Don in New York. The man my father calls a necessary evil when he thinks the doors are closed.

But his hand wasn't hurting me. It was shaking.

Outside, footsteps. Two sets. Slow and careful, checking doors. Nico shifted, putting his whole body between me and the handle, and I felt the gun at his hip press into my side.

The footsteps passed. His hand slid from my mouth. He didn't step back.

For a long moment neither of us moved. I could feel his heart hammering through his shirt, as fast as mine. Men like him aren't supposed to have hearts that do that.

"Why would anyone want me?" I whispered. "I'm nobody. I'm the good one. I wear pink and I sit where I'm told."

"You're the one I look at," he said. "And people noticed."

Somewhere down the hall, my sister was calling his name. I could hear the panic in it. I could also hear my own heartbeat, which was much louder, and much worse.

"You're marrying Adriana on Saturday," I said.

"Am I?"

His thumb found my jaw in the dark. Not rough. Almost careful. Like he'd imagined doing it so many times he was afraid to get it wrong.

"Nico. Go to her."

"Ask me why I agreed to this marriage, Elena."

I shouldn't have. I knew it the way you know a step is missing before your foot comes down. I asked anyway.

"Because the contract your father signed doesn't say Adriana," he said, very slowly. "It says his daughter. He never wrote down which one."

My breath stopped. His forehead dropped against mine.

"I've spent three months pretending I didn't care which. I'm done pretending. On Saturday I'm going to stand at that altar and tell him he gave me the wrong sister."

Before I could answer, the lights came back on.

And the door swung open, and my father was standing there with a gun in his hand.