Chapter 1
“Messing with my family was the last mistake you’ll ever make.”
Bianca stopped moving beneath the collapsed ceremony screens.
The scissors were in my hand now.
Not hers.
Sophia stood behind me with one palm pressed protectively over her stomach and the other around Emma.
My granddaughter was still crying over the strip missing from her dress.
Gregory tried pushing fabric away from himself.
“Raffaele, this has gone far enough.”
I looked at him.
“No.”
Then at Bianca.
“It went far enough when she touched the child.”
The room had gone silent.
Guests.
Capos.
Bodyguards.
People who normally found fascinating things to stare at suddenly discovered the floor.
I handed the scissors to Salvatore.
Then I turned to Sophia.
“Are you hurt?”
“I’m okay.”
“Baby?”
She nodded.
“Moving.”
Good.
Then Emma whispered:
“Grandpa, she said I can’t be in the picture.”
Something about that sentence stopped me.
Not the dress.
The picture.
I crouched.
“What picture?”
Bianca answered too quickly.
“The wedding photographs.”
I looked at her.
Emma shook her head.
“The big family one.”
Sophia’s face changed.
She knew something.
“What?”
She hesitated.
Then:
“Dad, Gregory’s been telling people tonight that the photograph after the ceremony is supposed to show the next Carbone household.”
I slowly stood.
Gregory went still.
There.
That was why he had been so confident.
Why Bianca cared where Emma stood.
Why Sophia had been pushed aside.
This wedding was not simply a wedding.
Someone had turned the photographs into a declaration.
I looked at Gregory.
“Next Carbone household?”
He said nothing.
I stepped closer.
“You’re a Hale.”
His jaw tightened.
“For now.”
The room became colder.
I understood.
They had not planned to join our families tonight.
May you like
They planned to use the wedding to make everyone believe Gregory was entering mine as something far more important.
And apparently my daughter and granddaughter were inconvenient evidence that the Carbone line already existed without him.
