Chapter 1
“If you plan to kill me, Mrs. Carter, I’d appreciate it if you waited until after the wedding.”
That was the first sentence Lorenzo Duca ever said to me.
Which was fair.
Because I had just tripped over a rug worth more than my bakery oven, grabbed his black silk tie with both hands, and nearly strangled the most feared man in Chicago in his own marble foyer.
“I’m not killing you,” I gasped. “I’m falling.”
There was a difference.
A small one.
My heel had caught the edge of an antique rug the second I stepped into the Duca estate.
My suitcase rolled toward the staircase.
My body pitched forward.
And because my survival instincts apparently had a sense of humor, I grabbed the nearest thing.
Lorenzo Duca’s tie.
I yanked hard.
He stumbled forward.
I crashed into his chest.
Six armed guards went completely still.
One of them turned toward the wall.
His shoulders shook.
He was laughing.
I looked up slowly.
Lorenzo was enormous.
Six-foot-five at least.
Broad.
Black suit.
Dark hair.
Trimmed beard.
Hands that looked capable of crushing walnuts and tax auditors.
His eyes were calm.
Too calm.
Like anger would have been less terrifying.
I released his tie.
“Oh.”
Brilliant, Amelia.
Very elegant.
I tried to step back.
My heel slipped again.
Lorenzo caught my waist before my skull met the marble.
Behind him, a blonde woman smiled at me with polished cruelty.
The kind of smile that says she already knows your weaknesses.
Lorenzo noticed.
So did I.
That mattered later.
At that moment, I was busy wishing the floor would open and politely swallow me.
“Do I get three falls before you send me home?” I asked.
The guard near the wall choked.
Lorenzo stared at me.
Then one corner of his mouth moved.
I pointed at him.
“You smiled.”
“No.”
“You absolutely did.”
His right-hand man, Marco Bellini, suddenly became fascinated with the chandelier.
Coward.
Three months earlier, I would have laughed if anyone told me I would be standing in a Lake Forest mansion arguing with a suspected mafia boss about facial expressions.
I was thirty-four.
Plus-size.
Single.
Owner of a bakery-cafe in Milwaukee that smelled like butter and panic most mornings.
My last fiancé, Ethan Cole, had spent two years trying to shrink me without ever saying the word fat.
He said, “That dress doesn’t flatter you.”
He said, “Maybe skip dessert before engagement pictures.”
He said, “I just want you to feel confident.”
Funny how his confidence always required me to become less visible.
I gave back the ring.
He told everyone I had emotional issues.
That was Ethan.
He could stab you and complain about the stain.
A year later, a letter arrived from Rosa Duca.
Cream paper.
Embossed initials.
Old money smell.
She was Lorenzo’s grandmother, and apparently she arranged marriages for families with too much power and no normal dating skills.
The proposal sounded ridiculous.
Ninety days at the Duca estate.
Separate bedrooms.
No obligation.
No penalty if I left.
If we both agreed, we would marry.
I almost threw it away.
Then Rosa called.
“What’s wrong with your grandson?” I asked.
“Mostly his manners.”
I laughed.
She said, “Good. You’re not scared of me.”
“I don’t know you.”
“Exactly.”
That should have been warning number one.
Warning number two came when I searched Lorenzo’s name.
Shipping.
Construction.
Clubs.
Warehouses.
Charities.
Seventeen articles using careful words like alleged and suspected.
Chicago knew one version of Lorenzo Duca.
Cold.
Powerful.
Dangerous.
Women whispered another version.
His size.
His temper.
His strength.
Six women had supposedly accepted his arrangement.
All six left.
Three days before my flight, one called me.
“You don’t know what you’re walking into.”
“Then tell me.”
Silence.
“Just don’t say nobody warned you.”
Click.
So naturally, I packed a suitcase.
My mother used to say curiosity would either make me rich or get me buried under someone’s patio.
Standing in Lorenzo’s foyer, I considered the patio option.
Then something strange happened.
Lorenzo carried my suitcase upstairs himself.
Not a servant.
Not Marco.
Him.
At my bedroom door, he handed me a brass key.
“One key?” I asked.
“Yours.”
“Housekeeping?”
“They knock.”
“Marco?”
“He knocks.”
“You?”
“I knock.”
“And if I lock it?”
“Nobody enters.”
That stopped me.
Ethan had once copied my apartment key without asking.
He called it openness.
I called it creepy much too late.
Now this huge, feared man had given me the power to lock him out of his own house.
That contradiction stayed with me.
Dinner was worse.
And better.
Rosa was seventy-nine, tiny, dressed in black, and apparently the only person alive who could insult Lorenzo without causing a regional crisis.
“I hear you nearly killed him,” she said.
“I tripped.”
“Marco said the tie changed color.”
Marco stared at his plate.
Traitor.
Rosa turned to me.
“You’ve heard the stories.”
Lorenzo went completely still.
I felt him waiting.
For disgust.
Fear.
A joke.
I shrugged.
“I’ve heard rich people gossip worse than church ladies at a bake sale.”
Rosa smiled.
Lorenzo didn’t.
But his shoulders loosened.
Then I knocked my spoon onto the floor.
Because dignity had missed its flight.
That night, Lorenzo found me by the windows.
“You can leave tonight,” he said.
“Did I offend your silverware?”
“I’m serious.”
“So am I.”
“A car can take you to Milwaukee. The agreement still stands.”
He wasn’t threatening me.
He expected me to go.
“If I leave,” I said, “it will be because of something you do, not something a woman whispered over expensive wine.”
Then I turned dramatically and walked down the wrong hallway.
Three steps later, I came back.
Lorenzo silently pointed left.
“Not one word.”
“I said nothing.”
His mouth twitched.
That was the first crack.
Over the next two weeks, I saw two Lorenzos.
One held midnight meetings behind locked office doors while black SUVs came and went.
The other repaired Rosa’s bracelet when the clasp broke.
One terrified half of Chicago.
The other crouched so Marco’s five-year-old daughter could hand him a drawing of him as an angry rectangle.
He framed it.
Then I found six diamond rings.
I got lost after midnight looking for water, opened the wrong office, and saw the drawer open.
Six velvet boxes.
Six rings.
Six women who left.
I was holding one when Lorenzo appeared.
He did not yell.
That would have been easier.
He only looked tired.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered.
He closed the drawer and walked me back to my room.
After that, he became painfully polite.
That was how I knew I had hurt him.
Then Bianca Romano appeared.
Beautiful.
Blonde.
Expensive.
The same woman who had smiled in the foyer.
She sipped wine across from me and asked questions with knives tucked under every word.
“Are you adjusting?”
“Yes.”
“Lorenzo can be intense.”
“I own a bakery. I survived Sunday brunch.”
She smiled.
“You haven’t discovered everything yet.”
There it was.
Another warning.
That night, I heard Marco tell Lorenzo, “She’s different.”
Lorenzo answered, “They always are until they know.”
Until they know what?
I watched after that.
Lorenzo noticed I changed from strawberry pastries to chocolate.
The next morning, chocolate appeared beside my coffee.
At a charity luncheon, a woman called me brave for wearing burgundy.
Lorenzo did not make a scene.
He placed one hand at my back and moved me away.
At a construction site, a steel support collapsed.
A worker was trapped.
Three men could not lift the beam.
Lorenzo did.
Not like a movie hero.
His face reddened.
His hands shook.
But he held it long enough for the man to be pulled free.
Then the worker’s little daughter ran toward him crying.
Lorenzo knelt.
Held out one huge hand.
Waited for her to choose.
She chose him.
That image stayed with me.
Everyone talked about what Lorenzo’s strength could do.
No one talked about what it could save.
That night, we almost kissed.
I leaned against the kitchen island.
Missed.
Fell.
Again.
He caught me.
Again.
Then Lorenzo laughed.
A real laugh.
Deep.
Rough.
Unprotected.
His hands stayed at my waist.
Mine rested against his chest.
His eyes dropped to my mouth.
He leaned closer.
Then stopped.
Waiting.
That did something dangerous to me.
A man who could take almost anything was waiting for permission.
I started to close the distance.
Then Rosa walked in.
She froze.
Backed out.
And yelled, “Marco, stay away from the kitchen. Something useful is finally happening.”
Romance, Duca style.
The next morning, Lorenzo was gone.
A white envelope sat beside my coffee.
Inside were six photographs.
Six women.
Six dates.
Bianca was on top.
On the back were five words.
ASK WHY SHE REALLY LEFT.
My coffee went cold.
Then I realized something worse.
This estate had gates.
Guards.
Cameras.
Motion sensors.
No stranger should have reached my breakfast plate.
Marco entered.
Saw the photos.
Stopped breathing.
Within three minutes, the house locked down.
Security footage.
Phone calls.
Staff interviews.
Lorenzo came home twenty minutes later.
He looked at the envelope.
Then at me.
I knew what he expected.
The question six women must have asked before leaving.
Instead, I pointed to the envelope.
“How did this get inside your house?”
His expression changed.
Because we both understood.
May you like
Whoever was playing with us was not outside the gates.
They were already inside.
