Chapter 1
My own sister was laughing about sending me to marry Boston’s most feared mafia boss—and the cruelest part was that everyone believed my scar would save them. “Send Adelaide. He’ll take one look at her face and send her straight back,” Chloe joked, never imagining that what happened when Mateo Moretti finally saw me would leave everyone speechless.
The first sound that reached me from the drawing room was Chloe’s laughter, bright and effortless, the kind that came from genuine amusement rather than fear. I stood frozen in the hallway with a stack of unopened mail pressed against my chest, listening as my sister discussed my future like I was an unwanted package.
“Send Adelaide,” Chloe repeated, stretching elegantly across the velvet sofa. “He’ll reject her before she even gets through the door.”
My stepmother, Evelyn, laughed into her champagne. “Assuming he sends her back at all.”
But my father said nothing.
That silence hurt worse than every insult.
Rockford Jones had built Jones Financial into one of Boston’s most respected private investment firms, a man who could calculate risk before most people finished breakfast. Yet somehow, when protecting his own daughter became inconvenient, all that intelligence disappeared.
Three days earlier, Mateo Moretti had sent my father a message that terrified him. Fifteen million dollars belonging to Moretti-controlled companies had vanished while under my father’s management, and Mateo wanted repayment immediately.
My father didn’t have the money.
So Mateo demanded something else as security: one of Rockford Jones’s daughters would become his wife.
Everyone in Boston knew the Moretti name, though smart people rarely said it too loudly. Their empire stretched through shipping, construction, restaurants, private security, and real estate, but everyone knew there were darker businesses hiding beneath the legitimate ones.
Mateo had inherited everything after his father was assassinated. At thirty-two, he was unimaginably wealthy, feared across the city, and rumored to possess absolutely no mercy.
Chloe, of course, was already engaged to Preston Whitmore, the son of a United States senator. There was no chance my glamorous sister would trade political galas, designer gowns, and Washington connections for the guarded Moretti estate.
So Evelyn had found another solution.
Me.
I was the daughter they kept out of family photographs whenever possible, the one who hid inside oversized sweaters and behind thick glasses. A jagged scar ran from my left temple to my jaw—the permanent reminder of the car accident that killed my mother when I was nine.
“Mateo asked for Rockford’s daughter,” Evelyn said calmly. “He never specified which one.”
“He expects Chloe,” my father muttered.
“How would he know?”
“He knows everything.”
Chloe laughed. “Then maybe this teaches him to be more specific.”
My father poured another drink with a trembling hand. “And if I send Adelaide and he thinks I’m insulting him?”
“That’s exactly the point,” Chloe replied. “He gets offended, rejects her, and you renegotiate.”
Evelyn nodded as though they were discussing a business contract instead of my life.
Then Chloe shrugged.
“Or he kills her.”
For half a second, nobody spoke.
Then my sister raised her champagne glass and smiled. “Either way, I don’t have to marry him.”
Something inside me went completely still.
I pushed open the drawing-room door.
Three faces snapped toward me, but not one of them apologized. My father’s face drained of color, Evelyn slowly lowered her glass, and Chloe stared at me as though the family furniture had suddenly started talking.
That told me everything I needed to know.
“I’ll go.”
May you like
My father shot to his feet. “Adelaide—”
“Don’t.”
