“What makes you think Bishop and White will let you get away with it?”

“The fact that they are letting me get away with it. I have the upper hand in this game of cards. You will play by my rules or lose your hand. There is no other option.”

“I will take Francesca away,” my father threatened, his voice lacking that same icy authority that usually laced his speech. I swallowed back a scream. Now he wanted to take me back? I wasn’t a toy. I was a human being who had grown oddly attached to my future husband. Besides, no one in The Outfit was going to want to have me now, especially after Wolfe had taken my virginity.

Only, my father didn’t know that.

Even if he suspected it—he obviously didn’t care.

Wolfe did. Wolfe had the potential to ruin my life now. He got what he wanted. My virginity and reputation. He could end this today. It would be enough humiliation for my father. Sweat clung to the back of my neck at the thought. It took forever for Wolfe to speak again.

“You will not.”

“How are you so sure?”

“You love The Outfit more than you love your daughter,” he said simply. An arrow of venom pierced my heart. This is why humans invented lies, I thought. No other animal in nature lies. The truth is ruthless. It cuts you open, shoving your face into the mud. It forces you to look reality in the eye and deal with it. To feel the real weight of the world that you live in.

“And you?” Papa asked. “How do you feel about my daughter?”

“I feel positive she will be a delight to fuck and decent arm candy, which I can quietly replace when her expiry date arrives,” Wolfe said good-naturedly. I wanted to throw up. I could feel the acid bubbling in my stomach, making its way to my throat. I was about to open the door and confront them both. How dare they talk about me like this? But the second my hand grasped the door handle, I felt someone clasping my shoulder from behind. I turned around in the darkened room. It was Ms. Sterling. She shook her head, her eyes almost bulging out of their sockets.

“He is aggravating your father,” she enunciated every word, slating her chin down and forcing me into eye contact.

There was a commotion outside the door. My father was shouting, cursing in Italian, as Wolfe laughed, the provocative, throaty tilt of his voice dancing on the walls and ceiling. I heard the screeching of my father’s shoes dragging along the marble floor and knew that his bodyguards pulled him out before he embarrassed himself any further. It was loud enough outside for me to confront Ms. Sterling without them hearing us.

“How do you know that?” I asked, wiping away angry, hot tears from my eyes. I was crying again. I could count on one hand the number of days I hadn’t cried since Wolfe walked into my life.

“Because I know how he feels about your father, and right now, his hatred toward your father trumps his affection for you. But things are shifting, my dear. All the time.”

Ms. Sterling had to drag me back outside, closing the secret door with precise, careful movements so Wolfe wouldn’t hear us. She glanced around to make sure the coast was clear, before grabbing my wrist and ushering me to the pavilion. She parked her wrinkly, bluish hands on her hips, sitting me down in front of her. For the second time that day, I felt like a punished kid.

“How can Wolfe even like me when he hates my family with such passion?” I dragged a hand through my hair, wishing I had a cigarette.

Ms. Sterling looked down, momentarily speechless. I made a good point. Her sheer white bob danced here and there as she scratched her head.

“He is halfway in love, Francesca.”

“He is in hate with my father and in lust with me.”

There was a beat of silence before she spoke again.

“My last name is not Sterling, and I am not who I seem to be. I actually grew up not too many blocks from you in Little Italy.”

I looked up, frowning. Ms. Sterling was Italian? She was strikingly pale. Then again, so was I. So was my father. My mother was darker, but I inherited my father’s looks. Another reason I feared Wolfe hated me. I kept quiet, listening to her.

“Something I did when I was young and confused made me start over. I was to pick a last name, any last name, and I picked Sterling after Wolfe’s eyes. I’m not proud of some of the things I did to young Wolfe Keaton when he was too defenseless to stand up for himself, but he still forgave me. His heart is not as black as you think it is. It beats fiercely for the ones he loves. It just so happens that…” Ms. Sterling blinked, choking on her words, “all the people he loves are dead.”

I began to pace in the pavilion overlooking the garden. The summer flowers burst in purples and pinks. My vegetable garden grew nicely, too. I injected life into this little land, and I hoped—perhaps even foolishly believed—that I could do the same with my future husband. I stopped, kicking a little stone.

“My point is, Francesca, his heart has taken quite a few hits. He is calloused and mean, especially to those who have wronged him, but he is not a monster.”

“Do you think he can love again?” I asked quietly.

“Do you think you can?” Ms. Sterling retorted with a tired smile. I groaned. Of course, I could. But I was also a forlorn dreamer with a lousy reputation of a person who insisted on seeing the good in almost everyone. My father called it naiveté. I called it hope.

“Yes,” I admitted. “My heart has room for him. He just needs to claim it.” My honesty rattled me. I didn’t know why I opened up to Ms. Sterling like this. Maybe because she did the same to me, offering me a clandestine peek into her own life.

“Then, my dear girl”—she cupped my cheeks with her cold, veiny hands—“to answer your question, Wolfe is capable of feeling whatever you feel toward him but much, much stronger. More resilient and more powerful. For everything he does, he does thoroughly and brilliantly. Most of all, love.”

I’d asked Ms. Sterling to tell Wolfe not to come to my bed that night, and he hadn’t. Since it was the night before the wedding, he chalked the fact that I stayed in my room for dinner up to nerves. He did insist that Ms. Sterling bring me my dinner upstairs and made sure that I ate it.

There were waffles drowning in maple syrup and peanut butter straight from the diner down the road. He obviously did not care for a swooning bride tomorrow morning.

I didn’t sleep a wink.

At five in the morning, Ms. Sterling walked into my room, bristling and singing with a herd of stylists at her heels. Clara, Mama, and Andrea also came along, whisking me off the bed like Cinderella waking up with the help of tiny furry creatures and canaries. I decided to push aside the fact that my father was a bastard and my fiancé was a heartless man, determined to enjoy the day. As far as I could tell, I only had one wedding to celebrate in this lifetime. Might as well make the best out of it.

I wore a rose-gold Vera Wang wedding dress with floral lace appliqués and a pleated tulle skirt. My hair flowed down in luscious waves all the way to the small of my back, complete with a Swarovski tiara. My bouquet was simple and contained only white roses. When I arrived at the Little Italy church where we were to get married—honoring my family’s tradition—the place was already swarming with media vans and dozens of local journalists. My heart accelerated. I didn’t even talk to my husband the night before our wedding. Didn’t have the chance to confront him about the horrid things he once again said about me to my father. According to him, he was going to toss me away when I got old. The reality of my situation sank in at that moment.

We hadn’t gone on one date (the diner was an apology, not a date, and the entire time I shoveled food into my mouth, he worked on his phone). We hadn’t texted regularly. We never slept in each other’s bed. We never talked for the sake of talking.

No matter how I tried to spin it, my relationship with Wolfe Keaton was doomed.

I walked down the aisle to find my seamlessly dressed, clean-shaven fiancé waiting for me by the priest with a solemn look on his face. Next to him stood Preston Bishop and Bryan Hatch. It did not escape me that Wolfe Keaton had no real friends. Only work friends he could benefit from. I didn’t have any real friends, either. Clara and Ms. Sterling were triple my age. Andrea, my cousin, was twenty-four, but she was mostly there for me out of pity. She worked in a salon and dated Made Men regularly, though she always said she wouldn’t let them touch her, not even a kiss. My mother was twice my age. This left both Wolfe and me in vulnerable positions. We were both lonely and guarded. Wounded and distrusting.

The ceremony went off without a hitch, and once we were pronounced husband and wife, Wolfe offered me a chaste peck on the lips. He was more concerned about the cameras flashing in front of us, and making sure we looked nice and proper, than our first kiss as a married couple. We still hadn’t spoken one word to each other the entire day, and it was nearly noon.

We drove in silence from the church to my parents’ house. I wasn’t sure this would not escalate into a fight had I confronted him about what I’d heard yesterday, and I didn’t want to kill the already-charged mood. After the engagement incident, Wolfe had sent out a list of demands which were to be met if my father had wanted us to set foot in his house. Sure enough, the house was filled with people who were pre-approved by my husband. Unsurprisingly, Angelo was not there, but his parents arrived, congratulated me curtly, dropped off their gifts, and shot straight for the door. People were talking, laughing, and congratulating us before the grand dinner when I turned to my husband and spoke the first words since we tied the knot and made it official.

“Have you done something to Angelo?”

There was significance in this exchange. Our first conversation was about another man. Another man I’d lusted after not too long ago. He continued shaking hands, nodding and smiling brightly, the public figure that he was.

“I told you I will not be so tolerant toward Angelo should a third incident occur. Though I profoundly apologize for jumping to conclusions about what you did with him, there’s no denying that he tried to cross the line and coax an engaged woman.”