A man crouches behind a dumpster in the rain, fifteen yards from a bakery's back door, holding a revolver on the two old men inside while they sign a peace treaty over a plate of lamb bones. His mother steps out of the shadows and tells him to lower it. *This one buys you time.*
Nine hours before the wedding, the contract is read aloud again in the study.
The Caruso family releases all claims on the Brooklyn docks and the Belmont Avenue territory. The Moretti family cedes the Red Hook warehouse district. The heads of the Fanucci, Lombardi and Rossi families witness it. And on page three: the Caruso family guarantees the safety and well-being of Luca Moretti, held as collateral, for the duration of the marriage contract. Any harm to him voids the treaty and triggers a blood ceremony against the offending party.
Matteo Caruso is marrying Sofia Moretti to stop a war that has killed seventeen men in six months. He has done his research on her. She is twenty-four. She has spent the last six months teaching ballet to children in a studio her father owns in Brooklyn, and her father has been laundering money through that studio while she smiled for the cameras out front. Matteo knows she was not part of it.
He doubles the watch on her wing anyway. *I think her father sent her here with a knife she hasn't pulled yet.*
His brother Dante is the underboss, and Dante thinks the marriage is surrender. He says so in the study. He calls the bride a whore, pours two fingers of whiskey, throws the tumbler at the wall and watches it run down the wallpaper in slow streaks. Matteo tells him precisely what will happen to his rank if he says it again.
And a note has already reached the estate, delivered by a street kid who was paid cash and has not been seen since. Somewhere in these walls, a traitor is breathing.
Sofia arrives knowing exactly what she is: a signature with a pulse, sent to smile and be good and remember that her brother's life depends on her performance. As his consigliere puts it, *her father didn't send her here to make you happy. He sent her here to survive.*
What nobody accounts for is Sofia declining the role. *I'm not going to run. I'm not going to hide. And I'm not going to let you push me away because you think you're protecting me.*
A dark mafia romance about an arranged marriage with a hostage clause written into it, a house with an informer inside it, and a woman who refuses to be anybody's prize.
