Page 2 of Forsaking All Others

She had been beautiful, Francesca Cavallaro, but I didn’t think we looked alike.

Whereas she was petite and slender limbed, I was tall with curves that started to desecrate my girlhood at the tender age of eleven. They made my father, already protective, almost obsessively so. By the time I was eighteen, about to be married off to the proverbial highest bidder in the war for my father’s good graces, I was not allowed to leave the house without an armed escort of four men.

Needless to say, the only silver lining to marrying an American stranger was getting the hell out of Palermo and my father’s oppressive rule.

Because Papà hadn’t just severed the connection between Niccolo and me when he ended our engagement, he’d ended the naive and blind loyalty and love I harbored for Papà.

Two hearts broken, all so I could marry some powerful, wealthy-beyond-belief capo from across the Atlantic.

I had heard his name whispered around the house by my father’s foot soldiers even though no one had ever seen fit to actually speak his name to me, his future bride.

Dario Ferretti.

The son of the Chicago Cosa Nostra’s boss, the most lucrative outfit of the Sicilian mob in the United States.

Thirty-six years old to my twenty.

The women tried to keep his name out of their mouths when I was near, but I was the only female child living in a house made of secrets, and I’d learned long ago how to eavesdrop silently.

He’d slept with every woman worth having on the Eastern Seaboard.

He’d killed the old Mafia don with a garrote while he was eating his birthday dinner in the back room of a Michelin-starred restaurant.

His family owned half the real estate in Chicago and the surrounding suburbs.

In short, he was loaded, dangerous, and about to marry a woman he had never met and probably wouldn’t ever want.

Which was fine by me because I knew in my girlish heart I would never stop loving Niccolo, not across the space of an entire ocean or the span of five years or ten. We were meant to be together, like star-crossed lovers.

So by the time my wedding day arrived, I was filled with nothing but dread.

I could hear the cacophony of mingling bodies in the cathedral while I waited with my two aunts in the antechamber. Any moment, my father would arrive to escort me down the aisle to my Italian American Prince Charming.

As if summoned like the devil by my thoughts, the wooden door creaked open, and Vincenzo Cavallaro stepped through, looking every inch the powerful Mafia don. He was a tall man with swarthy features, thick slashing brows, richly tanned olive skin, and dark-brown eyes that had the ability to slice through your skin and muscle straight through to the bone. They studied me then, pinning me like a butterfly in order to dissect me.

I held my breath and prayed he didn’t find me wanting.

Even angry with him for keeping me from Niccolo, I was too hardwired to ever eschew his validation.

My aunts, too, stopped their tittering.

That was the power of Vincenzo.

“You look very beautiful,” he said finally, moving toward me with his hand outstretched.

The starch dissolved in my spine, and I beamed at him.

Though he had exacting standards for those around him and kept me locked up like a princess in an isolated tower, my father could be sweet when he wanted to be.

And I was desperate for that kindness now, moments before he would hand me over to some strange man and send me off to an entirely new country. The resentment I harbored wasn’t enough to erase my childish need for his approval in the face of an uncertain future far, far away from his previous omnipotent presence.

“Thank you, Papà,” I replied as he leaned in to brush his lips over each of my cheeks. “My aunts helped me prepare.”

“Thank you,” he told them without taking his eyes from me. “You may take your seats now.”

Without hesitation, they swiftly left the room.

Papà waited for the door to clank behind them and then cupped my face in his hands. “I wish your mother could have been here. She would be very proud of you.”