Page 5 of Bellini Bound

“Of course I want you there,” I lied through my fucking teeth.

“Mm-hmm, sure you do.” Doubt crept into her tone. She had been born into the mafia life, the same as me, and could tell when something shady was going down.

“Babe, are you ready to go?” came a shout in the background, and I said a silent thank you to my brother-in-law, Sasha, for providing me with an escape from this conversation.

“Sounds like you’re heading out. Talk soon, sis.”

“Enzo, wait—“

I hung up on her words of protest.

Tossing my phone aside, I rubbed at my weary eyes.

I had exactly forty-eight hours before I was forced to say goodbye to life as I knew it, and the only comfort in this whole mess was imagining that my future wife was likely taking the news of our upcoming nuptials just as hard as I was.

We were bound together in this fucked-up little game of other people’s creation, for better or worse.

‘Til death do us part.

Chapter 2

Allie

Thenightshiftwaskicking my ass.

Sure, the emergency room was always busy, but it’s like as soon as the sun went down, shit hit the fan. Gunshot wounds, drunken car accidents, pregnant women crowning in the parking lot, and no less than once a night, someone came in with something shoved up their rectum thatdid notbelong there.

I was practically a zombie by the time I walked through the front door of my parents’ house.

Yes, I was twenty-five and still living at home. But in my defense, nursing wasn’t the most lucrative of careers, and it seemed silly to spend my entire paycheck on rent—in an expensive city like Chicago—when I had a perfectly good place to crash. Plus, it worked out perfectly because we were on opposite schedules. By the time my folks were getting home, I was headed out the door.

Which was why I was shocked to find both of my parents sitting at the table when I walked into the kitchen for a quick snack before I passed out.

“Uh . . .” My gaze darted between my mom and dad, noting their identical grim expressions. “What’s going on?”

Dad clasped his hands atop the wood surface. “Allison, we need to talk.”

Oh shit. If he was calling me Allison, this was serious.

“Okay.” I drew the word out slowly before taking a seat opposite them.

I began to squirm because the way they were staring at me, with disappointment—and maybe a trace of sadness—etched on their faces, made it feel like I was on trial. But in my whole life, I’d never stepped a toe out of line, so that couldn’t be right.

Then my mom started to cry, and panic set in.

“You guys are scaring me.”

With his lips pressing into a thin line, my father confessed, “I’ve found myself in a bit of trouble, pumpkin.”

My brows drew down. “What kind of trouble?” Dad was the top cop in Chicago, the police commissioner. Surely, whatever the issue was, it couldn’t be that bad, right?

“Well, for starters, I have a gambling problem,” he explained.

“Oh.” It finally clicked what he was trying to tell me. “You need money? I have some stashed away—”

Dad cut me off. “That’s only the tip of the iceberg.”

My stomach sank. “Oh God, you didn’t leverage the house, did you?” I sure as hell didn’t have enough to cover that.