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Oh, she didn’t smile. I was certain of it. I just didn’t care.

I was finding this whole thing quite delightful.

As soon as we were done sucking in the parts that needed sucking in, standing like statues for the society paparazzi, Giovanna left my side and fast-walked into the grand reception hall.

“Be gentle with her.” My mother came over and played with my lapels, smoothing my tie, which didn’t need to be smoothed. “This is hard for them.”

“You’re too soft on the Durantes.” I spoke to my mum, but I stared at my father over her shoulder. “They’ve been given too much leeway over the years.”

In what fucking world did it make sense to kowtow to your enemy?

“She’s a Green now, lad.” My father, who made me in his image in every possible way, glared at me. “And under your protection.”

Eoghan Green, once the most vicious man in New York City, had been softened by my mother. And this was the price.

This wedding made peace with the Durantes when he should have slaughtered them all—my bride included.

History teaches one lesson—that peace only comes with total war. Burn your enemies down, and when they are nothing but ash, bury them in salted earth so that they can never re-emerge.

But my father was a romantic.

The Grand Kintyre had been my father’s present to my mother. We stood on the ground Mum had lived in years ago, before he swept her up in their whirlwind romance. When the dilapidated building was for sale, my father bought it, and knocked it all down to build the Grand.

He placed it, and all its profits, in Mum’s name so that only she could control it.

As an act of love, he gifted her a way out of their marriage. As her gift to him, she moved her entire family into its penthouses, and made it the center of every Green event. Every Christmas, holiday, birthday was spent in the Grand.

Her way of saying that what was hers, belonged to us all.

Who said romance was dead, eh?

Oh, right. Me.

“Go dance with her.” My mother pushed my shoulders towards my bride who marched through the crowd of gossiping ingrates.

I groaned. She had gone right into the heart of the Grand, and gracefully stepped onto the hardwood dance floor where the waltzing had already begun.

No one made any pretenses that this wedding was anything more than an alliance, and that their presence here was simply proof that the deed was done. I was surprised there wasn’t going to be a bedding ceremony to ensure the next generation of heirs.

Giovanna was so impeccably timed, that she didn’t need to dodge a single swirling couple as they waltzed to Silver Bells.

In the middle of the floor, she turned around and looked at me, hands on her hips, tapping her high-heeled, silver shoe like an irritated, boreal angel.

I followed her, having to stumble and halt as couples came my way, but managed to get through unscathed.

“Dance?” She raised her arms, as if one was on a man’s shoulder, and the other in their hand. All that was missing was the cutout of the chump who’d occupy that space. I was certain that’s how she saw me. One Green brother, that could be easily replaced with another, were I to meet my untimely end.

“Aunt Kira instructed me to dance at least three with you tonight,” she said, as I took the first step in the waltz, and she followed.

It always irked me that she called my parents Aunt Kira and Uncle Eoghan. It seemed mildly incestuous, even. A kink I most certainly did not have.

“Only three? They told me five,” I remarked as I looked down my nose at her.

“I negotiated.”

Of course, she did. I wasn’t surprised that they had acquiesced.

“You must have withered them with that frosty glare.”

She didn’t respond. Much like she never responded to anything else.

The light sheen on her skin, a dewy glow, seemed to grow as we danced in silence. One song ran into another. The intention was clear—for everyone to see that she and I were together and in love. Let the photographers and journalists snap away, to give this marriage the appearance of legitimacy.

As the third song started, she stumbled, but I caught her.

She whimpered as I pulled her in, until her front was flush against me. She was warm. Too warm.

“You’re pale.” I looked down at her porcelain skin. “And you look tired.”

Was she actually ill?

“Calling the bride tired and pale?” Her words came out choppy, as she pushed them out between gasping breaths. “Care to call me fat, too, and make it a trifecta?”

Her chest rose and fell in a frantic rhythm. The dress wasn’t fitted with a corset. We weren’t twirling in a reel or dancing a polka. We were slowly waltzing, for God’s sake.

So why was she struggling to breathe?

She wobbled on her feet. I tightened my arms around her waist, taking all of her weight. For a piece of marble, she was surprisingly pliant.

“Are you alright?”

She had always been pale, but now she was downright sallow. Her eyelids fluttered, as she slowly nodded.

“I’m fine,” she said in a barely-there whisper.

“You’re not fine.” I tightened my arm around her as I looked around. I called out, “Randa!”

“How dare you… call… her… ” She slipped, her knees buckling beneath her. “It’s our wedding.”

Was my darling fiancée jealous?

I didn’t think she was capable of such a thing. How delightful.

Randa was by my side in an instant. “What can I do?”

“Damnit, Gia,” I snarled when the ice queen melted like a snowman in summer, losing her footing completely. I barely had time to catch her.

I pulled her into my arms like the reluctant bride she was and ignored her mumbled protests.

“Get Maeve to go up to my penthouse, and have her bring a doctor.”

Randa nodded at me, her phone at her ear. Who knows where in this gargantuan hall my sister would be.

“One more dance, and I can…” Gia said, her eyes were half closed as her head lolled onto my shoulder. “I can... leave.”

“For fuck’s sake,” I quietly growled down at my darling, “Your night is over.”

The crowd around us had stopped dancing, and stared at us like we were a car crash on the side of the highway.

Riordan appeared beside me. “Is she alright?”

I never knew if my brother’s concern stemmed from affection, or from something else, like a concocted plan to thrust me from my position as heir. I’d care about that some other time, though.

“She’s not feeling well. Probably just all the stress,” I said, excusing us. “Come on, love, let’s get you home.”

“I’m fine,” Gia said, gasping for air in my arms.

I carried her off the dance floor, through the Grand, and took her to the private elevator behind the front desk. I ensured that no one followed us into the elevator car before I pressed the button to our home.

As I waited for the mirrored doors to open to my floor, I tightened my hold on her.

“What—and I can’t stress this enough—the fuck just happened to you?”