Page 5 of Taken By the Enforcer

He doesn’t follow, because men like my father don’t chase. They command. They expect the world to bend. Today, the world bends around me. Just this once.

The side exit yawns again, and I slip through like a shadow. The sun strikes, blinding bright. Every bead on my veil catches fire. Steps carry me across the courtyard, along the lane, toward the awning and the burst of voices. A delivery scooter zips past, horn peeping. No one notices the bride with tears drying on her cheeks because Sicily has seen stranger things than a girl deciding she won’t let anyone sacrifice her on an altar of convenience.

La Sirena hums with afternoon talk and the clink of glass. I hover at the threshold, breath hitching, pulse a drum solo. Heads turn. Conversations pause. The bartender glances up—olive skin, sleeve tattoos, smile quick and easy. He doesn’t stare. He just nods like brides wander in every day.

“Signorina?”

“Grappa,” I say, surprising myself, then amend, “No. Something sweet.”

“Amara e dolce.” Bitter and sweet. He understands. A glass appears, amber liquid catching sunlight.

“On the house,” he adds, eyes kind. “Auguri.”

Congratulations. The word nearly undoes me.

My laugh is jagged. If only he knew. I lift the glass and drink anyway.

Warmth unfurls under my ribs. The sugar tells my brain I’m not dying. The bitter whispers the truth—I am changing.

“Cara!” a familiar voice trills from the corner near the window. My head whips before I can stop it. For one terrified instant I think she’s followed me, but it’s only a woman greeting her friend with the same name. My lungs restart.

I finish the drink. The room steadies. The mirror behind the bar reflects the door and the street beyond. If anyone comes looking, I’ll see them before they see me. For the first time today, I feel… not safe exactly, but possible. Like a different ending just opened and beckoned me through.

The bells begin again, tolling for a bride who won’t walk that aisle.

Aldo will notice, and Papà will seethe, and Mamma will cry, and Cara will pretend, but none of that belongs to me anymore. Not after what I saw in the priest’s dark box where sins are supposed to be cleaned, not committed.

I shake my head to clear the thoughts. The veil is heavy in my lap, damp with tears and citrus-scented airjust as my dress—the monstrosity of white tulle Papà chose—billows around the stool like some kind of cage. A bride drinking alone? What a spectacle.

The door opens, sending a shaft of sunlight across the floor. I don’t look up right away, too busy choking back the next sob. But I hear it—the solid thud of boots, the hush that follows when someone powerful walks into a room.

Then I sense him before I see him.

CHAPTER 3

Paolina

But it’s not Aldo.

Donatello Romano.

The name alone should make my blood run cold. Enforcer for the Lucchese family. Aldo’s boss. Papà’s associate. Dangerous doesn’t even begin to describe the man who makes hardened criminals piss themselves with a single stare.

One breath and I’m back, a year ago.

The chandelier at Teatro Massimo Bellini scatters light like diamonds across silk and shoulders, every facet catching in the air scented with orange blossom and polished wood. A string quartet plays something lush that makes the room sway in unison, conversations threading between notes like a secondmelody. Papà walks a measured path through donors and capos as if the marble belongs to him. Mamma glides at his side with the smile she saves for public evenings, eyes soft and careful.

Cara leans close, lips brushing my ear. “If I have to compliment one more signora’s emeralds, I’m going to drown myself in the punch.”

“Please don’t,” I murmur, keeping my gaze politely engaged on an older couple approaching Papà. “The punch did nothing to you.”

“The emeralds did.” Her elbow nudges my ribs. “And the men. All so proud of their watches.” Her tone turns conspiratorial. “Except for that one. Over there.” Her chin tips toward the far side of the hall. “I don’t even notice his watch, and I’m a sinner.”

The quartet slides into a new movement. I follow her cue across the crowd.

My breath stutters.

He stands near the colonnade with two other men dressed in formal black fits like sin and money. Age doesn’t cling to his face the way power does. Twenty-five, maybe, but the energy wrapped around him is older—coiled, contained, the kind that makes a room correct its posture without realizing why. Mahogany hair cut clean. A shadow on his jaw that reads as deliberate, not lazy. Shoulders that make a tuxedo look like it was invented for him. The eyes—God, the eyes—are the color of volcanic glass, glossy and fathomless, catching light and hoarding it.