Claimed By the Silver Fox (Ruthless Mafia Daddies #4)

Julia

I stare at myself in the mirror, taking in the strange sight of my body crammed into this wedding dress.

Hair teased up into a perfect updo, laced with flowers that match the bouquet sitting on the bed behind me, just waiting for me to pick it up and carry it down the aisle.

The fitted corset, the flared skirt, the delicate lace details around the neckline…

On anyone else, it would look like a dream, but on me, it feels more like a myth.

I still can’t believe I’m finally here, so close to marrying the man I’ve been with for so long now.

Ever since he pushed the ring onto my finger at the restaurant, I’ve been letting myself get swept along by the wedding planning, the thought of this huge day unfolding before me.

Not like I had much of a choice, given how fast everything came together.

One moment I was saying yes, the next I found myself standing here, staring at this version of myself, wondering how the hell I’m standing at the cusp of a whole new life.

A whole new life I’m not sure I want anything to do with.

I hurriedly push that thought to the back of my head. I can’t think that way.

Things are going to be different, once we’re married, I’m sure of it. They have to be, right? There’s no way everything will stay the same.

Andreo, he’ll settle down when he has that ring on his finger. It’s only insecurity that drives him to act the way he does sometimes. This wedding, if anything, will salve the fear in his heart, the fear that turns him dark when I least expect it. I know there’s a good man under there.

I mean, I think there is…

I tug down one of my long sleeves to cover the slight bruise on my wrist where he grabbed me the other day, and thank God I had the foresight to choose something that would cover me up.

He was stressed a few days ago, when he came back from his bachelor party, about what I’d been up to with Anna—my maid of honor and the only person in my wedding party.

She had come to sit and paint her nails and sip wine at our apartment while he was out doing God knows what.

He walked through that door and locked eyes with me like he wanted to start a fight, insisting that I’d been sneaking around behind his back, trying to make him look like an idiot.

He grasped my wrist so hard when I tried to head into the bedroom to get away from him that it left me with a bracelet of a bruise, now hidden beneath the white lace sleeve.

I inhale deeply and turn to grab the bouquet behind me, glad that the glam squad has backed off to give me some time to myself. My makeup has never looked better, hair teased to perfection, but their excited chatter was enough to make me feel even more nervous than I already was.

Not nervous about marrying Andreo, of course.

I know that’s going to be okay, when he settles down a bit.

But…probably just nervous about stepping out there in front of all those people, letting them see me, so many of them tied up in the darkness of the world that he has sworn only he can keep me safe from.

The soles of my feet prickle at the thought, and I do my best to ignore it. I’ve known about it since the start, more or less, the stuff his family is involved in.

I mean, the moment I saw him, when he paid for my drinks at a bar too fancy for me to afford, I figured he must have some kind of power in this city.

The way people ducked their heads when he drew close, the way they looked at him, the way they avoided him, like the last thing they wanted was for him to look too hard in their direction…

Yeah, I knew then that something was up, and I’m just glad that, by now, I’m on his good side—

Suddenly, the door to the hotel room flies open, and I nearly jump out of my skin, the bouquet slipping from my hand and landing with a thump on the ground.

“Julia!”

It’s Anna—my best friend—wearing the beautiful peony-pink dress that we chose together. But the dress is the only thing about her appearance that looks as it’s meant to. She rushes to my side, grabbing my arm tight, her eyes widening so far it looks like they might bust right out of her head.

“You scared me.” I laugh nervously as I lean down to grab the flowers where they dropped onto the plush cream carpet.

But Anna shakes her head, and I realize, with a creeping horror, that something is wrong. Really, really wrong.

“He’s gone.”

“What?”

I stare at her for a moment, mind unable to calculate just what it is she’s saying to me. Because there is no way, no way in fucking hell, that it can be what I think it is.

“Who’s gone, Anna? What are you talking about?”

“Andreo,” she tells me, her voice hitching painfully at the back of her throat.

“He—one of the groomsmen just told me. They went to check on him and the room was empty. We’ve turned over the entire hotel, he’s…

he’s nowhere, babe. He’s…” She trails off, clearly not wanting to fill in the rest of the gaps for me.

I feel the blood drain from my face, skin as white as the dress I’m wearing. No. No. This can’t be happening, can’t be real. It just can’t be. After everything we’ve been through, all that has led us to this moment, and he just…takes off? On the day we’re supposed to be married?

“There’s got to be some kind of mistake,” I reply, forcing a laugh, as if this is all some stupid joke at my expense.

Even though I know Anna would never, in a million years, pull something like this on me.

And even if she tried, she has a terrible poker face, and would never be able to pull off a joke for this long.

“I wish there was,” she breathes. “But he’s gone. He’s not answering his phone. He…”

I turn back to the mirror, staring at the person in front of me. A bride, sure, but a bride with no groom, if what she’s saying is correct. Sickness twists in my guts, and my knees tremble beneath me.

Fuck. Fuck. I don’t know what the hell is happening.

Why the hell he would have done this to me?

Wasn’t he the one who wanted to get married in the first place?

Anger courses through me for a second, so intense it feels like I’m going to scream, and I grip the flowers so tightly that I can feel the stems digging into my fingers, bleeding cold damp over my hands as the petals begin to drift to the ground.

“He’s gone,” I finish for her.

She doesn’t need to make it any clearer than that. I can see it now. See it clearly.

That freakout a few days ago, it was his way of trying to warn me that he already had one foot out the door.

And now, he’s gone. After everything he has done to me, everything I have put up with, clinging to the hope of what might come when I finally have the ring on my finger, Andreo has abandoned me, and it hollows me out in a way I don’t know if I will ever recover from.

I can hear Anna talking to me, her arm around me as she does her best to soothe me, but I can’t even begin to take any of it in. How the hell could I?

I know what this means. What he has always warned me of, from the first moment we met, the first moment we were seen together.

There are threats against his family, against anyone close to him, enemies who are constantly circling, looking for a way in.

And now, without him as my husband, I could all too easily fall prey to them.

Would he really have hung me out to dry like this? It’s difficult to believe that he would risk it, after everything he’s done to make certain that I belong to him, but maybe it was always more about ownership than care. Maybe I don’t know the difference, anyway.

“Come on, sit down,” Anna tells me gently, as she guides me back toward the bed.

I crash down, the weight of it landing so heavy on my shoulders that for a second I’m certain I’ll be crushed by it.

I look to the door, which leads down to the church beyond, a little setup meant for weddings like this so the rich and powerful in this city don’t have to risk traveling between venues to attend their nuptials.

I had been stunned when I realized that this would be my wedding, having pictured a cheap church or a registrar’s office when I was growing up.

But maybe that’s what I was always going to be doomed to in the first place.

Maybe it’s always what I deserved.

I rise to my feet and stumble toward the door, the kitten heels pinching at my toes—the shoes are new, new enough that I haven’t had time to break them in, but I can barely feel the pain right now.

I need to talk to someone about this. Anyone. Someone who can tell me why the hell he has taken off on me like this and what the fuck I’m going to need to do to fix this.

I must have screwed this up, said the wrong thing, looked at him in the wrong way. Shit, I don’t know what I did, but if I lose out on all of this, I might have to go back to my life before.

To my parents.

The thought churns in my guts, but it’s not as though I have anywhere else to live, given that Andreo has been paying for our apartment and I don’t exactly have a job I can rely on to bring money in. He told me he would take care of me, and I, as stupid as I was, believed him.

“Julia, come on,” Anna pleads with me, slipping her arm through mine to try and keep me in place. “You don’t need to torture yourself—”

“I need to see it for myself,” I mutter.

I know that I won’t be able to trust this until I see it for myself.

At the back of my mind, I want to believe that this is all some fucking joke, that he’s going to be waiting there at the end of the aisle for me like he promised, and that we would laugh about this later.

I can already imagine how he would turn it around on me, ask if I really believed he would leave me like that, but at the same time, I don’t care.

I just want to see this through. Anything to keep me from being dragged back into my old life, the life I’ve worked so hard to leave behind.

I rush down the stairs, lifting my skirts to take them two at a time.

A handful of guests are milling in the entryway to the hotel, and I can feel them staring at me as I look around, trying to remember which way it is toward the church where the ceremony is meant to be held.

I’m sure I can feel their sympathetic gazes on me, but I ignore them.

They can’t know. Can they? If I only just found out…

I look this way and that along the maze of corridors, trying to figure out where I’m going, and then spot the large wooden arched door at the far end.

I’m meant to be here now anyway, and I can hear the music drifting out from inside, the sweet sound of it meant to serve as a backdrop to me walking down the aisle.

My vision narrows as I force myself down there, wondering if Anna is still following me, praying that she isn’t, because the last thing I need right now is someone else coming here, telling me the truth, forcing me to face up to it in all the ways I don’t want to…

And then I reach the doorway, and as I look around—I realize that it’s true.

Andreo is not here. No sign of him at all. It’s like he has dropped into thin air, vanished off the face of the earth.

A few guests are in their seats, looking confused. I clutch at the doorframe, doing my best to keep myself upright, not wanting to keel over right then and there in front of everyone.

This can’t be happening. If I don’t get married today, that life I’ve tried to leave behind, it will come for me again, and there will be nothing that I can—

And then, all at once, I see something. Someone. Stepping up onto the altar, the very place I’m meant to exchange my vows with the man I will spend my life with.

My eyes widen, and I look up, relief coursing through me. Oh, thank God, all of this was just some crazy misunderstanding, there was no way he would really have left me to do this alone. Relief grips me, and I stare up—

Only to find someone else standing up there entirely.

Not my fiancé.

But my fiancé’s father.