The Bride Contingency

Her sister vanished before the wedding.

The groom still needs a bride.

And Nora Bellini has fifty-eight minutes to decide whether marrying a dangerous man is the only way to keep everyone alive.

Nora has built her career controlling disasters.

Temperamental brides. Impossible families. Million-dollar weddings where one misplaced flower can start a war.

But when her half sister disappears from a guarded bridal suite minutes before marrying Adrian Carbone, even Nora’s emergency plans are not enough.

Celeste left behind her wedding dress, a shattered phone, a strange man’s ring—and one warning:

Do not let him cancel the wedding.

Trust eleven.

Adrian Carbone is not simply a powerful businessman. He is the cold, calculating head of a criminal empire, and his marriage was supposed to seal a fragile peace between two dangerous families.

Without a bride, the agreement collapses.

Without the agreement, people die.

So Nora makes the most reckless contingency plan of her life.

She puts on her sister’s dress.

She walks down the aisle alone.

And she marries Adrian herself.

Before the ceremony is finished, an assassin opens fire.

Now Nora is trapped inside a marriage neither of them planned, surrounded by enemies who know every Carbone secret—and evidence suggesting she may have helped orchestrate the attack.

Adrian expected an obedient bride who would complete a contract.

He did not expect Nora.

She questions his orders, outmaneuvers his security team, and refuses to confuse protection with ownership. She is also the only person capable of finding the pattern hidden inside her sister’s final message.

The closer Nora and Adrian get to the truth, the more dangerous their alliance becomes.

Because someone inside Adrian’s family wanted the wedding destroyed.

Someone has spent decades burying bodies, stealing fortunes, and turning two powerful families against each other.

And whoever took Celeste is willing to kill again before Nora discovers what happened at Table Eleven.

Adrian may be ruthless enough to keep Nora alive.

But trusting him could cost her the freedom she has fought her entire life to protect.

And falling for the husband she never chose may be the one disaster she cannot control.