Chapter 3
The Duomo di Milano.
I had chosen the venue not for its sanctity, but for its scale. It was a statement of power. The Gothic vaults soared toward the sky, like a forest of stone and marble that made men seem insignificant.
That day, the church was packed. Important figures from Italy and around the world had gathered at one of the greatest symbols of Milan’s glamour to witness the wedding of the decade… perhaps of the century.
I was standing in the narthex, behind the massive bronze doors. The chilled air carried the ancient scent of incense, stone, and the ten thousand white lilies I had ordered.
My father, Alessandro, stood beside me, with his rigid posture and impassive eyes.
“A smart move, Bianca,” he murmured in a low voice—not like a father, but like a CEO approving an acquisition. “Valenti is a solid asset. This merger stabilizes the northern division.”
“The best, Papà,” I replied, perfectly calm.
I didn’t feel butterflies, but a steady electric charge, the same buzz I felt before closing a nine-digit deal. This was my biggest deal yet. The silk veil wasn’t a symbol of submission; it was an accessory of power.
Then a murmur stirred through the crowd.
A low sound, a vibration, and then the cathedral’s great organ burst into sound. It wasn’t a gentle, sentimental wedding march. It was Wagner. The “Wedding March” from Lohengrin. Triumphant, resounding, with a sound of conquest.
The bronze doors swung open.
The light hit me. Thousands of candles and the stained-glass windows cast pools of colored light onto the stone.
But what struck me most powerfully was the crowd.
There were more than six hundred people: the fashion press, business rivals, bankers, politicians, and the old Milanese aristocracy, all standing, staring at me.
My adrenaline spiked.
Stay in control…
My father took my hand in his and we began to walk.
I sensed the discreet flicker of cell-phone cameras, even though they’d been banned.
My eyes focused on the altar. I saw my brothers in the front row. Enzo, with his hand possessively on Larissa’s back. Matteo, his eyes fixed on Priscilla, as if she were the only person in the cathedral. They looked so… gentle. So tamed. Love had weakened them, turning wolves into lapdogs.
Fools, I thought. Mine will be different.
I kept walking. The altar was twenty meters away. Fifteen. Ten…
The priest waited in his golden vestments. The lilies stood in perfect arrangements, but there was an empty space where Marco should have been.
My step faltered for a millisecond. My father squeezed my hand. Stay professional, his grip seemed to say.
We reached the end of the aisle. The music reached its crescendo and stopped. Alessandro turned to hand me over, but there was no one there to receive me.
The hush fell so suddenly and completely that it struck like a physical blow. The Gothic vaults, which had previously amplified the music, now amplified the absence.
I stood still… one, two, three seconds.
I turned my head slightly toward the side door where he must have entered. Closed.
“Where is he?” I whispered to my father, trying to hold back the despair that was beginning to settle in my chest, but it was impossible.
Alessandro’s face was impassive, but a vein throbbed in his temple.
The air shifted. The scent of lilies, once cool and powerful, suddenly seemed sickening, like at a funeral. The heat from six hundred people washed over me, and for the first time, I felt a bead of sweat form on the nape of my neck, beneath the heavy veil.
The murmur began. Low, like the buzzing of insects, but it was growing. I heard the unmistakable click of a professional camera’s shutter coming from the press area.
The priest, pale, took a step forward.
“Perhaps a slight delay…”
A minute passed. It felt like a year.
My irritation—cold and professional—began to give way to something hot and ugly: embarrassment. Me, Bianca Ferraro, standing there like an idiot at my own wedding. Is this some kind of game? I wondered as anger flared. A last-minute power play to throw me off balance?
Three minutes… The murmur had turned into an audible buzz. I saw Enzo and Matteo stand up simultaneously in the front row.
Five minutes…
The organist, not knowing what to do, began to play a soft piece—Bach—but it was too late. The quiet had already done its damage.
The rush of power curdled into panic, climbing my throat and tightening around my chest. The silk of my dress suddenly felt heavy, like a cage.
That’s when my personal assistant came running down the side aisle; he wasn’t wearing a suit, but he was pale and out of breath. He ran up to my father and whispered something in his ear.
I didn’t need to hear it. I saw my father’s reaction.
Alessandro Ferraro, the man I’d never seen falter, turned as white as a sheet. His eyes briefly closed. Then he turned to me. The rage on his face was so volcanic that it made me recoil.
But the anger wasn’t directed at me. It was directed at Marco.
“What’s going on?” My voice came out in a whisper.
My father looked me straight in the eye and didn't sugarcoat it. He never sugarcoated anything.
“He didn’t come.”
Those three words. The floor of the Duomo—that solid, thousand-year-old stone—simply vanished.
Dizziness hit me hard. The world spun. The colorful lights from the stained-glass windows became nauseating blurs.
He wasn’t late or stuck in traffic. Marco had rejected me.
My hand, driven by an instinct I didn’t even know I had, flew to my stomach.
Six weeks…
Panic gave way to utter horror. A horror so deep it burned hotter than fire.
He didn’t just reject me. He rejected our child.
That “unbreakable contract.” That was the reason. He knew. Somehow, he found out and thought I was… trapping him.
The humiliation was total. It wasn’t about a failed merger. It was about being seen as my brothers saw me: weak, emotional, and desperate. The rejected fiancée… pregnant.
I felt the flash of a cell phone, a single white glow coming from the crowd.
That’s what saved me. The strategist took control. The pain, the horror, the nausea… everything was locked behind a steel door in my mind.
My face, which had lost its color, hardened into its familiar marble mask. I straightened my spine and stared at the crowd: the shocked faces and the barely concealed smiles of my rivals.
Without a word to my father, without looking at my brothers, I turned away, alone, and began walking back down the hallway.
Every step was torture, and I heard my heart break—not with a crash, but with a dry, final click, like a vault door being locked shut forever.
I was Bianca Ferraro… and I would never, ever forgive him.
I continued my march down the hallway that seemed to stretch for kilometers. With every step, my resolve hardened. I was no longer in pain. I was in “repair” mode.
The sunlight streaming through the front door was a blinding white square. My chief of staff, Alessandra, stood in the narthex, pale as a ghost, her headset dangling and her eyes wide with terror.
“Signorina Bianca… what… what do I tell the press? What do I do with the guests? The…”
I stopped right in front of her. My mask was perfectly in place. My face was impassive. My voice didn’t waver.
“Cancel the reception,” I ordered, my voice low but firm.
Alessandra blinked, her shock clouding her panic.
“But… Signorina… the catering trucks, the orchestra, the guests are on their way to the Villa…”
“Did you hear me, Alessandra?” My voice dropped a notch, so cold that she physically recoiled.
“Cancel it. Everything! Now! Have my private car ready at the back exit. No driver.”
She didn’t argue. She simply nodded, picking up the phone.
I didn’t run. I walked past her, pushed open the heavy bronze doors, and stepped out into the cold light of Milan.
The paparazzi in the square were kept at a distance. I didn’t see them; I didn’t want to think about the image of the rejected bride or the pain burning beneath my fury.
The flashes exploded in a cacophony of white light, trying to pierce my armor.
Click-click-click. They sounded like gunshots, each one aimed at my dignity.
I didn’t flinch. I focused on a spot on the sidewalk beyond them.
My mask was set in stone, my face an impassive marble sculpture.
I didn’t run. Ferraros don’t run. I walked.
Each step was deliberate, measuring the sound of my heels on the pavement, a rhythmic beat against the chaos. The eight-meter veil, which was meant to symbolize my triumph, trailed behind me like a silk shroud.
“Bianca! What happened?”
“Did Marco leave you?”
“Is it true, Signorina?”
The voices were like the buzzing of disgusting insects, irrelevant. I didn’t hear them.
The back exit, as I had ordered, was more tightly controlled. The black Maserati, my personal car, was there, engine running, looking like a panther ready to pounce. A security guard kept the few reporters who had made it there at a distance.
I opened the door, and the interior of cream-colored leather and dark wood welcomed me.
I let out a long sigh that drowned out the screams, the humiliation, and the world outside, leaving me alone at last.
I stood motionless, gripping the steering wheel so tightly that the leather groaned. My hands trembled—hidden from the eyes of the world, they could tremble. Not from sadness, but from a fury so pure that it burned my lungs and made my vision blur.
I slammed my foot on the gas pedal. The V8 engine roared like a beast, echoing in my head. The car shot out of the alley, merging into Milan’s traffic.
The city flashed by the window like a blur. Miscalculation. The phrase echoed in my mind. I treated him like a business deal, and he—like a coward—broke the contract in the most public, vulgar, and sentimental way possible.
Nausea rose, the same feeling I’d had that morning. I swallowed hard, forcing it down. Not now!