I raise an eyebrow. “You sure?”
She comes over, climbs into my lap, arms wrapping around me. “If you’re a monster, then so am I. After all, the Stuyvesant name is trash now.”
I trace the curve of her jaw with my thumb. "I guess it’s time to make you a Morrone, my beautiful, Lucia.”
EPILOGUE: THREE MONTHS LATER
LUCY
Three months later, I've purged my closet of all but the most expensive skeletons—the ones draped in Hermès scarves who've mastered the art of disguising terror with Chanel No. 5. Everything else lies buried beneath my parents' holiday correspondence and my father's prized collection of autographed photos from the politically connected. It turns out my man’s intimidation tactics yield better results than his vows ever could. While the once-prestigious Stuyvesant reputation decomposes like yesterday's garbage, House Morrone climbs even higher into the rarefied rot of Manhattan society.
I am, on paper, a fallen debutante. But I’m also engaged to the city’s most notorious mafioso, and if you ask Page Six, “reigning queen of the Tribeca scene.” Alessio likes to call me his bauble, his pretty ruin. Still, I’m building something from my own ashes: a couture studio on the ground floor of Alessio’s latest high-rise, a block south of Canal, where SoHo’s self-made princesses fight to the death over the last espresso at Sant Ambroeus.
The studio is, technically, still raw concrete, caution tape, and a mob of union guys who watched The Sopranos too many times growing up. But it has potential. The bones are good: asoaring glass wall, steel beams painted the bruised blue of a thunderstorm, a mezzanine that will one day serve as my office. I supervise the chaos with a yellow legal pad tucked beneath my arm and a ballpoint pen I chew until it’s pockmarked like a spent shell casing.
Vittoria perches on a folding chair, sketching a series of bias-cut silk gowns for this summer’s launch, cigarette jammed in a holder that’s probably older than she is. She chain-smokes Gitanes and drinks Picpoul at lunch, and she’s the only person in New York whose voice makes me feel like a child and an adult at the same time. “You must show more leg,” she says, shading in a slit that goes from ankle to upper thigh, “or you will drown in the sea ofmediocrità.”
It’s a Tuesday, too cold for the season, but I insist on cracking the loading dock door every hour to let in a shot of fresh air. The construction foreman, a man with the hands of a pianist and the squint of a correctional officer, brings me a soda as a peace offering. In another life, he was a minor league catcher; he tells me this twice a week, like it’s a warning. I let him believe I’m scared of him. I’ve learned that lesson: never show your actual teeth until you’re ready to use them.
I’m mid-rant about the wrong color of tile when Alessio, in a charcoal suit cut to emphasize the width of his shoulders, appears in my studio’s unfinished doorway. He fills any room like a fire, and his gaze scans the worksite before it lands, uncomfortably, on me.
“Is it lunchtime?” he says, holding up a white cardboard box stamped with the logo of a bakery that’s technically his, though nobody who works there knows it.
He glances at the foreman, dismisses him with a flick of his fingers, and stalks up the plywood ramp towards me. The touch of his hand on my elbow is casual to anyone else, but I know howit reads: You’re mine. All these men work for me, and so do you. I like that about him. I like it even more that he lets me.
He peels back the bakery box, revealing a layered concoction that must have taken three pastry chefs to engineer. “No poison,” he says, offering me the first bite. His eyes don’t leave my mouth until I finish it. “I bet you’re hungry.”
“Always,” I say, leaning closer so I can smell the box.
He laughs, a brief, rough vibration that makes the construction air taste better. “Make sure you eat, Lucia. You know I hate it when you disappear.”
I pretend not to hear. “Did you call the caterer from Le Richemont? They still haven’t emailed me a tasting menu.”
“I told Enzo. If they don’t call by tonight, I’ll talk with them at one of my warehouses.”
“Overkill,” I say, grinning. I let the back of my hand brush his wrist, angled just so the sunlight hits the ridiculous diamond on my left hand. The ring is ostentatious, the size of a chocolate truffle, and it’s Alessio’s way of staking claim because the usual channels—money, violence, social leverage—aren’t quite enough when your fiancée is as stubborn as a wildcat.
I see his gaze flicker down to the ring, then back to my face, searching for the part where I recoil from my own reflection. But I don’t. I force the diamond higher, twist my hand so it blinds him for a second. “I need you to intimidate the flower vendors, too,” I say. “Apparently, ‘peonies out of season’ just means ‘try harder.’”
He laughs again, this time in that rumble that vibrates through his ribs. “You’re going to be impossible when we’re actually married.”
I dust my hands on my pants, then wipe a spot of cream cheese from his cheek, just below the bone. “You created this monster.”
He catches my wrist, his fingers rough and hot. “You’re not a monster,” he murmurs, so quietly I almost don’t hear it.
He’s about to kiss me, right there in the middle of the sawdust and plasterboard, surrounded by the men who call him Don behind his back and Boss to his face, but I put a finger to his lips: “I have to finish reviewing the electrical plans before two. Let me work.”
He sighs, stepping back, and straightens the collar of my shirt, as if I’m a mannequin in his window. “Don’t forget your hard hat,” he says. “You are not replaceable.”
I roll my eyes, but the way he says it makes me want to fist his lapel and pull him behind the stacks of drywall for a quick fuck. “Noted,” I say, “Capo.”
He lingers, making a show of not wanting to leave, then pivots and walks out. On the way, he stops to say something to the foreman, who laughs—too loud, too eager. I try not to watch him go, but the cut of his suit and the curve of his shoulder blades are a gravitational field, and I’m too weak to resist.
“He’d bulldoze an orphanage for you, you know,” Vittoria says, not looking up from her sketchbook.
“He probably already has,” I reply, and pop another bite of the pastry into my mouth, savoring the burst of burnt sugar and cream.
Ten minutes after Alessio leaves, the next disaster walks in: my mother. She strides across the construction site in three-inch heels, ducking nothing and blinking at nobody, as if sawdust and hard hats are nothing more than props in her personal psychodrama. She’s followed by Aunt Elise, who’s half a head shorter but twice as poisonous in word and deed. Both are vacuum-sealed in monochrome wool, hair sculpted to withstand chemical attack, and eyes shielded behind enormous sunglasses despite being indoors. They stand at the mezzaninerail, surveying the future home of “Lucia Vittoria, NYC” as if they plan to rent it out for parties once I inevitably fail.