I watched Teresa Brennan play the perfect mob wife.
Watched the groomsmen file out, Tony Lombardo looking appropriately nervous about his alliance marriage.
Then Emma appeared at the back of the church.
And fuck me.
I’d seen photographs of her before.
I knew she was attractive, but photographs don’t do her justice.
The white, beaded dress fitted close enough to show the curve of her waist, the swell of her breasts.
She’s tall, maybe five-seven or five-eight, with a willowy build.
The dress shows off her figure in a way that’s probably meant to be demure but just makes me notice things I shouldn’t.
Her dark auburn hair swept up exposes the nape of her neck, and there’s something about that vulnerable curve that made my fingers itch.
Even from fifty feet away I could tell her eyes were unusual—some light color that stands out against her dark lashes.
Green, I’d thought.
The kind of eyes that demand attention.
She’s the kind of beautiful that stops traffic and makes men stupid and reckless.
Connor Brennan probably had to beat potential suitors away with a stick, not that he’d let her choose her own husband anyway.
And as she began to walk toward the altar with her father, I could see she was miserable.
The smile didn’t reach those striking eyes.
Every line of her body screamed reluctance even as she maintained that picture-perfect bridal composure.
She didn’t want this marriage.
This was duty.
And for half a second, something that might have been regret flickered through me.
She’s only twenty-four, which seems impossibly young from where I’m standing at thirty-five.
By all accounts she’s innocent of Connor’s sins.
She was…what, nineteen when Gabriel died?
She was away at college, studying whatever useless rich girl degree was deemed appropriate by her father and probably doesn’t even remember hearing about Gabriel’s death, if she even did.
Connor is the type of man to make sure his women are sequestered from the darker points of our world.
But innocence doesn’t matter.
Connor took my brother.
He took him from our mother, from Valentina, from everyone who loved him.
He took Gabriel’s future, his dreams, his ridiculous optimism about making peace between the families.