Chapter 1 - The Red Stain on Satin
"Your Father Has Always Been Talented At Lying," The Mafia Boss Coldly Whispered After Kidnapping Me In My Blood-Stained Wedding Dress. I Thought He Was A Monster Who Murdered My Groom—Until A Forty-Eight-Hour Ultimatum Opened My Dad's Secret Offshore Ledger, Revealing The Terrifying Truth About The Elite Life They Had Bought For Me...
The first gunshot rang out exactly three seconds after Elena Voss said, “I do.”
For one breath, nobody in St. Bartholomew’s moved. The priest froze with his hand still raised over the open Bible. Her groom, Michael Alder, blinked as if the sound had come from inside his own chest. Elena’s bouquet of white lilies trembled in her fingers.
Then the second shot shattered the stained-glass window above the altar.
The church doors flew open so violently that one of the carved angels cracked off its hinge and crashed onto the marble floor. Six men in black suits stormed in with guns drawn. Guests screamed. Someone dropped a champagne glass. Elena’s father, Robert Voss, stood from the front pew so fast his boutonniere tore loose and fell at his feet.
“No,” Robert whispered.
That was the first thing that terrified Elena.
Not the guns.
Not the blood.
Her father’s face.
He looked as if he had been expecting this day for twelve years.
Michael turned toward Elena, his mouth opening around her name. Before he could speak, red spread across his white shirt like spilled wine. His knees buckled. Elena caught him by instinct, her satin gloves slipping against his collapsing body.
“Michael?” she gasped. “Michael, look at me.”
His eyes were already losing focus.
The guests became a storm of screaming bodies. Bridesmaids ran toward the side chapel. Michael’s mother fell to the floor, wailing. Elena’s veil slid over her face, turning the whole world blurry and white.
Then a man walked down the aisle as if he owned the church, the city, and every terrified breath inside it.
He was tall, broad-shouldered, and dressed in a charcoal suit without a speck of panic on him. His dark hair was slicked back. His eyes were so calm they seemed almost cruel. Elena recognized him from an old photograph she had once found locked inside her father’s desk.
Luca Moretti.
The dead man.
That was what her father had called him when Elena was sixteen and too young to understand the offshore accounts, the names crossed out in red ink, or the newspaper clipping about a warehouse fire in Brooklyn.
“He’s dead,” Robert had told her then, snatching the photo away.
But the dead man was walking toward her now.
Robert stepped into the aisle. “Luca, please. Not her.”
Luca did not even look at him.
He stopped in front of Elena. Michael’s blood had soaked into the lace at her knees. Elena was shaking so hard her teeth clicked together.
Luca crouched, not beside Michael, but in front of her.
“You’re finally mine, little dove,” he whispered.
Elena slapped him.
The sound cracked through the church louder than the gunshots.
For one impossible second, every armed man went still.
Luca’s face turned slightly with the force of it. Slowly, he looked back at her. There was no rage in his expression. No humiliation. Only something colder.
Interest.
“My father told me you were dead,” Elena said, her voice breaking.
Luca’s eyes shifted, just once, toward Robert.
“Your father has always been talented at lying.”
Two of Luca’s men seized Robert before he could move. Elena screamed and lunged toward him, but Luca caught her wrist. His grip was firm, not bruising, which somehow made it worse.
“Let him go,” she said.
“Your father stole eighteen million dollars from me,” Luca said quietly. “Then he buried my men, bought you a life with my money, and dressed you in a twelve-thousand-dollar wedding gown to marry you into another lie.”
Elena shook her head. “No.”
“Yes.”
“My father wouldn’t—”
“Your father already did.”
Behind Luca, Robert’s face crumpled.
That was when Elena knew.
Not everything. Not the details. But enough.
Luca stood and pulled her up with him. Her dress dragged through Michael’s blood. Elena tried to twist free, but the church was full of guns and screaming and her father’s silence.
“You killed my husband,” she said.
Luca leaned closer, his voice low enough that only she could hear.
“No, Elena. I killed the man your father chose to hide behind next.”
Then he took her.
He did not carry her like a lover. He did not drag her like an animal. He guided her down the aisle with his hand locked around her wrist while her veil trailed behind her like a surrender flag. Outside, rain hammered the church steps. A black Mercedes waited at the curb.
Elena turned one last time.
Her father was on his knees in the aisle.
For the first time in her life, Robert Voss did not look powerful, rich, or untouchable.
He looked guilty.
The car door slammed. The city blurred through tinted glass. Elena sat beside the man who had destroyed her wedding, ruined her life, and spoken to her father like an old debt coming due.
Her hands shook in her lap.
Luca noticed.
“You need to breathe,” he said.
“I need you to die.”
His mouth curved, almost amused. “People have tried.”
“You murdered Michael.”
“I removed a man who knew what your father had done and agreed to marry you anyway.”
“You’re lying.”
“I don’t lie, Elena. Not when the truth hurts more.”
She stared at him through tears. “Where are you taking me?”
“To a place where your father cannot trade you again.”
“My father loves me.”
May you like
Luca looked out the window as Manhattan rose cold and silver through the rain.
“Then he has forty-eight hours to prove it.”
