Chapter 1

Chapter One 

The Unexpected Groom

Isabella's POV

The second time I saw Salvatore Moretti in five years, I was standing beside his father in a wedding dress. I wish I could say I handled it well.

That morning, I woke up in the bridal suite of the Langham Hotel, with ivory silk draped across the chair and my mother's pearls on the nightstand. I sat on the edge of the bed for a long time, doing nothing.

 Just sitting there and thinking about my life.

You are doing the right thing.

I said it out loud because all I needed was to hear myself say encouraging words.

Richard Moretti was not the man I loved. I knew that walking in. He knew it too, I think, and had the grace to never say so. 

What we had was simpler than love and more honest than most marriages I had witnessed — he needed a wife, I needed a way out, and somewhere in the negotiation we had found something that felt, like we had simply served ourselves.

After all, Love had never kept the lights on anyway.

Love had not been in that solicitor's office when I sat across from a man in a red suit and heard exactly how much my family owed.

 Love had not stopped the calls. Had not stopped the letters. Had not stopped my mother from crying quietly in the kitchen at night thinking I couldn't hear her.

Richard had been there. And now he had offered a solution. I had said yes before he finished the sentence." Will you marry me"

The stylist pinned my hair while I stared at my reflection in the mirror standing in front of me.

I looked beautiful. That surprised me a little. I had expected to look like what I was — a woman going through the motions — but the mirror showed someone else entirely.

You are twenty-eight years old, I told myself outside the ceremony doors, bouquet in both hands, music filtering soft through the wood. You are not a girl anymore. You made a choice. See it through. I said to myself all ready.

The doors opened.

Richard looked like nothing in the world could touch him. Silver-haired, sharp-eyed, shoulders straight inside a charcoal suit without a single wrinkle. 

His smile when he saw me walking toward him was genuine. I had always appreciated that about him.

He threw his hand around my waist and I adjusted myself so I would fit it. 

"You look wonderful," he said quietly.

"Thank you, darling"

He's now my husband, yes I'm good with it. I thought aloud.

The vows were simple the way Richard did everything. I said my vows too, clearly. Meant the ones I could. When he slid the ring onto my finger I looked at it for one second and then looked back at his face because that felt safer.

The officiant said the final words and it was sealed. Someone handed me champagne and the room exhaled into celebration around us.

 Glasses lifted. Voices rose. For one small moment, standing there with the ring on my finger and Richard's hand warm at my back, I thought — the hardest part is over.

Then the doors at the far end of the hall opened. I felt it before I looked at the door.

The room's attention was pulling in a direction it hadn't been pulling a moment before.

 Richard stiffened beside me and then let out a wide satisfying smile.

"He made it," he said, almost to himself. Then louder, pleased.

"My son actually made it."

Something moved through my chest.

His son.

Richard had mentioned him exactly three times in all our months of planning.

"My son is in Europe."

"Salvatore won't be able to make it."

"He's busy overseas."

Each time I had nodded and moved the conversation forward because there was no reason not to. I had never seen a photograph and I never asked for one. The name was common enough. Italy produced men named Salvatore the way England produced rain.

I had told myself that every single time.

Immediately, the champagne left my hand before I decided to let it go. It hit the marble and shattered and the sound split the room clean in half and I didn't look down because Salvatore Moretti was standing in the doorway and my body had forgotten every single instruction I'd ever given it.

Five years.

Five years and my first thought — God help me, my first thought — was the lake house. That summer. The way he used to pull me close from behind while I was cooking and rest his chin on my head while standing like being near me was enough. The way he laughed. The way he said my name made it feel like it meant the whole world to him.

He was broader now. Harder in all places, the boy I loved had been open and easy. The warmth was gone — sealed over by something controlled and expensive and very, very still.

 He stood looking very surprised, he looked at Richard and then looked at me.

I watched his face as it flowed with realization mixed with confusion. His gaze went to my left hand. He looked at the diamond-glamorizing ring and then he looked back at my face.

He started walking forward without saying anything to me, and he maintained his composure and walked confidently.

Richard was already moving, warm and oblivious, the happiest man in the room.

"Fashionably late." He clapped a hand on Salvatore's shoulder.

 But thank goodness you are here, I already thought you wouldn't make it.

Salvatore gave out a fake handsome smile.

"Flight was delayed Dad."

"Come. Come." Richard turned, drawing me forward.

 "There is someone you need to meet."

Salvatore looked at me. I looked back.

Neither of us spoke.

"Salvatore." Richard's voice was proud in the specific way fathers are proud when they think they're giving someone a gift. 

"This is Isabella."

"My wife."

The word landed in like a bomb ready to explode. Salvatore's eyes moved from Richard's face to mine slowly and then he extended his hand.

I took it because there was nothing else to do.

His grip was firm. His thumb moved once across my knuckles — just like we had planned to hold hands on our wedding day before I left.

Don't, I thought. Don't you dare.

"Mrs. Moretti," he said gently, looking so mean into my eyes. I know this voice, this voice that always tells me how he had loved me and wanted to keep me forever, now let's hear what he has to say this time.

 The corner of his mouth curved into a smirk.

"Welcome to the family."

A pause long enough to mean something.

"Mother."

The word went through me like a key turning in a lock I thought I had welded shut.

Heat flooded my face. Richard laughed beside us and said something about new beginnings and I heard none of it because Salvatore was still looking at me the way he always looked at me when he was deciding something.

I pulled free. Because this was my wedding day. My choice. The life that I had built deliberately out of the wreckage of everything that came before. 

There were two hundred people in this room and I was standing here coming apart over a man I had buried, no I straightened. Lifted my chin. Found my smile and put it back where it belonged.

He was my stepson. That was his role now. That was all he was ever going to be. He would soon be leaving for where he came from.

I let a few minutes pass. Let the room pull me back in — Richard's voice, the music, the warmth of people who meant well. And when I turned to Salvatore again it was with the steadiness of a woman who had made her peace.

"Thank you, son," I said evenly.

I could feel his shock as it appeared on his face. Richard turned to greet a guest nearby and in the half second his back was to us, Salvatore leaned in. 

Close enough that his breath reached my ear before his words did.

"We need to talk, Isabella."

"Alone."

I stared straight ahead at nothing in particular.

I had married Richard Moretti to save my family.

I was only now beginning to understand what it was going to cost me.