Chapter 2 - The Woman Silas Refused to Marry
Silas sent Clara into the reinforced bedroom while his men secured the residence.
She hated the room.
It had been designed before they married.
Steel beneath the walls.
An independent ventilation system.
A separate communication line.
Enough water and food for forty-eight hours.
Silas had once joked that it was more comfortable than most hotels.
Clara had told him that hotels usually had windows guests could open.
Tonight, the locking mechanism sounded like a prison gate.
“You’re staying here.”
Silas checked the interior monitor.
Clara folded her arms.
“No.”
“Clara.”
“If armed men are already inside the building, I am not sitting in a room waiting to hear whether my husband is alive.”
“You are twenty-four weeks pregnant.”
“And apparently still capable of forming opinions.”
“This is not an argument.”
“Then stop arguing.”
His jaw tightened.
Three months earlier, that expression would have made an entire conference room quiet.
Clara had learned it mostly meant he was deciding whether being unreasonable would save time.
He took off his suit jacket and wrapped it around her shoulders.
“Please.”
That word did what commands never could.
Clara’s anger weakened.
“Tell me who sent the picture.”
“I don’t know.”
“You recognized something.”
He hesitated.
“The angle.”
“What about it?”
“It was taken from the unfinished tower across the river.”
Clara knew the building.
A luxury project stalled after financing collapsed.
It faced their residence almost directly.
“So?”
“So the upper floors are controlled by a shell company.”
“Whose?”
Silas looked toward the door.
“Lucien Vance.”
Clara went still.
Silas’s uncle had been dead for eleven years.
At least that was what she had been told.
Lucien Vance had raised Silas after his father died.
He had also been the man responsible for the scar beneath Silas’s ear.
Clara knew only fragments.
Silas at twelve.
A locked basement.
Punishment for crying.
Lucien teaching him that affection made men controllable.
Silas running away at sixteen.
Returning at twenty with enough money and enough dangerous friends to take the Vance organization away from the man who had built it through fear.
Lucien disappeared eighteen months later.
Most people assumed Silas ordered his death.
Silas had never confirmed it.
“You told me he was gone.”
“I believed he was.”
Before Clara could answer, pounding sounded outside.
Three hard strikes.
A code.
Silas opened the inner panel.
Matteo stood there with blood on his collar.
Clara’s stomach dropped.
“Are you hurt?”
“Not mine.”
Matteo looked at Silas.
“Four intruders. Two dead. One in custody. One escaped through maintenance access.”
Silas’s expression did not change.
“Names?”
“We have one.”
“Talk.”
“Frank Deluca.”
Clara knew the name.
One of the captains who had attended their wedding.
Silas looked almost bored.
“Alive?”
“Yes.”
“Keep him that way.”
Matteo glanced at Clara.
“I am sorry.”
Silas stepped toward him.
“You should be.”
“Silas,” Clara warned.
Matteo did not retreat.
“I brought her the treaty because one of the captains wanted her to receive it after you were dead.”
That stopped everyone.
Silas’s voice dropped.
“Explain.”
“The Castiglione proposal is real. But somebody modified the timeline. Elena’s father wanted negotiations over three days.”
“And?”
“Someone told the captains the deadline was dawn. Someone wanted panic.”
Clara looked at Silas.
“Lucien?”
Matteo’s eyes sharpened.
Silas ignored the question.
“Where is Elena?”
“Palmer House.”
“Alone?”
“With six Castiglione guards.”
Silas reached for his phone.
“What are you doing?” Clara asked.
“Inviting Elena here.”
Matteo stared.
“Tonight?”
“If someone is using her family’s treaty to start a civil war, I want her where I can see her.”
Clara almost laughed at the absurdity.
“You’re bringing the woman they want you to marry into our home?”
Silas turned toward her.
“You suggested it first.”
“I was trying to save your life.”
“So am I.”
Elena Castiglione arrived at 1:08 a.m.
She was not what Clara expected.
No dramatic fur coat.
No diamonds.
No smug smile belonging to a woman arriving to steal another woman’s husband.
Elena wore black trousers, boots, and a dark cashmere sweater beneath a long coat.
She was thirty-one.
Tall.
Composed.
Her dark hair was pulled into a simple knot.
The first thing she did when she saw Clara was look at her stomach.
The second thing she did was look embarrassed.
“I did not write the clauses concerning you.”
Clara blinked.
Elena removed her gloves.
“My father did.”
“Comforting.”
“It was not intended to be.”
Silas stood between them.
“Elena.”
She looked at him.
“You always did choose terrible moments for reunions.”
Clara turned.
“Reunions?”
Silas’s face became unreadable.
Elena sighed.
“We knew each other as children.”
“How well?”
“Not well enough to justify the rumors your husband is currently hoping I will not mention.”
Silas looked irritated.
That alone made Clara suspicious.
Elena walked toward the fire.
“My father and Lucien Vance intended Silas and me to marry when we were teenagers.”
Clara felt something cold move through her.
Silas spoke immediately.
“It was never an engagement.”
Elena shrugged.
“I was fifteen. You were seventeen. Our fathers drank whiskey and planned dynasties. Call it whatever helps.”
Clara stared at Silas.
“You never told me.”
“Because it was irrelevant.”
“Apparently not.”
Elena looked at Clara.
“For what it is worth, I threatened to enter a convent.”
Despite herself, Clara almost smiled.
Elena continued.
“My father told me I would last four days.”
“How long did you last?”
“Seven hours.”
The tension shifted.
Not gone.
But altered.
Silas crossed his arms.
“Did your father authorize the dawn deadline?”
“No.”
“The residence arrangement for Clara?”
Elena hesitated.
“Yes.”
Silas’s face changed.
Elena held up a hand.
“I argued against it.”
“You signed the treaty.”
“I signed a preliminary alliance.”
“You signed a marriage document.”
“I signed nothing concerning marriage.”
Silas pulled the original folder fragments from the desk.
Elena studied the signature page.
Then swore quietly.
“That is not my signature.”
Matteo stepped closer.
“You’re certain?”
“I know what my own name looks like.”
Clara’s pulse quickened.
The treaty was not simply cruel.
It was forged.
Elena lifted the page toward the light.
“My father uses a legal seal beneath every family signature. This has the crest but not the registration mark.”
Silas looked at Matteo.
“Someone manufactured this.”
Matteo nodded.
“And circulated it among the captains.”
Clara sat slowly.
“So somebody wants Silas to reject a treaty that doesn’t exist.”
Elena turned.
“Or accept a marriage that was never properly offered.”
“Why?”
Silas answered.
“To split the organization.”
A phone rang.
Not Silas’s.
Elena’s.
She looked at the screen.
“My father.”
“Answer,” Silas said.
Elena put it on speaker.
“Papa?”
The voice that came through was weak.
“Elena.”
Her expression changed.
“Where are you?”
“Home.”
“No, you aren’t.”
A pause.
Then noise.
Something metallic.
“Listen to me,” Carlo Castiglione said. “Do not sign anything.”
Elena’s face drained.
“Where are you?”
“Your uncle has betrayed us.”
The line crackled.
Silas moved closer.
“Carlo.”
“Vance?”
“Yes.”
“Lucien is alive.”
Clara stopped breathing.
Carlo continued.
“He has been buying men for months. He wants the docks and both families. The marriage proposal was meant to unite us against him.”
Silas’s eyes became deadly.
“Where are you?”
Another noise.
Then Carlo gasped.
“Elena knows the old hotel.”
The call ended.
Elena grabbed her coat.
Silas caught her arm.
“No.”
“That was my father.”
“And Lucien wants you moving without protection.”
“Let go.”
Silas did.
But he spoke with absolute certainty.
“You leave with my men.”
Elena looked toward Clara.
“You married him voluntarily?”
“Some days I ask myself the same thing.”
For the first time, Elena smiled.
Then the building alarms began again.
Not gunfire this time.
Fire.
Smoke warnings illuminated three floors below.
Matteo checked his phone.
“Garage level.”
Silas cursed.
“They’re forcing evacuation.”
Clara rose.
“Then we leave.”
Silas looked at her.
“No elevator.”
“I know.”
“You cannot walk sixty floors.”
“I can if the alternative is burning.”
Silas pressed his forehead briefly to hers.
For one second, the mafia boss disappeared.
Only her husband remained.
“I promised you different.”
Clara touched his cheek.
“You still can.”
The evacuation took twenty-three minutes.
They descended through a private emergency stairwell.
Silas carried Clara for the final nine floors despite her protests.
Outside, black SUVs waited behind concrete security barriers.
Snow struck their faces.
Men shouted.
Engines roared.
Clara had barely entered the armored vehicle when an explosion shook the underground level.
Glass shattered somewhere behind them.
Silas covered her with his body.
The SUV accelerated.
Clara heard Matteo yelling into a radio.
Then Silas’s phone rang.
Unknown number.
He answered.
A man laughed softly.
“Hello, nephew.”
Silas became completely motionless.
Clara had never heard Lucien Vance’s voice.
But she knew immediately.
Silas’s hand closed around the phone.
“You should have stayed dead.”
Lucien laughed again.
“And miss your wedding?”
Silas’s expression hardened.
“There will be no wedding.”
“Oh, there will.”
A message arrived while Lucien was speaking.
Clara saw the attached photograph.
A ballroom.
Hundreds of chairs.
A raised platform.
And displayed at the center beneath white lights was a silver evening gown.
Clara recognized it.
Silas had commissioned it for her weeks earlier for the Vance Foundation winter gala.
The gala scheduled in three days.
Lucien’s voice drifted through the speaker.
“Bring your wife.”
Silas said nothing.
“I want Clara to see what happens when women believe love gives them rank.”
The call ended.
Clara stared at the photograph of her dress.
None of them understood yet why Lucien cared about a gala.
Or why Clara’s gown was already hanging in a ballroom she had never entered.
Three days later, she would understand.
May you like
Because the dress would no longer belong to her.
And the woman wearing it would be standing beside her husband.
