Chapter 1 - The Wedding He Never Wanted
Three hours before my wedding, I stood outside my future husband’s study and heard him say, “I don’t want her. I never did.”
I was already dressed in white, already surrounded by flowers and guards, when I realized I wasn’t about to become Ethan Carter’s wife—I was about to become part of his empire.
I was twenty-two and had spent most of my life trying to stay away from Chicago’s crime families.
Yet there I was, preparing to marry thirty-seven-year-old Ethan Carter, one of the most feared men in the city, because my father controlled South Side distribution and shipping routes Ethan needed.
“Then why marry her?” his right-hand man, Brian, asked from inside the study.
“Because her father controls territory I need,” Ethan answered coldly. “The Russo family keeps pushing into our business. Marrying Jane consolidates our power.”
Then his cousin Derek laughed.
“She’s pretty enough. Good breeding stock.”
I bit my lip until I tasted blood.
Women in our world were expected to smile, obey, produce heirs, and somehow survive whatever men decided around them.
“She can live in the east wing,” Ethan continued. “As long as she stays out of my business and gives me an heir within a year, she can do whatever she wants.”
Something inside me broke.
Minutes later, my father escorted me into a chapel filled with two hundred guests. Armed guards watched every doorway, diamonds flashed beneath chandeliers, and men whispered about business while pretending they had come to celebrate love.
Then the chapel doors opened.
Ethan stood at the altar in a black tuxedo, six-foot-two, composed, unreadable.
His gray eyes met mine.
I searched them desperately for some sign that I had misunderstood what I heard.
There was nothing.
I said vows I didn’t mean.
His fingers felt cold when he placed the ring on mine, and our first kiss felt less like a wedding and more like two executives closing a deal.
At the reception, he barely spoke to me unless someone important approached.
Then his hand would settle possessively against my waist.
“My wife,” he would say. “Jane.”
That was all I was.
Near midnight, my best friend Lily found me alone on the terrace staring at the Chicago skyline.
I told her everything.
“You can’t live like this,” she said.
“I’m going to survive,” I whispered.
Three months later, Ethan and I had perfected the art of being married strangers.
He lived in the west wing.
I lived in the east.
We appeared together only when appearances required it.
Our wedding night had been exactly what he promised.
Duty.
Nothing more.
He had not touched me since.
I buried myself in charity work, art, and anything that kept me from facing one humiliating truth.
Somewhere along the way, I had started noticing him.
His rare smile changed his entire face. His hands, capable of ordering terrible things, could move with surprising gentleness. Sometimes, when he thought nobody was looking, I caught something almost wounded in his eyes.
I was falling in love with a man who had never wanted me.
Then September came, and Brian began appearing more often.
“The boss wants to know if you’ll attend tonight’s charity gala.”
“The boss says you can redecorate the solarium.”
Then one afternoon, he stopped me before I reached the gardens.
“The boss noticed you’ve been walking alone.”
I almost laughed.
“And?”
“He’s assigned additional security to you.”
My stomach tightened.
For three months, Ethan had barely seemed to care where I was.
Now he suddenly cared where I walked, when I left the house, and whether someone was watching me.
I turned toward the west wing, where my husband was hidden behind closed doors.
And for the first time since our wedding, one terrifying thought entered my mind.
What had Ethan discovered that made him afraid something might happen to me?
I did not get an answer that afternoon.
I got an answer that night.
And it came with a gunshot.
The charity gala was held in a restored hotel overlooking the river, one of those places where old Chicago money gathered beneath crystal chandeliers and pretended the city belonged to them.
I wore a silver dress Lily had helped me choose.
“You look like someone who could ruin a dynasty,” she whispered before we entered.
“I’m hoping to survive one first.”
Ethan was already waiting at the entrance.
His black suit fit him perfectly, and his expression was the same one he wore during business meetings.
Controlled.
Cold.
Dangerously calm.
His hand came to my lower back.
“You stay beside me tonight.”
I glanced up. “That sounded almost affectionate.”
“It was an instruction.”
“Of course.”
His jaw tightened.
We entered together.
Within minutes, people surrounded him.
Bankers.
Shipping executives.
Political donors.
Men who smiled too much.
Women who stared at me and calculated exactly what my marriage meant.
I had begun understanding how this world worked.
Every handshake had a price.
Every invitation had an agenda.
Every smile hid a knife.
Then I noticed a man near the far wall.
He wore a dark green tie.
And he was staring directly at me.
I had never seen him before.
At least, I thought I hadn’t.
When Ethan followed my gaze, every muscle in his body tightened.
“Brian.”
His right-hand man immediately approached.
“Sir?”
“Get Jane out.”
I turned to him.
“What?”
“Now.”
Something in his voice frightened me.
Before I could argue, the lights went out.
The first gunshot cracked through the ballroom.
Screams erupted.
People dropped behind tables.
Guards moved instantly.
Ethan pulled me against him and covered my body with his.
Another shot shattered a champagne glass behind us.
“Down!”
I had never heard his voice like that.
Not cold.
Not commanding.
Terrified.
We rushed through a service hallway while security returned fire.
My heels slipped on the marble.
Ethan caught me.
“Are you hurt?”
“No.”
He looked at my face, then my arms, then my stomach.
He checked me as though he needed visual proof that every part of me was still there.
Then something strange happened.
His hand trembled.
Just once.
But I felt it.
“Ethan?”
He stared at me.
“You almost got killed because of me.”
I swallowed.
“Is that why you assigned more guards?”
He looked away.
“Brian was right. You should have been told sooner.”
“Told what?”
He hesitated.
“There’s a war starting.”
“Between you and the Russos?”
“Not only them.”
He stepped closer.
“The people attacking me know that hurting you is the fastest way to hurt me.”
I stared at him.
“That doesn’t make sense.”
“It will.”
There was another explosion outside.
Ethan immediately pulled me into his chest.
For several seconds, neither of us moved.
Then he whispered something so quietly I almost missed it.
“I should have never let you become part of this.”
My heart stopped.
Because it was the first time I had ever heard regret in his voice.
Not regret that he married me.
Regret that I had become a target.
And as I looked into his eyes, I realized something terrifying.
Ethan Carter had lied to me from the beginning.
But I no longer knew which part was the lie.
May you like
The part where he said he never wanted me?
Or the part where he said I meant nothing to him?
