[COMPLETED] My Father Gave Me to New York's Most Feared Crime Family—Then My New Husband Saw What the Rumors Had Hidden

Niko looked at me for a long moment.

Then he looked at my hands.

I had been pressing my fingers into the satin so hard that the seams were leaving marks across my palms. My shoulders were rigid. My eyes kept moving toward the bedroom door.

He had removed his jacket. The room was quiet except for the distant hum of the city beyond the windows.

"Are you afraid of me?" he asked.

It was the first question he had asked me that sounded as though the answer might matter.

"Would it surprise you if I was?"

His jaw tightened. The small black rose tattoo above the right side of his collar moved when he swallowed.

"Your father told me you understood the arrangement."

"My father told me on Thursday. He threatened to disinherit me if I refused."

Niko's expression changed again, more sharply this time.

"He said you agreed."

"Then he lied to both of us."

Neither of us spoke.

I was standing beside a bed large enough to look ridiculous in my Manhattan apartment. My father had placed my hand into this stranger's at an altar, and a legal ceremony had made us husband and wife. I had no idea whether any of that gave me a voice here.

"Open the door," I said.

Niko studied me.

Then he crossed the room, turned the lock, and pulled the door open.

"It's open."

I couldn't quite make myself believe that a simple movement of his wrist had changed anything. Security guarded the elevators. Men employed by his family controlled the building's entrance. The apartment belonged to him.

"Can I leave?"

"Yes."

The answer was immediate.

"Without someone coming after me?"

"I won't send anyone to bring you back."

I watched him carefully. He did not look offended that I had asked. That was almost more unsettling than anger would have been.

"I thought," he said, then stopped. "I was told this was a political arrangement. That you wanted the advantages attached to my name."

"I have a constitutional law exam I missed because my father kidnapped my weekend. I don't need your advantages."

A flicker passed through his eyes.

"You study law?"

"When people let me."

He glanced at the wedding gown, then at the faint red marks the fabric had made on my fingers. He looked away first.

"There's another bedroom. You can use it while you arrange where to go. Nobody will enter without your permission."

I almost thanked him. I caught myself.

Not being forced into his bed was not a favor. It was the bare minimum that should have existed before the wedding.

"I want my phone."

"It's in the sitting room with your other things."

We walked into the hallway with several feet between us. He kept his hands at his sides. I became acutely aware of the soft scrape of satin across the floor and the fact that my shoes had started hurting hours ago.

In the sitting room, I found my bag beside a stack of unopened wedding cards.

There were seventeen missed calls from Stella.

I called her immediately.

"Tell me where you are," she said before I could speak.

"Fifth Avenue. I'm safe right now."

She did not sound reassured.

"Have you been alone with him?"

I looked across the room. Niko was speaking quietly into his own phone by the window, his back turned to give me privacy.

"Yes. He hasn't touched me."

"I can come get you."

"I know. I need an hour. Then I'm leaving."

"An hour," she repeated. "And if that changes, you call me."

I promised.

Niko returned carrying a glass of water. He set it on the table rather than handing it to me.

"There's a security problem," he said.

"A problem beyond the fact that I just married someone whose family terrifies half the city?"

He accepted that without objection.

"A man at the cathedral tried to photograph the private service corridor reserved for you. He wasn't one of my people."

"Someone wanted pictures of me? There were already cameras outside."

"This one wasn't interested in your dress. He wanted to know how you would leave."

A cold sensation moved beneath my ribs.

"Do you know who sent him?"

"Not yet. That's why I would prefer you didn't leave without telling someone where you're going. Prefer, not order."

I asked why a marriage negotiated by two powerful men had somehow made me a target. Niko gave me the first direct answer of the night.

"Because your father has something my family wants, and at least one person is willing to use you to get it."

"Does that person include you?"

He hesitated long enough for the question to become its own answer.

"I agreed to the marriage," he said. "I believed your father had asked for it. I'm responsible for not speaking to you first."

He did not ask me to forgive him.

I took my phone and called Stella again. We arranged for her to meet me in the lobby, and for us to go somewhere she chose, not somewhere Niko provided.

While I waited, I remembered the envelope on my father's desk. The red wax. The raised S.

"What does your family's seal look like?"

Niko frowned.

"Why?"

"My father was holding an envelope. Red wax. A large S pressed into it."

He went very still.

"We stopped using wax seals years ago."

"So it wasn't yours?"

"I didn't say that."

He took out his phone and opened an old photograph of a heavy silver signet ring. Its face was engraved with an elaborate S surrounded by a circle of tiny leaves.

"My father's ring," he said. "It was kept with the family records after he died."

"Who has it now?"

Niko stared at the photograph before answering.

"My uncle Dario keeps the old records."

Beyond the windows, traffic continued down Fifth Avenue, indifferent to the marriage that had rearranged my life.

The bedroom door was unlocked. I was leaving.