Chapter 5 - Debt of Blood and Honor
Willow felt the breath leave her body in a sharp gasp. “Fiancée? You can’t be serious. You don’t even know me.”
“I know everything necessary,” Veto replied smoothly. “I know you survived five months on the run with twenty dollars in your pocket. I know you spent four months scrubbing my baseboards without stealing a single spoon or uttering a single complaint. I know that when my dog sat at your feet, he recognized someone worthy of loyalty.”
“This is insane,” Willow said, shaking her head. “People will know it’s fake. Your captains, your associates… they’ll see right through it.”
“In my world, nothing is fake if I say it is real,” Veto replied. His voice was steady, like granite grinding against granite. “You need a name that makes monsters run in the opposite direction. I need a wife who has no ties to the political families in Rome or the crooked syndicates in New York. A marriage of convenience settles three distinct succession disputes inside my own family council.”
“And my baby?” Willow asked, her voice cracking with raw emotion. “What happens when he is born? Will your men look at him and see a Mancini?”
Veto reached out. For the first time, his warm, calloused fingers brushed gently against the back of her hand on the table. The touch sent a jolt of heat racing down her spine.
“From the moment that ring touches your finger,” Veto said, each word deliberate, “that child carries the Ferrante bloodline by my decree. Anyone who whispers otherwise will find out how deep Lake Michigan is.”
Tears welled in Willow’s eyes, blurring the sparkle of the diamonds. All her life, she had been discarded—by foster homes, by deadbeat boyfriends, by an uncaring city that stepped over her when she was cold. Now, the most feared man in the Midwest was offering her a fortress built on iron and bone.
“Why?” she asked softly. “What do you get out of protecting a broken woman?”
Veto looked away for a fraction of a second, his gaze drifting toward the wall where a faded oil portrait of a dark-eyed woman in Victorian dress hung above the mantle.
“My mother was an outsider,” Veto said quietly. “My father’s brothers treated her like dirt under their shoes until the day she died. I watched her weep behind the pantry doors when I was seven years old, wishing someone would stand between her and the wolves.”
He turned back to Willow, his dark eyes ablaze with an ancient, untamed fury.
“I was too small to stop them then, Miss Whitlock. I am no longer small.”
Willow looked down at the velvet box. She picked up the ring. It felt heavy, cold, and final. She slipped it onto the third finger of her left hand. It fit perfectly.
May you like
“Good,” Veto murmured. He stood up from his chair and extended his hand to help her rise. “Tonight, we attend the Autumn Gala at the Palmer House. Let us introduce Chicago to my future wife.”
***
