THE MAFIA BOSS WAS FORCED TO MARRY THE “HIDEOUS” MORETTI GIRL—BUT WHEN HE LIFTED HER VEIL, HE REALIZED HIS ENEMIES HAD JUST HANDED HIM THEIR MOST DANGEROUS SECRET

THE MAFIA BOSS WAS FORCED TO MARRY THE “HIDEOUS” MORETTI GIRL—BUT WHEN HE LIFTED HER VEIL, HE REALIZED HIS ENEMIES HAD JUST HANDED HIM THEIR MOST DANGEROUS SECRET

On their wedding night, Tomasso Barbieri finally saw the face of the “monster” he had been forced to marry.

The entire city had whispered about Caterina Moretti.

They said she had been burned as a child.

They said her face was ruined.

They said her body was twisted, her mind broken, her screams locked inside the east wing of the Moretti compound where even her own uncle could not bear to look at her.

So when she walked into the cathedral under that thick white veil, the whispers began before she even reached the aisle.

“God help him.”

“Look at the veil.”

“Do you think she has a face at all?”

Tomasso stood at the altar and listened to every word.

He was not marrying for love. He was marrying for territory. Ten years of blood between the Barbieris and the Morettis had turned Chicago into a graveyard with streetlights, and this marriage was the price of peace.

Lorenzo Moretti had not offered his beloved daughter.

He had offered the hidden niece.

The shame.

The damaged thing.

The bride nobody wanted.

Caterina walked alone. No father. No uncle’s arm. No one to steady her as she came down the aisle in antique lace that looked more like a burial shroud than a wedding gown. Her gloved hands trembled around the bouquet.

Tomasso extended his hand.

After one long second, she gave him hers.

Cold.

Shaking.

Fear, he thought.

Good.

Fear kept people obedient.

At the reception, she sat beside him like a veiled statue. She ate nothing. Drank nothing. Spoke to no one. Men laughed into their glasses. His own cousin Dante joked that they should have “inspected the goods” before accepting delivery.

Tomasso crossed the ballroom and told him quietly to go home before he sent him out through a wall.

When he returned, Caterina had not moved.

But somehow, he knew she had heard everything.

Hours later, inside the Barbieri estate, Tomasso finally closed the bedroom door behind them. Lake Michigan was black beyond the windows. A fire burned low. Roses filled the room like a lie.

“You will take the adjoining guest room,” he said. “We will live separate lives. I will not interfere with yours if you do not interfere with mine.”

Silence.

Then Caterina raised both hands and began unpinning the veil.

Tomasso braced himself.

He had seen gunshots, knives, fire, and ruined flesh. Whatever waited beneath that cloth, he would not react.

The veil fell.

And Tomasso forgot how to breathe.

There were no scars.

No ruined mouth.

No twisted face.

Before him stood a woman so beautiful the rumors themselves seemed obscene. Dark hair spilled over her shoulders. Her skin glowed warm under the firelight. Her eyes were glacial blue, brilliant, merciless.

She was not trembling now.

She was smiling.

Not sweetly.

Dangerously.

“Surprised, husband?” she asked.

Tomasso stared at her.

“The rumors,” he said.

“My mother created them before she died,” Caterina replied. “I maintained them after.”

“Why?”

“Because a hideous girl has no value in my uncle’s world. She cannot be sold. She cannot be displayed. She cannot tempt allies or enemies into wanting her. She becomes inconvenient.”

Her hand slipped into the folds of her wedding gown.

When it came out, she was holding a slim silver blade.

Tomasso’s hand moved toward his gun.

But Caterina did not attack him.

She pressed the blade to her own palm and cut.

Blood welled bright against her skin.

“My uncle murdered my father,” she said. “He poisoned my mother. For ten years, I listened from the shadows. I read ledgers no one thought I understood. I memorized names, accounts, routes, bribes, judges, priests, shipments, weaknesses.”

She held her bleeding hand toward him.

“You want Lorenzo’s ports,” she whispered. “I can give you his entire empire.”

Tomasso’s voice dropped.

“And in exchange?”

“You do not touch me unless I permit it. You do not command me like property. You do not lock me in another gilded cage and call it protection.”

The fire cracked between them.

Then Caterina’s eyes burned.

“And when the time comes,” she said, “Lorenzo dies by my hand.”

For the first time in his life, Tomasso Barbieri stood in front of a woman he could not categorize as enemy, wife, prisoner, or prize.

She was all of them.

And worse.

She was useful.

He looked at the blood running down her palm, then at the blade she had used without flinching. Lorenzo Moretti had sent him a veiled bride as an insult, never realizing he had delivered the one person in Chicago who hated him more than Tomasso did.

Slowly, Tomasso took the knife from her hand.