Arranged to the Don, Freed from the Lie novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Rule
Helena tells the Don she loves that her family will marry her off by Friday, he laughs, and at Harrow House the Council's paper names him as the groom.
I told Santino Carraro that my family would choose my husband by Friday, and he laughed.
He was sitting on the corner of my desk with the quarterly numbers open across his knee.
It was ten past six, and the finance floor of Carraro Holdings had emptied out an hour ago.
"Say that again," he said.
"My family has a rule. A Crowninshield woman who is still single at thirty goes home to Harrow House."
"And then what?"
"Then the Council of Elders picks her husband."
He put his head back and laughed, low and honest.
I had heard that laugh maybe four times in two years.
"Six old people at a long table," he said. "Deciding who gets to marry the best CFO in Massachusetts."
"They can take my shares if I refuse. Twelve percent of Crowninshield Maritime."
"So let them have it."
"My mother's cottage comes out of that trust. So does Phoebe's tuition."
He turned a page and ran his thumb down a column.
"Then pay it yourself. You move forty million a month for me. Nobody in your family can touch you."
"That isn't the point."
"What is the point?"
"The point is I'm leaving tonight, and I wanted you to hear it from me."
He looked up.
"I'm not asking for your opinion, Santino. I'm telling you."
The laugh was gone from his face.
His knee was still pressed against my hip, where it had been all evening.
Neither of us had moved it.
I waited.
For two years I had waited in this office, in his penthouse, in the back seat of his car after midnight.
He had never once said stay.
He had never said anything that would have to be said out loud.
He reached out and turned my chin toward the window with two fingers.
His eyes went over my face slowly, and I held still for it.
"This Friday?" he asked.
"This Friday. It's my birthday."
"Thirty."
"Thirty."
His thumb moved along my jaw once.
Then he let go, picked the report back up, and smiled the smile he used on rival families.
"Send me a card from the wedding, Helena."
That one hurt, and I did not let it show.
I stood up so fast that my chair rolled back into the glass wall.
"I will."
"The driver goes with you," he said, without looking up. "He stays until I say."
"I don't need a driver."
"He's already downstairs."
That was the whole conversation.
So I took my coat from the hook, my laptop from the desk, and left him sitting on it.
I did not look back at the door until the elevator closed.
Harrow House sits at the end of a gravel road on the North Shore, forty minutes past the last streetlight.
I had last been there for my father's funeral, ten years ago.
The driver parked at the foot of the steps and stayed behind the wheel, and I walked up alone.
The front door opened before I knocked.
"Helena, dear."
My great-uncle Edmund stood in the hall in a grey cardigan, white hair brushed back, one hand on his cane.
He had paid for Phoebe's textbooks every year since our father died.
He took both of my hands in his.
"You look worn out. Harrison, take her bag. Get her some tea."
My cousin Harrison came out of the library, smiling.
"Oat milk, no sugar," he said. "Still?"
"Still. You remembered."
"Of course I did."
He took my bag and my coat.
It was the first kindness anyone had shown me all day, and I took it.
Edmund led me into the Great Hall.
The long oak table was set for six, and five of the chairs were empty.
A single folder lay in front of the sixth.
"The Council met this afternoon," Edmund said gently. "We did not want you to wait. A girl should not wait."
"You've chosen already?"
"We have. And I'm happy to say the groom has already accepted."
He opened the folder and turned it around to face me.
It was a marriage contract, four pages, heavy cream paper with the Crowninshield crest at the top.
The bride's line had my full name typed on it.
The groom's line had one too.
I read it twice, because the first time my eyes would not hold still.
Santino Salvatore Carraro.
And under it, on the signature line, in blue ink, was his name.
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