Bound by Love novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Peace Bridge
Alessia walks her sister out of an engagement party and onto the bridge to Canada, and her husband is waiting at the end of it.
My husband zipped my dress, and for a moment I forgot why I was afraid.
We were in my old bedroom in my father's house in Buffalo.
Adriano stood behind me, and his fingers moved slowly up my spine.
He was supposed to be my enemy's heir, my father's treaty, a stranger I had married seven weeks ago.
Now his mouth was at the side of my neck, and I was leaning back into him.
"You're shaking," he said against my skin.
"I'm not," I said, and my voice broke on it.
His hand slid around my hip and pulled me back against him, hard enough that I felt all of him.
"Say it again," he said, "and I'll make you a liar."
I turned my head and caught his mouth with mine.
He kissed me like he had every night for four weeks, like he was angry about how much he wanted to.
Someone knocked on the door.
"Mr. Corsini," a man said. "The Don is waiting."
Adriano did not move for a long second.
Then he stepped back, fixed his cuff, and looked at me.
"Stay close to me tonight," he said.
I did not tell him I would be gone before the cake was cut.
I had a plan, and it did not include him.
Downstairs, my father's whole house was lit up for my sister's engagement.
Cinzia stood by the piano in a white dress, nineteen years old, and smiling the way she did when she was trying not to cry.
Fabiano Roncalli stood beside her with his hand on the back of her neck.
He was forty-seven, bald and heavy, and my father's underboss.
His first wife had died four years ago on a staircase, and everyone in the room knew not to ask how.
"Alessia," Cinzia said when she saw me, and her whole face loosened.
"You look beautiful," I said.
"She looks tired," Fabiano said, and squeezed her neck.
Cinzia laughed too loudly at something he whispered.
She was holding her glass in her left hand.
I did not see what happened next until it was done.
Cinzia whispered my childhood nickname to me, and for a second she smiled for real.
Fabiano heard it and took her right wrist in his thick hand.
He smiled at the guests, and he twisted.
I heard the bone crack from six feet away.
Cinzia went white and did not make a sound.
Her glass fell and broke on the marble.
"Clumsy girl," Fabiano said pleasantly.
"She'll learn."
I looked for my father, because I still believed in him back then.
Benedetto Draghi stood ten feet away in his gray suit with a drink in his hand.
He looked at my sister's wrist, and then at Fabiano, and then he looked at the wall.
"She'll learn," my father agreed, in his soft voice.
The room started talking again.
I felt Adriano's eyes on me from across the room.
He had seen it too.
He said nothing, and he did nothing, because this was not his house and Fabiano was not his man.
I walked to my sister, took her good hand, and said, "Bathroom. Now."
In the bathroom, Cinzia sat on the edge of the tub and held her wrist against her chest.
Her fingers had already started to swell.
"The bag is under the guest bed," she whispered.
"I know," I said.
She had asked me for this a week ago, crying on the phone, and I had said I'd think about it.
I was done thinking.
"Passport, cash, the phone with the new number?"
"Yes."
"Then we leave in four minutes, and you don't look at Papa on the way out."
I took off my heels, tied my wrap around Cinzia's wrist to hold it still, and led her down the back stairs.
The garage was empty.
I took the keys of the car I had driven here that afternoon, the one that was in my name.
Nobody stopped us.
Every man in the house was inside, drinking my father's whiskey and congratulating a monster.
I drove to the Peace Bridge with the radio off.
Cinzia cried quietly in the passenger seat, and I did not tell her to stop.
At the Buffalo end of the bridge, there is a walkway for people on foot.
I parked on the street and walked her to the first lamp.
I gave her the bag and every dollar in my purse.
"There's a bakery in Toronto," I said.
"The woman upstairs rents to girls with no questions, and I've already paid her three months."
"Alessia," Cinzia said.
"They'll hurt you for this."
"Let them try."
I hugged her once, hard, careful of her wrist.
"Walk," I said. "Don't run, and don't turn around."
She went onto the bridge in her white dress with a backpack, and the wind off the river took her hair.
I watched her until she was a small light among other lights.
Then I turned around, and a black car was parked across the road behind mine.
Adriano stood beside it with his hands in his pockets.
He was looking at the bridge, where my sister was just crossing the middle line.
He was looking at it the way a man looks at a house he is watching burn.
"Where is she going?" he asked.
"Canada," I said. "She's gone, and you can't stop her."
He did not argue.
He looked at me for a long moment, and there was no kiss in his face now.
"You didn't ask me," he said quietly.
"You'd have said no."
He opened the passenger door of his car.
"Get in, wife," Adriano said.
"By morning two families are at war, and you're the reason."
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