My Fiancé Sacrificed Me for My Sister's Heart novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: Until Sundown

They marry at dawn, but her father's captain invokes an old law: the marriage is void unless it is made in the bed before sundown. Nerina tells Ruggiero to find a door with a lock.

The chapel was a narrow room behind the club's kitchens, with four candles and a priest who had not been told why he was awake.

Ruggiero stood at the front in a clean black jacket.

I stood beside him in my dinner dress, with my hair pinned up by one of his men's wives and my hands washed.

Two guards held the door. Nobody else was invited.

The priest read the words fast, and I answered them.

"Do you take this man?"

"I do."

My voice did not shake.

"Do you take this woman, Ruggiero?"

"I do."

He did not look at me when he said it.

He opened a drawer in the altar table and took out a plain gold ring.

"It was my mother's," he said, low.

He pushed it onto my finger.

It was a little too big, and he curled my fingers closed around it to keep it on.

His hand was warm and dry, and he let go at once.

The priest signed the certificate. Ruggiero signed.

I signed my name for the second time that night, and this time I knew exactly what I was agreeing to.

The sun came up through a high window and lay across the floor.

I thought of Costanza asleep in her bed, with no idea any of it had happened.

Then I looked up.

The number over my head still read 22.

It had not moved.

I did not know what I had expected. My stomach turned over anyway.

"Something's wrong," I said.

Ruggiero glanced down at me. "What?"

I could not tell him.

I shook my head.

A fist hit the chapel door, three times.

"Open up, Falsetti!"

Ruggiero's hand went inside his jacket. The guards moved.

"Who is it?" he said.

"Albertini."

He nodded once at the guards.

They opened the door, and six of my father's men filled it.

The man in front was my father's captain. I had known him since I was seven. He used to bring me peppermints.

He did not look at me now.

"Mr. Falsetti," he said. "The Don has sent me for his daughter."

"His daughter is my wife," Ruggiero said. "As of ten minutes ago."

He took the certificate from the priest and held it out.

The captain read it slowly, and his jaw worked.

"Well?" Ruggiero said.

"There's an old law," the captain said.

"There are many."

"A marriage between two Families isn't binding until it's been made." The captain's eyes flicked to me and away. "In the bed, with witnesses to the sheets. Before sundown. The Don invokes it."

I did not understand at first.

Then I did, and my face went hot.

Ruggiero did not move at all.

"Nobody has spoken that law aloud in thirty years," he said.

"The Don is speaking it today."

"It was written for stolen brides."

"It was written for any bride," the captain said. "If it isn't made by sundown, the marriage is void. She goes home, and the waiver stands."

I stared at the captain.

I thought of the folder and the black pen. I thought of my father at the dinner table, in his good suit, giving the orders that would stop my heart.

He had known I would run.

He had known exactly where I would run.

"I'll leave two men at your gate," the captain said. "They'll be here at sundown for the sheets."

"You'll stand outside my wife's door?" Ruggiero said.

"The Don's orders."

"Get out of my chapel."

They went.

The door shut. The candles flickered.

Ruggiero stood very still for a long time.

"It's real," he said at last, not turning around. "He's using the oldest rule he could find. He knows I won't force you. He knows you'd never agree. He thinks one of us will balk, and that I'll hand you back."

I had never heard a man say a thing like that out loud.

"Force me," I said.

"I won't."

"I know." I walked around to face him. "That's why I'm asking."

His eyes were very dark.

"Nerina. You didn't come here to be anyone's wife. You came to stay alive."

"I came to live," I said. "And my father just told me the price."

"There are other ways. I could hide you. I could make calls."

"For how long? A week? A month, with his men on every road?"

He opened his mouth and closed it.

"Say I do this," I said. "Say I do it, and nobody takes me home. In a year I walk away, if I want to, and you've lost nothing."

"I've lost a great deal if you hate me," he said.

It was the first thing he had said that was not about the Families.

I took the ring on my finger and turned it once.

I thought of how many people had decided what my body was for.

My mother. My father. A man with a black folder.

This was the first time I had been asked.

"I'm not doing it because my father said so," I said. "I'm doing it because I want to be the one who says no to him."

Ruggiero's jaw moved. He looked at the ring and then at my face.

Then he walked to the chapel door and put his hand on the lock.

"Tell me, then," he said quietly. "Where do you want to do it?"

I took a step toward him.

"Anywhere with a lock," I said.

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