Poisoned by His Love novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Wrong Sister
Savannah runs on the wedding morning, Cora gives Ivy the dress and a threat, and at the altar Sandro tells Ivy the price: his house, his bed, or her father's debt.
My half-sister left at seven in the morning on my wedding day, and it was not my wedding.
I found her bed empty and her window open.
A note was stuck to the mirror in pink lipstick.
"Sorry, Ive. Love is love. Tell Mom I'll call."
I was still in my scrubs from a night shift in the ICU.
I had come home to sleep for six hours before the biggest day of Savannah's life.
Instead I stood in her room with a lipstick note and a pounding head.
"Where is she?"
My stepmother stood in the doorway in her good pearls.
Cora Pendry never looked surprised, only inconvenienced.
"She's gone," I said. "She ran off with the bartender."
"I can see that, sweetheart."
She said sweetheart the way other people say shut up.
"Call the church. Tell them Savannah is sick."
"The groom doesn't take sick."
She stepped aside, and I saw my father behind her.
He sat on the hall bench with his hands between his knees.
He did not look at me.
"Dad?"
"Ivy, honey," he said. "Don't be mad."
Cora held up a white garment bag.
"This is Savannah's dress. You're an inch taller, but it will do."
I laughed, because I thought it was a joke.
Nobody else laughed.
"Sandro Vasari lent your father nine hundred thousand dollars," Cora said. "The note is forgiven if the bride walks to the altar at noon."
"If she doesn't, the debt is called. Today."
I looked at my father.
He still wouldn't look at me.
"They'll collect in the parking lot of the yard," Cora said. "I'm told that's how the Vasaris do it."
"You're lying."
"Ask him."
"Dad."
My father put his face in his hands.
He had two stents in his heart and a yard that was one bad month from the bank.
I knew exactly how long a man like that lasted in a parking lot.
I had held my mother's hand when she died, at sixteen, in a hospital bed in this same city.
I had raised Savannah through five years of nights, while Cora worked doubles and complained about it.
I had never once been asked what I wanted.
I was not being asked now.
I took the garment bag out of Cora's hands.
"I'll do it," I said.
My father looked up with wet eyes.
"But I'm not doing it for you, Cora."
Cora smiled.
"Of course not, sweetheart."
At five to twelve I stood at the back of St. Anthony's in Savannah's dress.
It was too tight across the chest and too short in the sleeves.
The veil was long enough to hide my face, and I was grateful for that.
The church was full.
Half the pews held men in black suits who did not turn to look at me.
They did not need to.
I felt every one of them know.
I knew what everyone in Baltimore knew about Sandro Vasari.
He was thirty-five, and he ran the Vasari family.
His first wife had died two years ago in his house, after a long illness.
People said it was not the illness.
They said poison, and they said it quietly, with a glance at the door.
I was a nurse.
I had stood at a hundred bedsides.
I knew how easy it would be.
The organ started.
I walked down the aisle on my father's arm, and his hand shook the whole way.
At the altar a man turned around.
He was taller than I expected.
He wore a black suit with no tie, and the shirt was open at the throat.
His hair was black and gray at the temples, and his eyes were darker than the suit.
A burn scar crossed his left forearm, where the sleeve had ridden up.
He looked at the veil, and then at the hem of the dress where my work shoes showed.
Something moved in his face.
It was not anger.
It was closer to hunger.
My father let go of my arm and went to sit down.
I was alone at the altar with the head of the Vasari family.
The priest began to speak.
I leaned toward the veil and whispered without moving my lips.
"I'm not Savannah."
"I know," he said, very low.
"She ran. I'm her sister. I'm only here so my father lives."
"I know that too."
"Then let him go. I'll sign whatever you want, I'll work it off..."
"No."
One word, and it shut.
"The debt is paid when you are in my house," he said.
"In my bed."
"As long as my wife is there, your father breathes easy."
"And if I leave?"
"You won't."
My heart was pounding in my teeth.
"That's not a marriage," I said. "That's a lease."
Sandro Vasari bent his head until his mouth was beside my ear.
His breath moved the veil against my cheek.
"It's both," he said. "Say I do, Ivy."
Heat went down my spine, and I hated it.
I hated him a little, and I hated myself more.
"Do you take this man?" the priest asked me.
I looked up at the stranger who had just bought me in front of God.
"I do," I said.
He lifted the veil with two fingers.
He did it slowly.
He looked at my face, tired and unpainted and furious.
"There you are," he said.
Then he kissed me.
It was not a polite kiss.
His hand slid under my jaw, and his thumb pressed the corner of my mouth open.
His tongue touched mine once, hot and certain, in front of three hundred people.
My knees went.
His other arm closed around my back and held me up.
When he lifted his head, I was breathing.
Somebody in the pews coughed.
In the car, a long black car with a driver and a glass wall, I sat as far from him as the seat allowed.
He took a ring from his pocket and held out his hand for mine.
I did not give it to him.
He waited, perfectly patient, until I did.
It was a plain gold band, and it still had the jeweler's tag on the inside.
"I bought it this morning," he said. "It stays on."
He pushed it down my finger and held my hand a moment longer than he needed to.
"I won't lie to you," he said. "Not about anything."
I looked at the scar on his arm and at the city sliding past the window.
I had to know.
"Did you kill her?"
The driver did not move.
Sandro looked at me for a long time.
"Ask me again," he said, "when you're sure you want to hear the answer."
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