🐺 The Forbidden Bed That Made Her the Mafia Boss’s Fiancée

Chapter 02 - The Lie Everyone Had to Believe

I had planned three hundred weddings, nine engagement parties, and one memorial service for a woman who had left instructions for the orchids to be white because, according to her final note, she had spent enough of her life around beige.

I understood public performance.

I understood false smiles, controlled panic, and the difference between a crisis the guests saw and a crisis the staff handled behind closed doors.

What I did not understand was how to walk downstairs beside Adrian Moretti while wearing yesterday’s ivory blouse, a borrowed cashmere wrap, and the brand-new identity of his fiancée.

His grandmother, whose name I learned was Vittoria Moretti, walked ahead of us with her cane clicking softly over the marble hallway.

“Back straight,” she said without looking at me.

“I’m sorry?”

“Fiancées do not slouch.”

“I became one seven minutes ago. I haven’t had time to study.”

Adrian’s thumb brushed once over my knuckles. A warning, perhaps. Or reassurance. With him, I could not yet tell the difference.

At the top of the staircase, I finally saw what waited below.

The gala had not ended.

Guests stood in clusters beneath gold chandeliers, champagne in hand, faces turned toward the stairs with that hungry stillness people get when they smell scandal but have not yet been served the details. My assistants moved along the walls, pale and confused. Near the entrance, two of Adrian’s men blocked the doors without looking as though they were blocking anything at all.

Everyone watched me descend beside him.

Whispers lifted like steam.

Adrian did not smile. He did not explain. He held my hand in a grip that told the room I was under his protection and dared anyone to ask why.

Vittoria stopped at the final step and turned toward the crowd.

“My grandson has always had a taste for secrecy,” she announced, her voice carrying effortlessly. “Tonight, it appears he has decided to bore me with another one.”

A small ripple of laughter passed through the room. Nervous laughter, but it worked.

Adrian looked down at me.

“Stay close.”

“What happens if I don’t?”

“Someone tries to take you.”

The words were calm enough to belong to a weather report.

My skin went cold.

Before I could ask anything else, a woman in emerald silk approached us, smiling with every tooth.

“Elena Brooks,” she said. “What a surprise. I thought you were the planner.”

“I am,” I said before I could stop myself.

Adrian’s hand tightened.

“I mean I was. I am. I’m also—”

“My fiancée,” Adrian finished.

The woman looked at our joined hands, then at my ringless fingers.

“How modern.”

Vittoria’s cane struck the floor.

“If you have a question, Mrs. Salerno, ask it like a woman with manners or choke on it quietly.”

Mrs. Salerno’s smile collapsed.

I decided in that moment I liked the grandmother.

Adrian guided me across the ballroom, past arrangements I had chosen and candles I had supervised, as though we were not walking through the wreckage of my professional reputation. My phone vibrated inside my handbag near my hip. Then again. And again.

I glanced down.

Twenty-three missed calls.

My assistant, Kate.

My landlord.

Unknown number.

My mother.

That one made my chest tighten.

Adrian saw my face change.

“Who?”

“My mother called.”

His expression sharpened.

“Call her back. Now.”

We moved into a small side library where two guards stood outside the door. Adrian stayed beside me while I dialed. The call connected on the fourth ring.

“Elena?” My mother’s voice came thin and terrified.

“Mom? What’s wrong?”

“Someone was here.”

The floor seemed to shift beneath me.

“At the house?”

“Yes. I didn’t open the door. I looked through the upstairs window. A man stood across the street taking pictures.”

Adrian turned away from me and raised two fingers at one guard. The man disappeared instantly.

“What kind of pictures?” I asked, though I already knew.

“Of me. Of the front door. Of your father’s old truck.”

My father had been dead sixteen years. His truck had been covered in a tarp behind my mother’s garage for almost that long.

“Stay inside,” Adrian said, taking the phone from my hand with quiet authority. “Mrs. Brooks, this is Adrian Moretti. Lock every door. Step away from the windows. My people will be there in twelve minutes.”

My mother went silent.

Then, very softly, she asked, “Moretti?”

Adrian’s eyes moved to mine.

“Yes.”

“Elena,” my mother whispered. “Get away from him.”

I stared at Adrian, suddenly aware that his hand was still wrapped around my phone.

“Mom?”

But her next words were not for me.

They were for him.

“I told Michael no good would come from hiding that key.”

Adrian’s face went utterly still.

“What key?” he asked.