The Revenge Marriage To My Ex‑Fiancé’s Mafia Uncle

The night before my engagement party, I found my fiancé in our bridal suite with my little sister.

I had come back for the guest list. That was all. One folder, left on the dresser in the room I had spent three months putting together, down to the last silk pillowcase.

The door wasn't locked.

It swung open on its own, and I heard her laugh first.

Celeste. Twenty-one years old. My baby sister, the girl whose braids I used to fix before school.

She was flat on her back on the bed, the ivory one with the carved headboard I had flown to Milan to choose. And Julian Reyes, the man I was supposed to promise my life to in less than twenty hours, was pressing her into the mattress with his shirt half off.

The folder slid out of my hand and hit the floor.

Julian jerked up. "Sylvia."

That was it. Just my name. Like I had walked in on him reading the newspaper.

Celeste didn't move. She didn't grab the sheet. She didn't even blush.

She propped herself up on one elbow and smiled at me.

"Oh," she said. "You're early."

"Get up." My voice sounded strange, flat and far away. "Both of you. Get off my bed."

"Your bed?" Celeste tilted her head. "Funny. Julian said it was the most comfortable one he's ever been in."

"Celeste," Julian muttered, reaching for his shirt.

"What? She asked."

Then she lifted her left hand into the lamplight.

The diamond caught the glow and threw it across the wall. Two carats. Oval cut. Platinum band.

My ring.

The one Julian slid onto my finger last spring. The one I took off tonight to have cleaned so it would sparkle in tomorrow's photos. The one I left in the velvet box on the nightstand.

"Do you think it looks pretty on me?" Celeste wiggled her fingers. "Be honest, Sylvie. I think it fits me better. Your knuckles are kind of big."

Something inside my chest cracked straight down the middle.

I didn't decide to cross the room. My feet just carried me there. My hand was already up, already swinging, aimed at that smug, pretty little face.

It never landed.

Julian caught my wrist an inch from her cheek. His fingers clamped down hard enough that I felt the bones grind.

"Don't," he said quietly.

"Let me go, Julian."

"Not until you calm down."

"Calm down?" I laughed. It came out high and ugly. "You're half-naked on top of my sister, and you want me to calm down?"

"Lower your voice. The staff are downstairs."

"I don't care about the staff!"

I twisted hard. He didn't budge.

And then his other hand came up.

The slap cracked through the room. My head snapped sideways. For a second, everything went white, and then my cheek started to burn, slow and hot, like someone had pressed an iron against it.

I tasted copper. I had bitten the inside of my lip.

Behind him, Celeste gasped. Not in horror. She sounded delighted, like a kid at a magic show.

I touched my face. My fingers were shaking.

In six years, Julian had never raised his voice at me. Not once.

"Look at me," he said.

I didn't.

He grabbed my chin and turned it toward him. His thumb dug into the exact spot he had just hit.

"Listen carefully, because I'm only saying this once. Tomorrow at seven, you are going to walk into that ballroom in the dress your mother picked. You are going to smile for the cameras. And we are getting engaged, exactly as planned."

"You're insane."

"I'm practical. Three hundred guests, Sylvia. Your father's board. My father's investors. You think I'm throwing that away over this?"

"Over this," I repeated. "You mean over you sleeping with my sister."

"Celeste is young." He said it like a doctor reading a chart. "She got confused. It happens. It doesn't mean anything."

"Hey," Celeste said, pouting. "It meant something to me."

"Not now," he snapped at her, then turned back to me with a softer voice that made my skin crawl. "She made a mistake. I made a mistake. We'll handle it privately, as a family. Nobody needs to know."

"A family."

"Yes."

"She's wearing my ring, Julian."

He glanced back at Celeste's hand. For a split second, something flickered in his eyes. Annoyance, maybe. Then it was gone.

"Give it back to her, Cece."

"No." Celeste curled her fingers into a fist and held it to her chest. "You said I could try it on."

I stared at the two of them. At my sister, sulking like a child denied candy. At my fiancé, already doing the math on how to fix this before breakfast.

Neither of them was sorry.

Not even a little.

The burn on my cheek stopped hurting. Everything went very quiet and very cold.

On the nightstand beside the bed sat our engagement portrait in a heavy silver frame. Julian in a navy suit, his hand resting on my waist. Me in white, laughing at something the photographer said. I had hung on to that picture every lonely night he spent "working late."

Now I knew where some of those nights went.

I picked it up.

"Sylvia," Julian warned. "Put that down."

I lifted it over my head and slammed it onto the corner of the nightstand.

Glass exploded. Shards sprayed across the hardwood and skittered under the bed. Celeste shrieked and yanked her bare feet up onto the mattress.

"Are you crazy?" she yelled. "You almost cut me!"

"Almost," I said.

Julian stepped toward me. "Sylvia, enough—"

I already had my phone out.

The camera clicked. Then again. And again.

Julian on the bed with his belt undone. Celeste in a tangle of my sheets, my ring flashing on her finger. The two of them frozen, staring at me with their mouths open.

The flash lit up their faces like a crime scene.

"Stop it." Julian lunged for the phone. "Give me that."

I stepped back. Broken glass crunched under my heels. He stopped short, barefoot.

"Delete them," he said. His voice was low and dangerous now. "Right now."

"Why?" I tucked the phone against my chest. "You said she was just confused. You said it was a mistake."

"Sylvia."

"So let's not keep it private." I smiled, and my split lip stung. "Let's be a family about it."

"I'm warning you—"

"No. I'm warning you."

I backed toward the door, keeping my eyes on him the whole way.

"You want an engagement party tomorrow? Fine. You'll get one. Three hundred guests. My father's board. Your father's investors."

I held up the phone.

"Then let everyone see exactly how confused you two really are."

Celeste had gone pale. For the first time all night, she looked her age.

Julian didn't. He just watched me with a face I had never seen before. Calm. Flat. Calculating.

"You won't make it to seven o'clock," he said softly. "Not with that phone."

I walked out and pulled the door shut behind me.

My hands didn't start shaking until I reached the stairs.

Halfway down, my phone buzzed.

A text from an unknown number.

*Check the security footage from the night of your mother's accident. Then ask Julian where he really was.*