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

The call rang six times. Then a click, and silence.

No voicemail. No greeting. Just dead air.

I hung up before I lost my nerve, and I remembered the other thing Julian had said that night, slurring into his scotch. *Uncle Viktor runs the whole east side out of a club called The Onyx. Dad won't even drive past it.*

That was enough.

My bedroom window opened onto the roof of the sunroom. I had snuck out that way exactly once, at sixteen, to see a boy who turned out to be terrible at kissing. Back then, I had shoes.

Tonight, I didn't stop to look for any. The ones in my closet were heels, and heels would kill me on wet shingles.

I slid down the drainpipe, scraped my palm raw, and dropped into my mother's rosebushes. Thorns tore at my ankles. I didn't feel them until I was already at the gate.

---

The Onyx had no sign. Just a black door, and a man the size of a refrigerator standing in front of it.

He stared down at my bare, bloody feet. Then at my face.

"Lost, sweetheart?"

"I'm here to see Viktor Reyes."

"Sure you are." He didn't move. "Go home."

"Tell him Julian's fiancée is outside."

That got me something. His eyebrows twitched. He touched his earpiece and turned his back, muttering. I heard my name. I heard *barefoot*. I heard someone on the other end laugh.

Then the door opened.

---

The room was dark wood and low gold light, thick with cigar smoke. Maybe fifteen men sat around tables and in leather booths. Every single one of them stopped talking when I walked in.

Cards froze mid-shuffle. A glass halted halfway to someone's mouth.

And at the back, in the center booth, sat a man who didn't stop anything at all.

He was turning a lighter over in his fingers. Older than Julian, maybe forty, with the same sharp jaw but none of the polish. A scar cut through his left eyebrow. His shirt sleeves were rolled to the elbow, and his eyes, when they finally lifted to me, were gray and very, very still.

"Miss Marlowe," he said. "You're dripping on my floor."

I looked down. Rainwater. Blood. A little of both.

"I'll buy you a new one."

A man near the bar snorted. Viktor didn't even glance at him, and the snort died instantly.

I walked straight to his booth. Nobody stopped me. I think they were too curious.

I sat down beside him. Close enough that my wet shoulder brushed his arm.

Somebody behind me swore under his breath.

"Bold," Viktor said.

"Desperate," I corrected. "There's a difference."

"Not from where I'm sitting."

I folded my scraped hands in my lap so he wouldn't see them shaking.

"Your nephew slept with my sister," I said. "She's seven weeks pregnant. My parents want me to marry him anyway and raise the baby like it's mine."

The lighter stopped turning.

"So here's my offer. I want Julian to call me *Aunt Sylvia* for the rest of his miserable life." I made myself hold his gaze. "Do you have the nerve to marry me?"

The silence in that room had weight. I could hear the ice settling in someone's glass.

Viktor didn't answer.

He didn't laugh, either, which I had braced for. He didn't call me crazy or tell his men to throw me out.

He just looked at me. Not at my eyes. At my cheek.

Slowly, he reached over and tipped my chin toward the lamp with two fingers. His touch was light. Nothing like Julian's thumb grinding into the bruise.

"Who did this?"

"Does it matter?"

"I asked you a question."

His voice hadn't risen at all. Somehow, that made it worse.

"I came here with a proposal, Mr. Reyes. Not a complaint."

"And I'll get to your proposal." His fingers stayed under my chin. "Who hit you?"

My throat closed up. I had told my father. I had told my mother. Neither of them had asked me that. Not once.

"Julian," I whispered.

Something moved behind his eyes. Fast and cold, like a blade sliding back into its sheath.

He let go of my face.

Then he stood, shrugged out of the dark wool jacket hanging on the booth behind him, and dropped it around my shoulders. It was heavy and warm and smelled like cedar and smoke. I hadn't realized I was freezing until the shivering stopped.

"Dmitri," he said.

A thin man by the bar straightened up. "Boss."

"Bandages. And find her some shoes."

"What size?"

Viktor glanced at me.

"Seven," I mumbled.

"Seven," he repeated, like it was an order of national importance. Dmitri vanished.

"You still haven't answered me," I said.

"No. I haven't."

He pulled a phone from his pocket, tapped the screen once, and put it on speaker. He set it on the table between us.

It rang twice.

"Uncle Viktor?" Julian's voice. Wary. Careful. A tone I had never once heard him use. "It's almost two in the morning. Is everything okay?"

I stopped breathing.

Viktor leaned back, completely relaxed, and stretched one arm along the top of the booth behind me.

"I hear you're getting engaged tomorrow."

A pause. "Yes. Seven o'clock at the Marlowe estate. I didn't think you'd be interested in—"

"I'm interested."

"Oh." Another pause, longer this time. I could almost hear Julian sweating. "Well. That's... we'd be honored, of course. I'll have my assistant send—"

"Save me a seat at the head table."

"The head table? That's usually reserved for immediate family, and the Marlowes have already—"

"Julian."

One word. Quiet. The men around us went so still they could've been furniture.

"Yes, sir. Of course. The head table."

"Good boy."

I pressed my hand over my mouth. Not to hold in a sob.

To hold in a laugh.

It bubbled up out of me, wild and completely wrong, and I bit down on my knuckle to keep it in. Viktor's eyes slid to me, and the corner of his mouth moved. Just barely.

"Is someone there with you?" Julian asked.

"Nobody you need to worry about tonight."

"Right. Of course." He cleared his throat. "Can I ask what brought this on? You've never come to a family event before."

"Let's just say," Viktor said, studying the bruise on my cheek, "I've taken a sudden interest in your fiancée."

The line went dead quiet.

"My... Sylvia? Why would you—"

"Seven o'clock," Viktor said. "Don't be late."

He ended the call.

I stared at the black screen. My heart was pounding so hard I could feel it in my split lip.

"He has no idea," I said. "He thinks I'm locked in my bedroom."

"Then tomorrow's going to be very educational for him."

"You still didn't say yes."

Viktor turned toward me fully for the first time. The lamplight caught the scar through his eyebrow.

"Before I say anything, Miss Marlowe, I need you to understand what you just asked for." He tapped one finger against the table. "People who marry into my side of the family don't get to divorce out of it."

Across the room, Dmitri came back through the door with a first aid kit in one hand and a pair of black flats in the other.

And a thick manila envelope tucked under his arm.

"Boss," he said, his eyes flicking to me. "You'll want to see this first. It's about her mother."