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Ginevra’s arms clamped around Amalia’s shaking shoulders. They huddled close under the heavy patchwork blankets of Amalia’s bed, seeking comfort in the dark room. Two agonizing hours had passed since Amalia fled her uncle's office in the church, yet she continued to weep. Her best friend had bundled her onto the mattress the moment she burst through the front door, holding her secure while she cried until her throat felt raw.

Despite her uncle’s strict orders to maintain silence about the arrangement, Amalia broke protocol. She could not carry the weight of this alone. Between ragged sobs, she confessed the life-altering truth: she had been bartered away in a mafia arranged marriage.

Refusing to remain in the dark about the monster her friend was promised to, Ginevra declared they were going to look him up online. She reached to the nightstand, pulling her tablet onto her lap and illuminating the tear-stained sheets with the bright screen.

Amalia shivered against the pillows, terrified. "I don’t want to do this. How could they do this to me? How could my family barter my life and keep it a secret all this time?" The realization gnawed at her bones. Her righteous family, people who preached about salvation and grace, had kept her existence as a secret bargaining chip for over two decades. She had spent her youth attending mass, singing in the choir, and pressing altar linens, believing her purity was a devotion to God. Instead, it was a mafia mandate to keep the merchandise untainted.

Trying to lighten the suffocating mood, Ginevra tapped the search bar. "I know it sounds crazy, Amalia, but we did pray on it. Do you think this is because of Thursday night? When we stayed late in the church to pray to find true love? Maybe this mobster is God's twisted answer to our prayers."

Amalia wiped her wet cheeks, doubting a criminal could ever fit the bill. "Do you honestly think God would answer my prayers for true love by giving me a mobster for a husband?"

"Maybe he’s a nice mobster?" Ginevra asked, wincing. They both knew how absurd the question was.

"Pretty sure there is no such thing," Amalia whispered. She watched with bated breath, her heart hammering against her ribs, as Ginevra typed the name *Valerio Castiglione* into the search engine.

The page loaded in a fraction of a second. Amalia froze at the very first image that populated the top of the screen. The air rushed out of her lungs.

"Oh my goodness," she whispered in panic.

"What is it?" Ginevra asked.

"That is him." Amalia pointed a trembling finger at the glass, recognizing the dark, piercing eyes. "He is the guy who came into the choir room today."

"This guy? When?"

"Right after you all left. He stopped in." She pulled the blanket tighter around her neck, staring at the handsome, terrifying man. "I am supposed to marry him?"

As Ginevra scrolled deeper into his statistics, the reality of Amalia's betrothal grew darker. "He is old," Ginevra whispered. She scanned a page that broke down his background like a corporate profile. "Thirty-five. Amalia, you are engaged to a man who is thirteen years your senior."

Ginevra clicked on the image tab, and a massive grid of photos filled the browser. The search results were plastered with scandalous images. Valerio was surrounded by countless different, scantily clad women in almost every shot. They draped themselves over his broad shoulders, pressed their bodies against his side in VIP booths, and hung onto his arms outside expensive clubs.

Feeling betrayed, Amalia stared at the parade of women. "Are any of these girls even the same person?" she asked incredulously. "My family sold my soul to save themselves from embarrassment, and they did it by marrying me off to a man-whore?"

Ginevra tapped a link beneath one of the thumbnails. The screen redirected to a notoriously shocking tabloid photo. Amalia’s eyes widened. In the grainy picture, Valerio stood naked. A blurred-out woman was positioned right beside him. Despite his lack of clothing, Valerio was pointing a weapon directly at the camera lens, his expression lethal and unbothered.

Through their shock, the two girls shared a brief, nervous moment of banter.

Ginevra pressed her lips together, studying the screen. "How does someone stand naked next to a woman and focus on aiming a firearm? Where on earth do you think a naked man could have possibly hidden that gun before he drew it?"

"Between her boobs?" Amalia offered. She made a gun-shape with her fingers, tucked her hand sharply between Ginevra’s breasts, then pulled them out in a flash, jerking her thumb back like a trigger.

Ginevra let out a loud laugh at the physical demonstration. "No! Between his butt cheeks?"

"Not in a million years," Amalia giggled, though her voice still carried a tremor. "I watched him walk out of the choir room today. His butt was way too rounded and tight for that."

Ginevra turned her head, raising an eyebrow. "You looked at his butt?"

"How could I not? Ginevra, he sniffed me."

The fleeting humor vanished. Ginevra’s eyes widened. "Show me. Show me exactly how he did it."

The terrifying reality of the physical encounter came rushing back. Amalia shifted closer on the bed. She took hold of Ginevra’s shoulders, turned her best friend's head to the side, and dragged her nose sharply along the bare skin of Ginevra's neck. She trailed all the way up to her ear and growled lowly, mimicking Valerio’s dark tone perfectly.

Ginevra shuddered and pulled back, fanning her face with her hand. "How did you not pee yourself?"

"I almost did," Amalia confessed.

"Did he genuinely tell you to remain untouched?"

"Yes. He said those exact words." Amalia pointed a shaking finger back to the screen. "And his face... the look on his face was dangerous. Frigid. He looked just like he does in that picture with the gun."

Ginevra swiped back to the main search page. She clicked on another article featuring a photo of Valerio lounging in a hot tub on the deck of a private yacht, three women tangled around him in the water.

"Seriously, Amalia," Ginevra muttered, reading the caption. "You need to demand an STD test before he comes anywhere near you. Remember that girl from college? The one who was told she couldn't have children because she caught that awful disease?"

"Yes," Amalia said, hugging her knees to her chest. "I felt so bad for her. She and her husband were trying so hard until she found out he cheated on her and got her infected. She didn’t know until it was too late. I prayed so hard for her to be cured."

"Me too." Ginevra clasped her hands around her tablet.

They moved away from the tabloids and started reading the hard news articles. The picture painted of Valerio Castiglione was chilling and blood-soaked. He was dubbed the "Affluent Assassin." The online reports detailed the billionaire mobster’s explicit ties to heavy drugs, illegal weapons, and massive racketeering operations. He was the prime suspect in multiple gruesome murders, all allegedly committed on behalf of his father's vast criminal empire. One article suggested he was even more lethal than the patriarch of the Castiglione family.

The tabloids highlighted his blatant disregard for the law. There were reports of women fighting in the streets over him, tearing at each other's clothes and hair just for a moment of his attention.

Amalia could barely breathe. The weight of his violent, chaotic reputation pressed down on her lungs. "I cannot marry this man. His arrogance and hubris are out of this world."

Ginevra read aloud from a detailed profile piece. "It says here he operates like the rules of society don't apply to him. It is like this guy gets high on thumbing his nose to everything good and decent in the world. I bet if there was a law against punching dogs in the face, he would turn it into a sporting event just to prove he could get away with it." She shook her head. "He really doesn't care."

"He doesn't care about anything." Amalia rubbed her temples, feeling a massive headache forming behind her eyes. "He is a monster."

The tension in the small bedroom peaked when Ginevra abruptly stopped scrolling. She froze on a devastating, specific detail buried in one of the mafia stories.

"Oh no," Ginevra whispered.

"What is it?"

Ginevra looked up from the screen, her face pale in the blue light of the tablet. "It says his primary home is located in New York. He spends the vast majority of his time there, running the family's business."

Amalia’s throat instantly felt like it was closing off. A fresh wave of sheer panic set in. She shook her head vehemently, rejecting the thought before it could fully take root. "No. No, no, no."

"Amalia..."

"I don’t want to move!" Amalia cried out, her voice breaking as the claustrophobia gripped her. She frantically listed her reasons, desperately holding onto the remnants of her current existence. She thought about the quiet bookstore, the parish where she felt safe, the familiar streets she walked every Sunday. "I have a steady job here. I have a life in Providence. My friends are here. You are here. I can't move away."

This was an entirely new, crushing fear unlocked in her chest. She had focused so much on the terrifying prospect of the man himself that she hadn't even considered the logistics of becoming a mafia bride. She would be ripped away from her home, from her only support system, and dragged to another state to live in a sprawling, dangerous empire isolated from everything she knew.

Amalia stared helplessly at the glowing tablet, her breathing shallow and erratic. She pulled her knees tight against her chest, shivering under the blankets, wondering if her day could possibly get any worse.