I check my watch. Three hours until I become a married man. That’s three hours until I bind myself to a woman I barely know for life.
Chiara. The name sounds strange now—made even stranger by the fact that this marriage is nothing more than an arrangement. She owes a debt I inherited—and I get to escape marrying a woman I despise.
It’s a simple proposition. Clean.
Until now. I stare at the closed door of my office, waiting for Nicolo to deliver the background check I requested. It’s a simple precaution I’m taking so that there aren’t any surprises later. My father can’t attend today due to some overseas business, but I know he’ll have questions.
I need answers. Well, I need a last name, at least.
The bottle of Macallan 25 sits open on my desk. I don’t drink before noon, but today warrants an exception. The whiskey burns pleasantly as it goes down. Not enough to dull my senses, just enough to take the edge off the irritation I feel waiting for Nicolo. He’s late. Nicolo is never late, and I have a bride waiting.
The knock comes within minutes.
“Come in,” I say, leaning forward on my desk in the office.
Nicolo steps inside. The look on his face tells me everything I need to know. His usual composed expression is gone, replaced by something tense. Worried. He’s found something.
“You’re late,” I say.
“I apologize, boss.” He places a thick manila folder on my desk. He remains standing instead of taking his usual seat. Another bad sign.
I gesture to the chair across from me. “Sit.”
“I prefer to stand, if you don’t mind.”
I raise an eyebrow. In fifteen years of service, Nicolo has never refused a direct instruction. Whatever he’s found has him rattled. I lean forward, suddenly more interested.
“So,” I say, tapping my fingers on the unopened folder. “Did you find something interesting about my bride-to-be?”
Nicolo’s jaw tightens. “You could say that.”
“This is why I had you run the check, Nicolo. So that there are no surprises.” I don’t even know her full name. “Well?”
“I found something that could be dangerous, Marco.”
I frown. “For her or for me?”
“For both of you.”
Now he has my complete attention. I flip open the folder. The first page is a photograph, yellow with age. Two little girls, identical in every way, stand in front of a building I recognize as St. Catherine’s Orphanage in Brooklyn. Below the photo, their names: Aria and Chiara Rossi.
“Twins?” The word comes out sharper than I intended. “She has a twin?”
Nicolo nods once. “Identical twins.”
I stare at the photograph, studying the faces of the two girls. Same blonde hair, same features. Identical smiles. I flip to the next page, a detailed history of their time at the orphanage.
“Parents died when they were infants,” I murmur, scanning the document. “Adopted at birth, but then back into the system at age two when the adoptive parents died in a car accident. How tragic.”
Something cold settles in my chest as I turn the pages. These girls had a hard life. Bounced from home to home. The reports detail instances of neglect and possible abuse. Nothing concrete enough for charges, but enough to make me clench my jaw.
“Aria attempted college,” Nicolo offers. “Dropped out after two semesters. Couldn’t afford the tuition.”
I find the page he’s referencing. City College of New York. Nursing program. Incomplete. I turn to the next page.
A list of debts in Chiara’s name. Credit cards. Payday loans. Medical bills.
“And the sister? Aria?”
“Kept a lower profile. Worked service jobs earlier, but now has two shifts. One at a bookstore, the other at a pharmacy at night.”
For some reason, that nags at me too. She wanted to be a nurse, and when that didn’t work out for her, she still clung to being as close to medicine as possible. Chiara’s sister—the woman I don’t even know—becomes more intriguing with every detail Nicolo reveals.
I stop on a page detailing Aria’s employment history.
“Tell me more about them and their work schedules.”
Nicolo’s expression doesn’t change. “According to these records, Chiara has often been in two places at once.”
“Explain,” I say, looking up at him now.
He shuffles on his feet, as though he knows something I don’t. “From the intel we gathered, she’s been spotted roaming the city’s darkest corners while her sister, Aria, covers for her at the café. We know this because Chiara punched in at work—but at the exact same time, her phone logs show taxis picking her up miles away.”
The realization hits me like a bucket of ice water. The woman I met didn’t seem like the type to sell herself into marriage within seconds. She was too grounded, too proud, too… different.
“I saved Aria that night. Not Chiara.”
The woman I dug my finger into—the woman who’s haunted my every thought since that night, who burned herself into my skin.
She was different from the women I usually encounter: direct, unimpressed by my power, clumsy with her manners—a breath of fresh air after the calculating social climbers who typically orbit my world.
And she was Aria. Not Chiara.
“Are you certain?” I ask, though I already know the answer. Nicolo wouldn’t make this kind of mistake.
“Yes. The woman you’re scheduled to marry today is Chiara Ross. The woman you met that night was almost certainly her twin sister, Aria.”
My fingers clench around the edge of the desk. I’ve been played. Deceived. I don’t like being deceived.
“Keep going,” I say, voice steady despite the anger building inside me. “What else did you find?”
Nicolo hesitates. “Turn to the last page.”
I flip through the remaining documents until I reach what appears to be a birth certificate. Not the altered one from their adoption, but the original. My eyes fix on the surname.
DeLuca.
Aria and Chiara DeLuca.
The name hits me like a physical blow. My blood turns to ice in my veins. DeLuca. A name I haven’t heard spoken in over twenty-five years. A name my father made sure would never be spoken again.
“This can’t be right,” I say, though I know it is. Nicolo wouldn’t bring me incorrect information. Not about something this significant.
“I verified it three times,” Nicolo says. “Different sources. It’s legitimate.”
I stare at the birth certificate. Emilio and Sofia DeLuca. Parents of twin daughters. Born June 12, twenty-five years ago.
The DeLucas. The family my father wiped out in a single night. Every member. Every associate. Every distant cousin. A brutal power grab that established the Bianchis as the dominant family in New York’s underworld for a generation.
Or so we thought.
“How?” I ask. The question encompasses everything. How did they survive? How did they hide for so long? How did I end up engaged to one of them?
Nicolo pulls another sheet from the back of the folder, placing it on top of the birth certificate. A police report from twenty-five years ago.
“Their aunt, Teresa DeLuca, escaped the night of the purge. She had the twins with her. They were just two months old. She disappeared, changed their names, placed them in the orphanage system under false identities.”
I remember Teresa DeLuca. My father’s men searched for her for years, but they never found her. Now I know why. She didn’t run. She hid in plain sight, protected her nieces, and then disappeared.
“The aunt?” I ask.
“Died of cancer fifteen years ago.”
So the twins grew up not knowing who they were. Or did they? The question burns in my mind. Does Chiara know her true identity? Does Aria? Was their entrance into my life a random chance or calculated revenge?
I think back to that night with Aria. Her nervousness when she saw the violence. Was it all an act? Was she playing me from the beginning?
“Is there any indication they know who they are? Who I am?” I ask.
Nicolo shakes his head. “Nothing concrete.”
“And then there’s the debt,” Nicolo continues. “Chiara has significant debt, while her sister has none. One has to wonder where all this money goes. So far, we’ve assessed that she owes different sharks over a hundred thousand dollars.”
The paranoia in my mind grows louder. Chiara Rossi—or rather, DeLuca—let me believe she was the one I saved when she agreed to this marriage. But why? What does she really want? Is she trying to get close to me? And then what—kill me on our wedding night? Take revenge for their parents?
How much of this does Aria even know?
“You need to call off the wedding,” Nicolo says. “At least until we know more.”
I stare at the photograph of the twins. Young girls with haunted eyes. Daughters of a man my father murdered. I should be furious. I should be calling my security team and arranging for Chiara—or whoever she is—to disappear.
Instead, I find myself intrigued. Impressed, even. The audacity of their plan. The patience. Twenty-five years of waiting for revenge.
“No,” I say, closing the folder. “The wedding proceeds as planned.”
Nicolo’s face betrays his shock. “Marco, this is madness. They’re DeLucas. Do you understand what that means?”
“I understand perfectly.” I stand, straightening my cuffs. “Which is why I won’t change anything. I want to see how this plays out.”
“It could be a trap. They could be planning to kill you.”
I smile, cold and sharp. “Let them try.”
Nicolo runs a hand over his face. “This is a mistake.”
“Perhaps.” I move to the liquor cabinet, pouring two glasses of whiskey. I hand one to Nicolo. “But I’m curious. Which one am I actually marrying today? Chiara, as planned? Or Aria, the woman I met that night? The woman who’s been in my head all week?”
“We don’t know,” Nicolo admits. “They could be switching places. They’re identical.”
“Not identical,” I say, recalling the small details—the way she held her glass while sipping water during her break at the café, the way she laughed. “I’ll recognize Aria the minute I see her.”
Nicolo drinks his whiskey in one swallow. “And then what? What if you marry the wrong woman?”
I consider the question. What do I want? Revenge for their deception? Or something else entirely?
The image of the woman from that night flashes in my mind. Her defiance. Her vulnerability. The way she looked at me without fear or pretense.
Aria. It had to be Aria. I’m taking a risk here. There’s something about Chiara that tells me she’s the kind of woman who likes to take the easy way out. There’s something about Aria that tells me she’s the kind of woman who shows up for those she loves.
Today, it has to be Aria. But I don’t tell Nicolo that, for if I’m proven wrong, it weakens my judgment in the future.
“And then I make her mine,” I say. “DeLuca blood or not.”
Nicolo shakes his head. “You’re playing a dangerous game.”
“Life is a dangerous game.” I finish my drink.
As Nicolo steps away to take a call, his sharp glance tells me the guests are beginning to arrive at the venue. I return my gaze to the photograph of the twins.
Two innocent girls whose lives were destroyed by my family. Two women now poised to either destroy me or be destroyed.
The thought should terrify me. Instead, I feel something I haven’t felt in years. Anticipation. Challenge. Perhaps even desire.
Three hours until I marry a DeLuca. The last of a bloodline my father tried to erase. My enemy by blood.
