Chapter 1 - THE PENTHOUSE ABOVE THE WEDDING
The elevator doors closed, and Elena immediately wondered whether she had lost her mind.
Thirty minutes earlier, she had been sitting in the last row of her ex-fiancé’s wedding trying not to cry.
Now she was standing beside a six-foot-four stranger who had casually admitted that people feared him and had just offered to make an entire ballroom believe she belonged to him.
The elevator climbed past the ordinary guest floors.
Thirty.
Thirty-one.
Thirty-two.
Then it required a key card.
Dante removed a black card from his pocket and pressed it against the panel.
PENTHOUSE.
Elena stared at him.
“You live here?”
“No.”
“You rented the penthouse?”
“I own part of the hotel.”
She looked at him sharply.
Dante did not smile.
The doors opened into a private foyer where three people were already waiting.
A woman in a black suit held garment bags.
An older man carried two velvet jewelry cases.
A third man stood beside a portable clothing rack.
Elena stopped walking.
“You arranged all this in five minutes?”
“Eight.”
“That doesn’t make it less insane.”
Dante turned toward the woman.
“Something elegant. Not bridal. She isn’t competing with the bride.”
The woman nodded.
“Understood.”
Elena folded her arms.
“I’m standing right here.”
Dante looked at her.
“Good. Then tell them what you want.”
That surprised her.
She had expected control.
Instead, he stepped back.
Twenty minutes later, Elena stood before a mirror wearing a midnight-blue silk dress that fit as though it had been made for her.
Her hair remained mostly the same.
Her makeup was softened.
Nothing looked excessive.
She still looked like Elena.
Only now she looked like the version of herself nobody in that ballroom had bothered to imagine.
Then the jeweler opened the smaller velvet box.
Inside was a ring.
Not huge.
Not gaudy.
A deep emerald surrounded by diamonds.
Elena looked at Dante.
“That looks real.”
“It is.”
“I’m not wearing a two-million-dollar ring for a joke.”
“One point four.”
“That was not reassuring.”
For the first time, Dante almost laughed.
Then his expression changed.
He picked up the ring.
“Elena, before you put this on, understand something.”
She waited.
“I did not meet you by accident.”
Her stomach tightened.
“What?”
“I knew who you were before you walked into me.”
The room suddenly felt colder.
“How?”
Dante slipped his hand into his jacket and removed an old photograph.
Elena recognized the man on the left immediately.
Her father.
Miguel Reyes.
Dead for sixteen years.
Standing beside him was a much younger Dante Salvatore.
And behind them was a burned-out black sedan.
Elena looked up slowly.
Dante’s gray eyes held hers.
May you like
“Your father saved my life.”
And suddenly revenge was no longer the most important reason Dante had stopped her in that hallway.
