Page 1 of Dante

CHAPTER 1

GINA

“You look like a gal who could use some Champagne.”

I turn. A black-haired girl with dramatic eyeliner and glossy red lips presses a glass into my hand.

“I know who you are,” she says. “The sacrificial lamb who’s going to fix everything between the families.”

“Is that what they’re saying?” I ask before taking a sip.

“That’s the polite version. I’m Angie, Dante’s cousin.”

Angie flashes me a saucy wink before pulling me toward a red velvet sofa with a perfect view of the glittering crowd.

Once we’re settled, she turns to me. “So how does it feel to be married to the most powerful don in Manhattan?”

“Since you know so much about me, you must know it wasn’t my choice. We met formally at the altar tonight.” I lower my voice. “But tell me. Was there a lot of competition for Dante among the local girls?”

Angie widens her eyes and laughs.

“Competition for the most gorgeous, most powerful don in Manhattan history? Honey, when his wife died, every single girl in the five boroughs started circling. Their parents were even worse, shoving their daughters under his nose so he could take a good sniff.”

Just what I thought.

It has only been a week since my father revealed the news.

I’d known this day would come, of course. I’d spent my whole life watching it happen to other girls.

Their fathers would get the phone call. And suddenly, there was a wedding to plan.

My friend’s cousin disappeared for three weeks. Then she returned with a diamond the size of a kumquat and a husband with a matching knife scar and scowl.

The daughters of men in the organization don’t get normal lives.

We don’t get choices.

We don’t even get to flirt and kiss. At least, I didn’t.

When I was a young teen, the minute my mother found out I’d kissed a boy from art class, I was on a plane to a relative’s wine estate in Sicily for the summer.

That’s where I first met him.

Dante Ricci.

Today, my new husband.

It had been at the harvest party. A winery celebration for the hundreds of workers employed at the estate. I didn’t know his name then, but I couldn’t stop watching him move through the crowd.

I had been impressed by the way he shook hands and looked each person directly in the eyes. Regardless of whether they were field workers with callused palms or dignified local politicians.

Then I’d been mesmerized when he took off his expensive-looking silk jacket. And revealed his white shirt sleeves rolled up to his elbows, revealing tanned forearms.

He was the most gorgeous man I’d ever seen in my life.

That included movies, TV, and the covers of my best friend Alice’s trove of romance novels.

Watching him, I felt something stir inside me.