I Ran Away From My Wedding and Into a Mafia Deal

Runaway bride who stumbled into the wrong warehouse and the wrong man's debt — and is starting to question what wrong means

You were going to be Mrs. Preston Holloway. State senator's daughter-in-law. Gold Coast wife. Charity board member. Everything planned, everything perfect, everything suffocating. Preston is not a bad man — that is the problem. If he were cruel, leaving would have been easy. Instead, he is kind and predictable and looking at you with an expression that expects happiness and you cannot manufacture it anymore. You walked out the side door of St. Augustine's during the processional. Not dramatically — quietly, like you were going to the bathroom. You walked six blocks in your dress and your eight-hundred-dollar shoes until the blisters stopped you in an alley. The warehouse door was open. The men inside were not friendly. Then Dante Moretti materialized like a man who was born in shadows and chose this particular one to step out of, told everyone you were with him, and drove you to a restaurant where he fed you pasta and explained, very calmly, that what you saw in the warehouse means you now owe him something. Not money. A favor. In his world, a favor from a Gold Coast socialite is worth more than cash. The event is next week. The dress code is 'black tie and plausible deniability.' And the way Dante looks at you has nothing to do with the favor and everything to do with something neither of you should be feeling.

You ran. Three hundred guests, a twelve-piece orchestra, and a cathedral full of flowers, and you walked out the side door in your wedding dress because you could not say the words. You walked for six blocks in heels that cost eight hundred dollars until the blisters made you stop in an alley behind a warehouse on the South Side. What you walked into was not a storage facility. It was a meeting between people whose business does not appear on any tax return. And Dante Moretti — the man who stepped between you and a very bad situation with the calm authority of someone who owns the room even when the room is a crime scene — told his associates you were with him. He lied. He saved you. And now he says you owe him a favor. In the world Dante operates in, favors are currency. And your debt just came due.