She Took My Wedding, So I Married the Don Chapter 01

My sister stood up at my wedding dinner and tapped her champagne glass.

“I’m pregnant.”

The father was my fiancé.

My mother burst into happy tears.

Then she turned to me and asked for my wedding dress.

For one long second, the only sound in my parents’ dining room was Grandpa’s old clock ticking in the hall.

I looked at Ethan. My Ethan. The man who’d proposed to me on the hood of the ’69 Camaro I’d rebuilt with my own two hands. He was staring at his plate.

“Ethan,” I said. “Tell her she’s lying.”

He didn’t.

Bianca laid a manicured hand on her flat stomach and gave me the soft, trembling smile she’d perfected since kindergarten. My sister could cry on cue. She should’ve won three Oscars by now.

“We didn’t plan it, Sloane,” she whispered. “Christmas night. We had too much of Dad’s eggnog, and we went upstairs to talk—”

“Upstairs where?”

Silence.

“Your room,” Ethan muttered.

My room. My bed.

I’d slept in those sheets for a week after Christmas. I’d lain there texting him goodnight while their—

I gripped the table so I wouldn’t throw up on Mom’s good china.

“Five months,” I said. “You’ve kissed me for five months. You picked our cake with me last Sunday.”

“I didn’t know how to tell you.”

“Sloane, lower your voice,” Mom snapped.

At me. Not at him. Not at the sister who’d slept with my fiancé in my bed. At me.

Dad was already reaching for the champagne he’d bought to toast my wedding. “Well. A grandchild. That’s a blessing.”

“Don’t be dramatic,” Mom said, dabbing her eyes. “Think of the baby. Bianca can’t walk down the aisle six months along. The wedding has to happen now.”

“The wedding,” I said slowly, “is in three weeks. It’s my wedding.”

“The venue’s booked. The guests are invited. The flowers are paid for.” She ticked them off like a grocery list. “It’d be a waste to cancel. We’ll just change the bride.”

Change the bride.

Like I was a flat tire.

“Bianca will need your dress, of course. You’re the same size. And honestly, sweetheart, it’s best if you don’t come. People will count the months.”

I had paid for that venue. Two years of double shifts at the garage, sliding under rusted trucks at five a.m., to pay for that venue.

“Oh—and the nursery,” Bianca added sweetly. “Mom says your room gets the best morning light.”

I turned to Dad. Waited. Just once in my life, I wanted him to say no.

He poured the champagne.

“You’re twenty-four,” he said, not meeting my eyes. “It’s time you found your own place.”

Something inside me went very quiet. Not broken. Broken would’ve hurt. This was colder.

I slid the ring off my finger and dropped it into Bianca’s champagne flute.

Plink.

“Congratulations,” I said. “He’s yours. Enjoy my leftovers.”

Bianca’s smile cracked. Mom gasped. I grabbed my leather jacket and walked out the front door, and the rain hit me like a slap.

I made it to the end of the driveway before my knees buckled.

Not here. Not where they can watch.

I forced myself upright and kept walking. No car—Ethan had driven me. Twelve dollars. A phone at four percent.

Headlights swept across the wet street.

A black Maybach rolled to a stop beside me. Slow. Deliberate. The kind of car that didn’t belong anywhere near my parents’ cul-de-sac.

The rear window slid down.

I knew the man inside. Everyone in this city knew him. For six months I’d been restoring his dead father’s Shelby, and for six months he’d stood in the shadows of my garage bay, watching me work, never saying more than ten words.

Luca Moretti.

The man they called the Devil of the Docks.

His dark eyes moved over my soaked hair, my bare ring finger, the tears I couldn’t hide.

“Get in, Miss Avery,” he said quietly.

It wasn’t a request.