“Don’t be sad, Mr. Lorenzo. I’ll marry you when I grow up.” The maid’s little girl said it just minutes after my bride abandoned me at the altar because I was in a wheelchair. Three hundred guests had watched me endure that humiliation without breaking, but somehow, those innocent words nearly destroyed the composure I had left.

That morning, my hands trembled as I tightened my black tie for the fourth time.

Enzo, my butler of twenty-two years, noticed immediately.

“You’re staring,” I said.

“I am, sir.”

“Why?”

His weathered face softened. “Because you look like a man expecting something good to happen.”

I almost smiled.

Two years earlier, an ambush had put me in a wheelchair. Men who once feared Lorenzo Vitali had begun watching me differently, searching for weakness behind every breath.

But Bianca hadn’t.

She’d visited me in the hospital carrying white lilies, sat beside my bed, and treated the wheelchair like nothing more than furniture. She made me believe she loved the man who survived, not the man I used to be.

By eleven, three hundred guests filled my garden.

Rival families. Allies. Enemies.

Every man who had ever dreamed of seeing the Vitali name buried was dressed beautifully for my wedding.

I rolled beneath the white pergola as Vivaldi filled the garden. Bianca had chosen the music herself.

Five minutes passed.

Then seven.

Then ten.

The mansion doors never opened.

Enzo appeared beside me, pale and silent.

“Sir,” he whispered. “There’s a letter.”

My fingers tightened around the wheels.

“Give it to me.”