He Rejected Her for Her Sister—Then She Married His Father, the Powerful Mafia Boss

The ballroom in Beacon Hill smelled of expensive champagne and the perfume of people who had never needed permission to enter anywhere.

I held my glass with both hands so no one would notice that they were trembling. Julian stood on the other side of the room, speaking to a white-haired man, far enough away that I could become part of the furniture without even trying.

I had spent the entire afternoon rehearsing the expression I would make when he got down on 1 knee. I had decided on the tone of my laugh, the tilt of my head, and the way I would say yes as though the proposal were a surprise. In truth, I had imagined the moment so many times that I knew the name of the feeling before I felt it.

It was one of those decisions that seemed intelligent when made and ridiculous once the dress was already on.

“Aurelia, darling.”

My mother approached with her voice lowered and exhaustion already visible in her eyes. Helena Hawthorne had aged 10 years in the previous 6 months, ever since my father began spending sleepless nights with the bank folders he claimed meant nothing. Her burgundy dress seemed larger than she was, as though she had shrunk inside it without telling anyone.

“You need to eat something. You’re pale.”

“I’m fine, Mom.”

“You always say that.”

Rosalie appeared behind her with the ease of someone who had never needed to balance in tight shoes. At 27, she wore her blond hair loose over her bare shoulders and smiled at a senator as though she had known him since childhood. Perhaps she had. I had never memorized the list of people my sister seemed to know by heart.

Her dress was emerald green, the kind that did not ask for attention because attention always found it.

“Aurelia,” she said, kissing the air near my cheek. “What a pretty dress. Was it Mom’s?”

“It’s mine.”

“Oh. It looked like Mom’s.”

I smiled because the alternative was crying, and crying in Beacon Hill was the sort of thing that became a story by the following morning.

Julian turned at that moment. He met my eyes from across the room and raised his glass half an inch, as though that were enough.

I smiled more widely.

Idiot.

The waiters began circulating with silver trays, and the man on the makeshift stage called for silence in the voice of someone accustomed to being obeyed.

Julian climbed the 3 steps, straightened his tie, looked at the entire room, and did not look at me.

I should have understood then.

“Good evening,” he began, his voice carrying a tremor I mistook for charming nervousness. “Some of the most important people in my life are in this room tonight. It is no accident that I chose this moment to say something I have been carrying for far too long.”

My mother squeezed my elbow. I felt my heart rise into the roof of my mouth.

“I’ve fallen in love.”

I smiled and started to step forward.

“With Rosalie Hawthorne.”

The step died before it happened.

I heard my sister’s name come from the mouth of my boyfriend of 3 years in front of businessmen, politicians, and a woman in a pearl necklace who could not suppress her gasp. I heard the room hold its breath. I heard the glass slip from my fingers and felt champagne run down the neckline of my dress without registering the cold.

The liquid was ice-cold.

I was not.

Rosalie stood beside the stage. The surprise on her face had been rehearsed. It was theatrical surprise, the kind practiced before a mirror until the jaw fell open at precisely the right moment.

She brought a hand to her mouth and looked at Julian as though she had never considered a man in her life.

Julian descended the 3 steps toward her, not toward me.

“You knew,” I said.

The words left my mouth before I authorized them. They were not loud. It was a dry question directed at my sister, standing 2 m away, and she heard it.

“Aurelia, this isn’t the time,” Rosalie whispered without looking at me.

My mother caught my wrist. Her fingers were ice-cold.

“Let’s go home,” Helena said. “Now.”

No.

I did not want to leave through the main door. People who left through the main door became stories. I wanted to disappear.

The terrace was to my left. The glass doors opened onto the October night. I walked away without saying goodbye, without offering an excuse, and without looking back.

My right heel twisted on the 3rd step, and I did not stop to fix it. I crossed the terrace, descended the exterior stairs, and reached the Beacon Hill sidewalk, where damp fallen leaves and asphalt wet from a cold drizzle scented the air.

The wind struck my face like a warning that had arrived too late.

I breathed for the 1st time in 20 minutes.

That was when I saw him.

He was leaning against a black sedan parked at the curb, watching me the way someone might watch a door close. He wore a dark suit, a petrol-blue tie, and an onyx ring with the letter D engraved in white gold. His hair was gray at the temples and dark everywhere else. His eyes were gray throughout.

He was 50, perhaps older, with the posture of someone who had learned early that a man did not need to shout to be heard.

He was completely still, but his stillness was different from everyone else’s. It was not waiting.

It was choice.

He said nothing and did not move. He merely tilted his head half an inch toward the broad-shouldered man beside him.

The driver opened the sedan’s rear door.

“Ma’am,” he said in a low, toneless voice, “would the lady like a ride home?”

I should have refused. It was the answer every well-bred woman in Boston learned before she learned to walk. A woman did not enter a stranger’s car outside a party where her name had just become a joke.

“Aurelia Hawthorne,” I said, looking the older man in the eye. “That’s my name, in case you want to know who you’re doing this kindness for.”

He tilted his head another half inch.

He did not give me his name.

I entered the car.

The driver closed the door carefully. The mechanism clicked more softly than I had expected from a sedan of that size. The older man walked around without hurry and sat beside me in the back seat.

The interior smelled of dark leather and something woody, expensive, and old, the kind of scent that required years to settle into a place.

The sedan moved down the narrow street. I looked at my right hand and discovered that I was still holding the empty glass. I did not remember picking it up.

The man did not speak. He did not ask where I lived. The driver seemed to know.

He did not ask whether I wanted to talk. He did not offer a handkerchief, water, or any of the phrases people used when they wanted someone else to feel better so they could feel better themselves.

He simply existed beside me in silence.

His silence asked nothing of me.

Somewhere along Storrow Drive, I realized the driver had taken 1 turn more than necessary. The route to Back Bay was direct.

He was giving me time.

The city lights passed the window in blurred points of orange and white. I did not try to focus on any of them.

I looked at the older man. He faced the window, his profile firm, and did not return my gaze.

“Thank you,” I said quietly.

He tilted his head for a 3rd time.

That was the only answer I received.

The sedan stopped in front of the Hawthorne house in Back Bay. The porch light was on, orange and weak, the same bulb my mother had been saying she would replace since summer.

The driver got out, opened my door, and offered his hand so I would not fall because of the damaged heel.

I stepped onto the wet, uneven stone pavement and looked into the car once more.

“You’re not going to tell me your name,” I said.

The older man turned toward me. His gray eyes remained on mine 1 second longer than politeness allowed. It was the gaze of someone cataloging something and storing it for later, in no hurry to finish.

“Not tonight,” he said.

His voice was low, controlled, and unhurried, like everything else about him.

The sedan pulled away before I could insist.

When I turned toward the house, Margot was sitting on the porch steps in flannel pajamas with a winter coat over them. Beside her were a bottle of wine I recognized from the corner store’s discount selection and 2 glasses.

She looked me over, saw the champagne stain running down my dress and the crooked heel, and opened her mouth.

“Darling, I’m going to need you to sit on that step and drink this terrible wine before I ask you literally anything. From your face, I already have 80% of the story, and I would prefer to receive the remaining 20% with alcohol in my system.”