Sold to the Don as My Sister's Stand-In

My sister ran the night before her wedding.

So they dressed me in her veil and sent me in her place.

"No one looks twice at a bride behind a veil," the Signora said, pinning the lace over my face. "You were born to stand in for her. About time it paid off."

They were marrying Bianca into the Falcone family to end a war. The Falcones — the name people in this city only said with the door closed. The family that had spent twenty years turning the place over, hunting for something they'd lost.

Turns out they were hunting for me.

They didn't know that yet. Neither did I.

I'd been Bianca's shadow my whole life. Same height, same dark hair. The Marchettis took me in as a baby and raised me for one thing — to be the daughter they could afford to lose. Trained me to walk like her, sign her name, sit in her chair when a meeting smelled like a trap. When Bianca didn't feel like showing her face, I wore it for her.

So the night she climbed out her bedroom window, nobody panicked for long.

The Signora found me in the back kitchen with my hands in dishwater. She pulled me up by the collar and looked me over the way you check a coat for stains.

"You'll do," she said.

An hour later I was in the back of a car in Bianca's wedding dress, the veil sticking to my cheeks, two of the family's men up front saying nothing.

"Remember," the Signora said beside me. "You don't talk. You nod. You let the priest say his part, you sign her name, you keep your eyes down."

"And after?" I asked.

"After isn't your business."

But I knew what after meant. The Falcones weren't a family you walked back out of. Bianca had run rather than find out. They were sending me to find out for her.

I thought of the last time I'd worn her name. Six months back, a supplier's son had come to discuss terms with her father, and Bianca got a headache the moment his car pulled up. I sat in her chair. Got two words wrong in the greeting. Her father backhanded me across the mouth in front of the man and told him his daughter was tired from the wedding planning. Bianca watched from the stairs the whole time. Later, passing me in the hall, she'd laughed under her breath. "You should've practiced," she said.

I looked down at my wrist. Under the lace cuff, on a thin chain, was the one thing that was mine — a small silver locket my mother left me before she died. The Signora had told me a hundred times to keep it hidden. Junk, she called it. But it was all I had of a woman I couldn't even remember, so I never took it off.

"Don't pick at that thing," she snapped, and I dropped my hands.

The car slowed. A wall rose up out of the dark, higher than any I'd ever seen, and a gate worked all over with iron birds. Falcons. Two men stood under the light, as still as the iron above them.

My stomach turned.

"Out," one of them said.

The Signora got out first and smoothed her coat, all smiles now. "She's a little shy," she told the men. "Wedding nerves. You know how brides get."

They didn't smile back. One of them looked at me a beat too long, then stepped aside.

She took my arm and walked me through, her nails finding the soft skin above my elbow.

"Behave," she said under her breath. "We don't leave here without a marriage. You hear me? You ruin this, and there's no roof left for you to crawl back under."

The dress dragged in the gravel. Up ahead the house was lit gold, doors open, full of people who all thought they were about to watch Bianca Marchetti walk in.

Eighteen years I'd spent wearing someone else's face. Standing where she should stand. Taking whatever was coming to her so she never had to.

At the door, I stopped.

The Signora pulled. I didn't move.

She pulled harder, nails biting in, hissing my sister's name at me through her teeth.

"That's not my name," I said. My voice came out low and scraped raw, but it came out. "I'm not her. And I'm not doing it."