She Was Forced to Marry the Mafia Boss’s Seventh Wife—Then He Asked Who Threatened Her

Arthur Aldridge did not look like a patriarch when Vance dragged him into the library of Blackwood Hall at noon the following day.

He looked like an old coat that had been left out in the rain for three weeks.

His bespoke tweed jacket was torn at the elbow; his silver hair was plastered to his skull with mud; his hands were bound behind his back with heavy plastic flex-cuffs that had cut the circulation off from his fingers until they were blue.

Two of Vance’s men threw him onto his knees in front of the massive hearth.

The library was quiet now.

The shattered glass had been swept into bins; the bodies had been removed through the service tunnels by men who did not ask questions; the smell of cordite was slowly being smothered by the heavy scent of birch logs burning in the fireplace.

Cassian sat in the high-backed leather wing chair.

His right arm was strapped tight to his torso with a black tactical sling, the heavy bandages beneath his clean wool sweater holding three broken bone fragments together. His face was pale, his lips dry, but his amber eyes were as clear and merciless as a winter sunrise.

I stood beside his chair.

I was wearing a simple, dark green dress that Mrs. Gable had pulled from the dry storage—clean, warm, and entirely mine. My hands were resting on the back of Cassian’s chair.

When Arthur looked up and saw me standing there, his face collapsed into a mask of pure, unadulterated hatred.

“You,” he spat, a bubble of bloody saliva catching on his lower lip. “You miserable little scullery rat. You should have died in that chapel.”

Cassian didn't raise his voice.

“Arthur,” he said softly.

Arthur flinched, his head jerking toward the chair.

“You’re speaking to Mrs. Vale,” Cassian said, every word falling like a drop of liquid nitrogen onto the Persian rug. “And you will address her with your forehead touching the floor, or I will have Vance remove your tongue with a pair of rusty pliers.”

Arthur’s chest hitched. He looked at Vance, who stood by the door with a fresh plaster cast on his arm and a submachine gun resting against his hip, his face as cold as a headstone.

Slowly, his shoulders shaking with humiliation, Arthur lowered his head until his nose brushed the wool of the carpet.

“Good,” Cassian said.

He reached down to the small mahogany table beside him with his left hand, picking up a leather folder.

“Arthur,” Cassian continued, “your offshore holdings in Grand Cayman were seized three hours ago by the Federal District Court. It seems someone provided the United States Attorney with twenty-four years of your personal tax ledgers.”

Arthur’s head jerked up, his eyes wild with terror. “Who? Who could have… nobody had access to those files! They were in a private vault in Hamilton!”

Cassian looked at me.

“Lydia has an exceptional memory,” Cassian said. “When she was sixteen, Margaret had her organize the family papers in the attic after the first audit. Lydia remembered the account numbers. She remembered the name of the dummy corporation you used to buy your mistress that townhouse in Sarasota.”

“You… you kept records?” Arthur choked out, staring at me as if I were a demon that had climbed out of the cellar floor.

“I kept everything, Mr. Aldridge,” I said, my voice steady, cold, and entirely without pity. “When you treat people like furniture, you forget that furniture has ears. I spent eight years listening to you discuss your bribes over the breakfast table while I served your poached eggs.”

Arthur let out a low, animal wail, his forehead hitting the floor again.

“Margaret is currently in a holding cell at the Westchester County jail,” Cassian added, his tone entirely conversational. “She has been charged with conspiracy to commit murder, wire fraud, and grand larceny. She tried to tell the magistrate that she was an Aldridge. The magistrate told her that the Aldridge estate was bankrupt, and her bail was set at twelve million dollars.”

Cassian leaned forward slightly, his amber eyes boring into the top of the old man’s head.

“You have no money, Arthur. You have no houses. You have no friends on the Council—Hector Ward signed an agreement with me at dawn to surrender all claims to the river berths in exchange for his son’s life.”

“Julian?” Arthur gasped.

“Julian is on a cargo ship heading for South America,” Cassian said. “He will spend the next five years working the engine rooms to pay off his father’s fine. And Evelyn…”

Cassian paused.

He looked at me, as if asking for permission.

“What about Evelyn?” Arthur whispered.

“Evelyn came to this house two hours ago,” I said, stepping around the side of the chair to look down at him. “She walked through the front gates on foot. Her shoes were ruined. She had fifty dollars in her purse.”

Arthur’s breath stopped. “What did you do to her?”

“I gave her a ticket to Chicago,” I told him. “A small apartment in the city—two rooms, with a gas stove and an iron radiator. And a job at a commercial laundry near the rail yards.”

Arthur stared at me, his mouth opening and closing like a fish on a dock.

“A… a laundry?” he croaked.

“Fourteen dollars an hour,” I said, letting the words hang in the warm air of the library. “No advances. No corporate trust. She will learn what soap smells like, Arthur. She will learn what it feels like to have her back ache at the end of an eight-hour shift. If she works hard, she might have a bed of her own by next winter.”

Arthur began to weep—dry, wheezing sobs that shook his thin frame, the tears soaking into the carpet beneath his face.

Cassian turned to Vance.

“Take him to the marsh,” Cassian said.

Arthur shrieked, his head jerking back, his eyes rolling in terror. “No! Cassian, please! Not the marsh! I’ll sign whatever you want! I’ll leave the country! Don't kill me!”

“I’m not going to kill you, Arthur,” Cassian said, his voice dropping into pure ice. “The marsh is where the federal marshals are waiting. They have three warrants for your arrest for interstate racketeering. You will spend the rest of your life in a supermax facility in Florence, Colorado. You will have twenty-three hours a day in an eight-by-ten concrete box to think about the maid who took your empire away from you.”

Vance stepped forward, grabbed Arthur by the collar of his ruined tweed jacket, and dragged him backward out of the library.

The heavy oak doors clicked shut.

The silence that followed was different from the silence in the chapel five days ago.

It wasn't stagnant. It wasn't full of terror.

It was the clean, wide silence that comes after a blizzard has cleared, leaving the world white, sharp, and empty.

Cassian leaned back into the leather cushions, his left hand coming up to pinch the bridge of his nose, his chest rising and falling in an exhausted sigh.

“It’s done,” he murmured.

“It’s done,” I agreed.

I walked to the side of his chair, picked up the glass of water that Mrs. Gable had left on the credenza, and handed it to him. He took it with his left hand, drank it down in three long swallows, and set the crystal back on the table.

Then he looked up at me.

“Vance has the car ready,” he said quietly.

My heart gave a strange, unexpected twist. “The car?”

“To Mount Sinai,” Cassian said, his amber eyes searching my face with an intensity that made the room feel suddenly too small. “Your mother’s surgery was successful. She woke up an hour ago. Dr. Kroll says she can go home to the cottage by next Friday.”

He reached into his pocket with his good hand and pulled out a small leather case. He laid it on the arm of the chair.

Inside was a cashier’s check from the Bank of New York.

Twelve million dollars.

And beside it lay the deed to Cottage Four, stamped with the golden seal of the county recorder, free and clear of all liens.

“Our contract was for three years,” Cassian said, his voice flat, but his fingers trembling slightly against the leather of the chair. “Arthur is gone. The Wards are neutralized. You don't have to stay here, Lydia. You don't have to live in a house with bullet holes in the walls and guards at the gate.”

He looked toward the window, where the winter sunlight was turning the snow on the rose bushes into a blinding field of diamonds.

“I won't keep you prisoner,” he said. “You’ve earned your freedom ten times over. Take the check. Take the deed. Go back to your mother. Build a life where no one ever looks at you and sees a target.”

I looked at the check.

Twelve million dollars.

It was safety. It was peace. It was everything I had prayed for during eight years of scrubbing floors on my knees.

Then I looked at the man in the chair.

I looked at the sling around his broken shoulder. At the pale scar across his eyebrow. At the large, scarred hands that had held mine in the mud on that mountain road.

I picked up the check.

I tore it in half.

Then I tore it in half again, letting the white scraps of paper flutter down into the glowing embers of the hearth, where they curled into black ash in three seconds.

Cassian stared at the fireplace, his mouth slightly open, then jerked his head up to look at me.

“What are you doing?” he demanded, his voice cracking with shock.

“I told you in the chapel, Cassian,” I said, stepping between his knees, resting my hands on his good shoulder. “I don't bargain with monsters.”

“Lydia—”

“I’m not wife number seven,” I told him, looking straight into those frozen amber eyes until the frost inside them began to melt. “And I’m not your employee. I’m your wife. If you think I’m going to leave you in this drafty barn with only Vance and Gable to keep you from getting shot again, you’re far more stupid than Arthur Aldridge was.”

Cassian’s left hand came up, his fingers wrapping around the back of my neck, pulling me down until his forehead touched mine.

His breath was hot, smelling of cedar and sweet bourbon, his heart beating a strong, steady rhythm against my ribs.

“This house is dangerous, Lydia,” he whispered against my lips. “I am dangerous.”

“I have a Glock in my nightstand, Cassian,” I murmured back, my smile touching his mouth. “And I know where you keep the whiskey. I think I can handle you.”

He laughed—a low, deep, magnificent sound that filled the library, chasing away the ghosts of six marriages and thirty years of war.

He pulled me down into his lap, his good arm wrapping around my waist, holding me against his chest with a strength that told me I would never have to run barefoot through the snow.

Outside, the sun climbed over the Hudson, burning the mist off the water, illuminating the stone walls of Blackwood Hall.

The storm had passed.