My Ex Chose His First Love, So I Married the Blind Don

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At the alliance feast, Marco learned that his first love was being handed into an arranged blood-bound union with the wounded heir he despised.

Without hesitation, he went before the priest and the bosses and had his own union sealed with her instead.

That same afternoon, the two of them slipped off to a Family safe estate in Iceland for their retreat.

Their childhood devotion, so touching and profound, ran through every parlor and social club in the territory.

Meanwhile, I became the disgraceful woman who had come between two lovers, my name torn to pieces in the whispers of the Families' wives and capos until I couldn't so much as cross my own doorstep.

Unexpectedly, that blind heir Marco had scorned showed up at my door.

"I've always been one to repay a grievance in full. Since that pup Marco stole my promised bride, I'll just have to take his woman. A fair trade requires reciprocity, Miss Rossi. Would you enter a blood-bound union with me?"

I glanced down at the whispers already spreading, their kiss beneath the aurora passed mouth to mouth across every Family in the city.

Without hesitation, I placed my hand in the hand of the man before me.

Even after the union was sealed before the priest, I still couldn't believe I had just bound myself in a single afternoon.

And the man I'd bound myself to was not Marco, the man I'd stood beside for eight years, but Lorenzo, someone I had crossed paths with only a handful of times, someone who had once stood on the enemy's side of the truce.

"Once the vow is spoken, there's no backing out. When are you moving into the estate?"

Understanding what he meant, my face went hot in an instant. Mercifully, he couldn't see it.

"Half a month. I still need some time to pack."

Lorenzo nodded, his thumb tracing the rim of his wine glass as he listened. "That works. Half a month is enough time to prepare for the union. Buy whatever you like."

He pressed a black card into my hand, the flush at the tips of his ears betraying an excitement he was trying to hide.

I pressed my lips into a smile and thought it was not a bad start.

Ten days into their retreat, Marco finally remembered I existed and called.

"My flight lands at three. Come pick me up."

No explanation. No acknowledgment. As though nothing had ever happened.

Yet for ten days the whispers had carried nothing but him and Adriana, every sweet moment paraded through the Families in real time.

I had heard how they wrapped themselves in each other at the Blue Lagoon, how they kissed beneath the aurora, how they swore eternal love on the black sand.

He had taken another woman first to every place I had once dreamed of for my own retreat.

"I'm busy. Get a car."

Once, no matter the hour or the distance, a single word from him would have been enough for me to drop everything and go to his side without hesitation.

Marco went silent for a moment, then let out a cold snort and hung up.

By then I thought this was the unspoken end between two grown people. But when I came home that evening, I found him sitting on my sofa in a bathrobe.

He lifted his gaze at me, careless, as if nothing had happened.

"Place is pretty tidy without me around."

Over the past days I had thrown out everything of Marco's.

The photograph of the two of us that had once hung in the front room was gone now, and still he didn't notice.

He nodded toward a paper bag on the table.

"A gift for you. Take a look."

I glanced inside. It was a heap of broken seashells, some still crusted with mud.

Only moments earlier, Adriana had been flaunting to the Families that Marco had gifted her a massive Ocean Star stone.

With the whispers piecing it together for me, I finally understood that every so-called heartfelt gift I had received over the years was nothing but discarded trash.

On Valentine's Day he gave Adriana a limited designer bag, while I got a heart folded from wrapping paper.

On her birthday he lit the whole city with fireworks, and on mine he took me to a street stall for skewers.

Every holiday, he swore the Family's business kept him too busy to meet my parents, when in truth he was seated at Adriana's family's table instead.

"Mr. Bellandi, you're a bound man now. Isn't it improper to turn up at my place in the dead of night?"

A flicker of guilt crossed Marco's face. He laughed, a half-beat too early and too loud, and wiped his palm down his trouser leg.

"Bianca, I only did this for Adriana. Lorenzo is cold, he's ruthless, and the war left him blind. I couldn't just stand by and watch her thrown into that fire. Binding myself to her was a temporary thing. Give it time, and I'll cut her loose."

He'd already rehearsed his story, the way an associate rehearses an alibi before a sit-down.

"Signor Bellandi, I have no interest in being a kept woman hidden from the Family. Get out."

From the moment he abandoned me before the whole assembly at that feast of alliance, we were already over.

Marco's face darkened. "Bianca, can you stop being so selfish? Adriana was worried you'd be heartbroken. She's the one who asked me to come keep you company. And this is how you repay her? If you had any sense, I could come to you Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays. Adriana and I are bound now, so I owe her the greater share of my time."

Something bitter rose in my chest. Eight years of love, and I'd been reduced to a woman hidden from the Family, scheduled like a debt to be paid off.

"Marco, we're finished!"

His face went dark, a faint heat behind his eyes. "Bianca, are you taking my kindness for granted? It's a scrap of paper before a priest, nothing more. Why are you making such a fuss? Before there was any paper, you let me into your bed for eight years all the same. Now you want to play the wounded innocent? If you hadn't begged me, saying you couldn't live without me, you think I'd still want you? At your age, still playing these hard-to-get games. How pathetic is that?"

I was shaking with rage.

He had been the one who pursued me back then, stubborn and relentless. The one who wept drunk against my shoulder and begged me to ease his pain.

Now he'd bound himself to Adriana, made me a joke whispered about by every capo's wife in the city, and still he stood there blaming me for being selfish and cold.

"Marco, we're done. From this day, you live your life and I'll live mine. We have nothing to do with each other."

Fury took him whole. He seized the bag of broken seashells and hurled it to the floor, shattering it apart.

"Bianca, you still think you'll bind yourself to someone else? In this world, every Family knows you were mine for eight years. You're used up. Who'd want an old spinster like you?"

In the tense silence, the bathroom door opened.

Adriana stepped out, wrapped in a bath towel, barefoot.

I stopped breathing.

At the alliance feast, Marco had answered a call and rushed off. In the days since, I'd watched the two of them parade their affection where all the Families could see.

Now I couldn't tell if it was pain, or bitterness, or fury that had its hand around my throat.

This house had been bought when Marco and I were still drowning in each other, each of us laying down half the money. He'd called it our sanctuary, a place where every wall would hold a happy memory.

"Bianca, don't blame Marco, he only wanted to help me. If you have to blame someone, blame me. I'm the one who doesn't belong here..."

She reached for my hand as she said it. Her fingertips drifted toward her collarbone as if the moment had wounded her, but her eyes flicked sideways first, measuring who might be watching.

I pulled my hand back on instinct, never even touching her, and still she cried out and dropped to the floor.

Before I could move, Marco's hand caught the side of my face and knocked me down.

The pain came sharp and immediate. The broken shells scattered across the floor bit deep into my palm, and blood welled up and began to drip, spattering the ground.

"Are you all right, Adriana?"

He turned and looked at me with disgust.

"If anything happens to her, I swear to God I won't let you walk away from it."

He gathered Adriana up and carried her down the stairs, rushing her to the hospital.

I struggled to my feet, looking around the house I'd lived in for eight years, and it had gone strange to me, like the home of a stranger.

On my bed the sheets lay tangled, a torn black stocking hung off the edge, and the floor was littered with used tissues. The air held a smell that turned my stomach.

I hurried out, tears running down my face beyond any power to stop them.

It was filthy. Even the house felt dirty now.

Too many shards of shell were driven into my palm to pull free. I had no choice but to flag down a cab and take myself to the hospital.

I chose a hospital far from Family ground on purpose, but as fate would have it, I ran into Marco and Adriana anyway.

Adriana was cradling her hand, the one that hadn't even been so much as bruised, crying out in pain.

Marco, in that soft way of his, lifted her into his lap and carefully pressed the doctor for anything she ought to watch for.

When we first belonged to each other, he had fretted over me the same way.

One night, when a fever took me, he was so rattled he didn't even bother with shoes, and only afterward, once he'd made certain I was safe, did he notice the glass had opened the sole of his foot.

"Bianca, you're my treasure. I can't stand to see you hurt."

As I stepped out, I walked straight into him coming in.

"Bianca, Marco was only bringing me to have my injury seen to. Are you so restless you had to trail us all the way here?"

Marco raked me with a contemptuous look. "Weren't you the one going on about how we're finished? So what is this? Bianca, you've no shame left. Lay a hand on Adriana again and I won't be gentle with you."

I lifted my hand, still stained with blood. "Look at the injury, and move aside."

Marco froze where he stood, a flicker of guilt passing behind his eyes.

"Bianca, is it bad?"

He tried to come toward me, but Adriana's scream cut him off.

"Adriana, my hand hurts so much"

Marco stopped paying me any mind, turning on his heel and carrying her away.

The next morning, the moment I woke, a message came from Lorenzo, asking me to set aside time to try on the custom ring.

After I'd washed and dressed, I was startled to see Marco walking into the room carrying breakfast.

"You must be starving. Come and eat."

A basket of crab roe buns and a bowl of pumpkin porridge. One would set off an allergy, the other was something I couldn't stomach.

"Take the day for yourself. The seasons are turning. Let me buy you some new things."

It was the old rhythm. A little sweetness pressed into the palm right after the blow, a thing he'd done for years.

Yet when the hour came, he slid into the back seat. "You drive today. I didn't sleep well."

I looked down at my hand, bound in bandages, and mocked myself in silence.

In the rearview mirror he sat with his phone, a faint smile playing at the corner of his mouth.

Not until the car stopped and he caught sight of the jeweler's sign outside did his face go dark all at once.

He blocked the doorway, his expression full of displeasure.

"Bianca, I told you already, let's wait. Why must you force me like this? I'm only signing a certificate with Adriana, not holding a wedding before the priest and the bosses. No one has to know. Once the whispers die down, we'll quietly part ways."

Before he could finish, another voice broke over his. "Marco, don't you think this diamond ring is beautiful?"

Adriana wore a one-carat diamond, lifting her hand and leaning into him, all sweetness.

Marco's face rearranged itself into a smile at once.

"If you like it, then it's beautiful. Our union's in five days. Shall I buy this one to seal it?"

I stopped in my tracks, just in time to catch Marco turning his head, awkward.

Every word out of him was a lie. But it made no difference. In five days I would be married too, my own union sealed before the priest and the bosses. It only seemed to prove the old truth, that a man and a woman marry and then go their separate ways.

The clerk carefully brought over the ring Lorenzo had ordered. A pink diamond, the only one of its kind in all the world, stunning and bright enough to draw the eye across the whole room.

Adriana looked at the ring on my hand, her eyes full of greed.

"Bianca, I really do love the ring on your hand. May I try it on?"

The clerk beside me apologized at once.

"I'm sorry, this piece has already been reserved. Would you care to look at something else?"

Adriana's eyes reddened in an instant. Her fingertips drifted delicately to her collarbone, though her gaze flicked sideways first, gauging who in the shop was watching before the tears came.

"Bianca, you know our wedding is in five days. Are you deliberately putting your head together with the staff here to make trouble for me? I love this ring. I only want to know what it feels like to be a bride. Can't you just let me try it on?"

"No! I'm getting married in five days too!"

Marco's face darkened like ink. "Bianca, are you done? When did I ever say I wanted to marry you?"

I furrowed my brows slightly. "Marco, don't get ahead of yourself. The man I'm marrying is not you."

He sneered, again and again. "Eight years on my arm, and you think any Family would still want you? A woman other men have already had. A person should know her own worth. Don't be a fool and ruin what's left of your future."

He stepped forward and roughly yanked the diamond ring from my finger, not caring that my skin tore, that a thin line of blood welled up where the band had bitten in.

He was almost giddy as he tried to slide the ring onto Adriana's hand, only to find the setting too small to fit.

"I'll take this ring. Resize it. How much?"

The jeweler, an old man who dressed windows for the wives of capos and knew exactly whose money he was handling, murmured a figure. Marco's face went white. So did Adriana's.

"Bianca, just because you don't want Marco to marry me, there's no need to be so vile and inflate the price to trap us."

Marco shook his head at me, the picture of wounded disappointment. "Bianca, I never thought you'd sink this low."

They came to take my ring, couldn't afford the stone, and then turned to lay the blame at my feet.

The two of them swept out in a temper, and my phone rang. Lorenzo.

"Do you like the diamond? Don't forget, tesoro, you're to try the gown this afternoon."

"Yes. I really like it."

I drove to the bridal salon Lorenzo had named, a discreet place off the boulevard where the seamstresses knew better than to gossip about the names in their appointment book. The moment I stepped inside, I saw Adriana stroking the shoulder of a single-strap gown.

"Miss Verdi, I'm sorry, but that gown is already reserved."

"I want this one. Call whoever reserved it. I'll pay ten percent over to take it."

When the attendant saw me come through the door, her eyes lit with relief.

"The customer who reserved it is here now. Perhaps you'd care to settle it with her directly, Miss Verdi."

Something ugly flickered across Adriana's face, unwillingness sharpening into anger.

"Bianca, why do you always haunt me, always set yourself against me? First you stole my wedding ring, and now you'd take my gown from my hands too."

Beside her, Marco frowned deep. "Bianca, you're the one who said you wanted to be finished with me, and now you throw a ring and a dress at my feet to force me to the altar. You have no shame."

"Even if you crawl into my wedding, I won't spare you a glance. I'll give the ring and the gown both to Adriana."

I laughed, soft and low. "Who told you that a woman buying a ring and a gown means she means to marry you? You are not the only man walking this earth."

"You can't afford a stone, you can't afford a dress, and now you stand here expecting me to hand them over for nothing?"

Marco's face went from pale to something worse. Adriana, seeing it, covered her face and fled the room.

"Marco, since you've already settled on a ring and a gown, there's nothing here for me. I'll go."

"Bianca!" Marco, in a fit of rage, snatched the shears from the cutting table and began slashing at the gown, wild, careless. "I'll teach you to stop forcing marriage on me, to stop making Adriana weep! You want to marry, do you? Let's see what you'll wear to that wedding now the dress is gone."

That gown had been commissioned by Lorenzo himself, the finest hands in the trade working through the night to finish it in time.

I rushed to stop him. He shoved me down, and I hit the floor hard, and the shears caught my other hand and opened it in one clean, sharp line.

Marco seemed to have lost his mind entirely, tearing the flawless gown to ribbons.

Not satisfied, he ground it under his heel. "You dream of marrying me, Bianca? Keep dreaming. And if you dare ruin my wedding five days from now, your end will look exactly like this dress."

Then he didn't even look at me. He hurried out after Adriana.

The attendant beside me had gone white to the lips. She was already reaching for the phone.

On the floor, my hand bleeding into the shredded silk, I closed my fist around the small silver crucifix at my throat. Not a gift. Not from any man. The one thing that was mine. My fingers tightened around it, and something in me went very still and very certain.

In the haze of it, Lorenzo called.

"Are you hurt?" A pause, and in that pause the room seemed to hold its breath. "Don't trouble yourself over the gown. I'll have my consigliere see to it."

"I'm sorry."

His voice came down the line low and even, carrying the weight of a man who ordered the world from behind it.

"Bianca, it's only a wedding gown. Let it go. I'm still on foreign soil, tesoro. I've sent someone to your door with something. I hope it eases the wound a little."

No sooner had I stepped back into the house than a soldier in a tailored suit appeared at the door, grave as a priest, and placed a lacquered box into my hands.

Inside lay a full set of emeralds and pearls, cold and green as old money.

"These are the heirlooms of the Marchetti bloodline," the man said, "handed down through generations to the matriarch of the Family. Don Marchetti asks that you accept them, Miss Rossi."

I took the box carefully, and a wave of warmth flooded my heart.

Lorenzo truly honored me as the woman who would carry his name, and for the first time I felt a glimmer of hope for the future of this blood-bound union.

Just as I stepped away to answer a call about some tangled matter of the family's business, I came back to find the emerald set gone.

I searched the entire room, but there was no trace of it. The doors and windows showed no sign of being forced.

Just as I reached for the phone to raise the alarm, I saw Adriana's post appear among the Families' whispers.

"Couldn't find a ring worthy of me, and instead he prepared heirloom jewels. So this is what it feels like to marry for love."

In the photo Adriana wore the earrings, the necklace, the bracelets. Weren't those the very Marchetti emeralds Lorenzo had given me?

I pulled up the room's surveillance and watched. After I'd left, Marco and Adriana had come in.

"Marco, is this the surprise you had waiting for me? It's beautiful."

Adriana's eyes went straight to the emeralds I'd left on the bedside table.

Marco hesitated, his face uneasy as he stammered. "Uh... I'm glad you like them..."

My heart was in turmoil. I couldn't think another moment. I went straight to Marco's house.

When I arrived, Adriana was parading the set in front of Marco's relatives.

"This is Marco's family heirloom," she said, smug as a cat in cream. "He's already decided I'll be the daughter married into the Bellandi name."

"The fire in these stones, Madonna. Marco really does treat you well."

My blood boiled. I crossed the room and pointed at the two of them.

"Thief. Who gave you leave to take my emeralds? Give them back."

Adriana looked at me and sneered.

"Bianca, have you no dignity left at all? This set is the Bellandi family heirloom. Since when did it become your private property? You've already taken my ring and my gown, and now you'd steal the Bellandi bloodline's treasures too? How shameless can one woman be?"

I looked at Marco, standing beside her with guilt written across his face.

"Are you sure these are your family's heirlooms? Shall I bring in the Feds right now to settle it?"

Marco, cornered by the words, laughed a half-beat too loud and wiped his palm down his trouser leg.

"Enough! Even if they aren't ours, you stole Adriana's ring and her gown, didn't you? You should be begging her forgiveness. If it makes you happy, once Adriana tires of them, maybe I'll let you wear them a few days."

My blood boiled again. I had never in my life met such shameless creatures, the pair of them.

Not willing to waste another breath, I drew out my phone to call the Feds.

Adriana's eyes flickered sideways, and then she tore the jewels off herself.

"Bianca, stop tormenting us again and again. If you want them so badly, take them. Just leave us in peace. Marco doesn't love you. Stop hanging on him."

She pressed her fingertips to her collarbone as though wounded, playing the injured innocent while I stood there cast as the shameless, clinging one.

Adriana held the set out toward me, then suddenly let go, and the whole thing crashed to the floor and shattered into pieces.

My head rang, and for a moment it felt as if the blood in my body had frozen.

Adriana only smiled faintly. "Oh, why didn't you catch it, Bianca? Such a shame. Fine emeralds like those..."

Marco looked down at me from above, his voice thick with disdain. "Bianca, stop humiliating yourself. Take your junk and get out of my house."

I looked at the shattered pieces on the floor, my heart aching beyond words.

"Marco, I will never forgive you as long as I live."

He sneered. "So what if you don't? Don't come crawling back to my door in a few days like a beaten dog, begging me to take you in again. I'm warning you, stay away from my wedding. It's five days off. Behave yourself, and maybe I'll feel generous enough to look in on you now and again."

"There's no need. You'd best never come near me again."

With that I turned and walked out of his house, and I put the place I'd shared with him up for sale.

The bloodline's sacred tokens had been destroyed, and I couldn't shake the guilt of it.

Lorenzo went on comforting me through the phone.

"They were only objects, cara. Once I gave them to you, they were yours to do with as you pleased. Now. Are you ready? I won't have my bride walking to the priest with her eyes swollen from crying."

Before I knew it the wedding day came, and I found myself, for no reason I could name, growing nervous.

No sooner had I finished my face than I ran into Marco again, in a dark suit, near the washroom.

"Bianca, you've a thick hide on you. I told you plainly not to come and ruin the wedding. Are you deaf? It seems that unless I teach you a lesson, you'll keep ignoring every word I say. Someone. Take her. Lock her up somewhere."

I fought against the hands that reached for me. "Marco, let go of me. I'm not here to ruin your wedding."

Marco sneered. "Bianca, even your lies you can't be bothered to dress up. If you weren't here to break up the ceremony, why are you dressed like this?"

"Let go of me. I've told you, my marriage is no concern of yours. The man I'm going to marry isn't you."

He pinched my chin between his fingers with contempt. "Who else would take you but me? Bianca, there's a limit to how far a woman can push an act. Go past it, and you only make people sick of you."

Just as he gave the order for his men to drag me off, a deep voice came from behind him, low and unhurried, the kind of voice a room goes quiet for.

"Signor Bellandi. Where exactly do you intend to take my bride?"