Chapter 1 - Laughter in the Cathedral: The Unseen Deception Beneath the Silicone
One hundred and twenty people tried not to laugh when I bent down to kiss the most feared man in Chicago.
They thought a crippled mafia boss marrying a scarred, ugly bride was some kind of cruel joke orchestrated by the Barone family to mock his physical decline—but before that night was over, Adrian Vitali would discover that my face was fake, my marriage was a setup, and someone in that cathedral was hiding an even darker lie.
The whispers followed me down the aisle like insects crawling across a rotting log.
“Barone really gave him that daughter?” someone muttered from the third row, their voice dripping with malice, while others coughed into their hands to hide their open laughter.
Adrian sat perfectly still in his custom-built black wheelchair, dressed in a sharply tailored charcoal tuxedo, his broad shoulders and piercing gaze making him look terrifyingly dangerous even though everyone in the city believed a sniper’s bullet eleven months earlier had destroyed the nerves in his legs.
Newspapers called him a reclusive shipping magnate and a legitimate businessman, but everyone in Chicago knew exactly what kind of monster he truly was, and what kind of blood soaked the foundations of his empire.
And then there was me, walking beside him as the unwilling sacrifice to appease two warring syndicates.
A thick, puckered silicone scar covered the right side of my face from temple to chin, heavy, thick-lensed glasses distorted my eyes to make them look weak and watery, and dull brown hair hung limply around my shoulders like a cheap curtain.
Some guests openly stared with cruel fascination while others turned their heads away, as though ugliness might somehow be contagious if they looked too long.
When I leaned down because Adrian couldn’t stand to meet me at the altar, I kissed his cold cheek quickly and whispered the exact words I had been trained to say ever since I was a little girl whenever my existence became inconvenient to my handlers.
“I’m sorry.”
His long fingers suddenly tightened around the leather armrest of his wheelchair with enough force to make the metal groan.
“Say that again,” his deep voice commanded, sending a shiver straight down my spine.
My stomach clenched into a hard, painful knot of pure dread.
“What?” I stammered, my voice trembling on cue.
“What you just said.”
“I said I’m sorry.”
Something strange and unreadable flashed across his sharp face before disappearing into shadow, and for one terrifying second, it felt as if he could see straight through the elaborate web of lies and silicone I was hiding behind.
What Adrian didn’t know was that the hideous scar everyone mocked wasn't real.
For ten agonizing years, my biological father, Salvatore Barone, had forced me to wear three pieces of Hollywood-quality prosthetic silicone every single day because I looked almost identical to his legitimate, favored daughter, Celeste.
We shared the exact same emerald-green eyes, the same high cheekbones, and the same lips—and Celeste had never wanted anyone in Chicago asking why her powerful father’s unwanted, hidden daughter looked so much like her twin in a mirror.
Salvatore controlled every breath I took through Ruth Delaney, the sweet, elderly foster mother who had raised me since I was four years old and taught me how to read in secret.
He paid for her specialized care at an expensive memory-care facility across town, and I understood the unspoken threat without him ever having to explicitly say the words.
Obey his commands without question, and Ruth stayed safe in her warm room.
Disobey him, or show my real face to the world, and Ruth would pay the ultimate price for my defiance.
That morning, everything had imploded when Celeste threw a screaming fit over breakfast in the Barone estate dining room.
“I am not standing at an altar beside some breathing corpse in a wheelchair!” she had snapped, throwing her silver fork against her porcelain plate.
Salvatore had calmly lowered his gold-rimmed coffee cup, his eyes cold as ice.
“Then send the other girl,” he had replied without a shred of hesitation.
Before the cathedral ceremony, Celeste had cornered me in the hallway, handing me a freshly printed bank receipt proving that Ruth’s monthly care facility bill had been paid in full for the next thirty days.
Then she placed a dark, heavy glass bottle of herbal amaro beside my makeup case with a sinister smile.
“Pour Adrian a glass of this before midnight,” Celeste had whispered, her fingers cold against my arm. “He drinks first to celebrate the alliance. You drink afterward to seal it.”
Something about her toxic smile had made my skin crawl, but I had slipped the heavy bottle into my leather bag, knowing I had no choice in the matter.
By ten that night, the lavish reception at Adrian’s secluded Lake Forest estate was finally coming to an end, and the medical adhesive beneath my silicone scar had begun to itch and loosen from the sweat of the evening.
I kept checking the antique clock on the wall, praying for an excuse to escape, until Adrian noticed my nervous glances.
“You keep looking at the time,” he remarked, his gaze never leaving my face.
“I’m tired,” I lied softly, my fingers trembling.
“That isn’t why you’re anxious.”
My hand instinctively twitched toward my right temple, where the silicone was starting to peel away from my skin. “I need to go upstairs.”
He watched me in silence for several long, agonizing seconds.
“Your room is at the end of the second-floor hall,” he said slowly. “I’ll come up in ten minutes.”
My heart nearly stopped beating in my chest.
Ten minutes later, I stood locked inside the dark master bedroom beneath the vanity lights, desperately pressing the peeling edge of the silicone back against my skin with shaking fingers.
It lifted again, refusing to stick.
Then I heard the slow, heavy sound of wheelchair wheels moving across the hardwood floor outside my bedroom door.
Adrian entered the room alone, his dark eyes sharp and calculating.
He closed the heavy oak door behind him.
May you like
And locked it with a sharp, echoing click.
My hand froze against my fake scar as he looked directly into my terrified eyes and said, “Now tell me why my wife is trying to hold her face together.”
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