Part 1 Lydia Hayes had spent forty-seven minutes making herself look like a woman no sane man would ever want to marry

Lydia Hayes had spent forty-seven minutes making herself look like a woman no sane man would ever want to marry.

She smeared fingerprints across the lenses of her wire-rimmed glasses. She greased her dark hair flat against her scalp with a fistful of cheap leave-in conditioner that smelled like a motel carpet. She wore a mustard-yellow polyester turtleneck under a mud-brown cardigan, then added a heavy olive skirt that hit her calves in exactly the wrong place.

Before leaving her tiny Brooklyn apartment, she stood in front of the cracked bathroom mirror, took one last look, and rubbed half a raw onion across both wrists.

Perfect.

She looked tragic. She smelled worse.

And for once, that was the plan.

Three nights ago, her father had called her crying from some backroom poker game in Queens, his voice thick with cheap whiskey and panic.

“Lydie, sweetheart, I just need you to meet him,” Frank Hayes had begged. “One dinner. That’s all.”

“Him who?”

“The son of the man I owe.”

Lydia had closed her eyes.

“How much, Dad?”

Silence.

“Dad.”

“Two hundred thousand.”

The number had gone through her like ice water.

Frank had cried harder. He said the man’s son, Augustus Rossi, was young, lonely, spoiled, and looking for a respectable wife. He said if Augustus liked her, the family might extend the debt. He said Lydia didn’t have to do anything.

Just smile.

Just be polite.

Just save him one more time.

But Lydia had been saving her father since she was twenty-two, since her mother died and grief turned Frank into a man who could gamble away rent money, grocery money, and eventually anything that was not nailed to the floor.

She had not agreed to be liked.

She had agreed to show up.

So when the cab dropped her outside Il Cigno, a private Italian restaurant in lower Manhattan where hedge fund wives and men with sealed indictments whispered over thousand-dollar wine, Lydia lifted her chin and stepped into the light.

The maître d’ saw her and nearly dropped his leather reservation book.

“Can I help you, miss?” he asked, his smile dying a slow death.

“Reservation for table seven,” Lydia said loudly, letting her voice go nasal and flat. “Rossi party.”

The man blinked twice.

Then, very carefully, he checked the book.

His face changed.

“This way.”

Lydia followed him through the dining room, dragging her orthopedic thrift-store shoes across the polished floor.

Squeak. Scuff. Squeak.

Heads turned.

A woman in pearls pulled her Chanel bag closer. A businessman looked her up and down, then looked away like poverty might be contagious.

Lydia swallowed the humiliation.

This was armor.

Ugly, itchy, onion-scented armor.

The maître d’ stopped beside a corner booth half hidden by a velvet curtain.

“Your guest has arrived,” he murmured.

Then he fled.

Lydia braced herself for Augustus Rossi, some slick-haired mafia prince in a shiny suit.

Instead, she found a man who looked like the reason people lowered their voices.

He was not young.

He was not soft.

He sat in the booth with one arm stretched along the backrest, a crystal glass of amber liquor loose in his scarred hand. He wore a dark charcoal shirt with the sleeves rolled to his elbows, exposing thick forearms threaded with faded black tattoos. His nose had been broken at least once. His brows were heavy. His eyes were nearly black.

He looked at Lydia from her greasy hair to her ugly shoes.

He did not laugh.

He did not flinch.

He smiled.

“Sit,” he said.

His voice was low, rough, and final.

Lydia’s knees almost locked.

Still, she slid into the booth across from him. The leather made an unfortunate wet squeak under her skirt.

She gave a fake snort. “Oops. Chair.”

The man took a slow sip from his glass.

Nothing.

No disgust. No embarrassment. No visible reaction at all.

Lydia grabbed a piece of bread from the basket and tore into it with her teeth.

“So,” she said around a mouthful, dropping crumbs onto her cardigan, “you’re Augustus. Dad didn’t mention you were old.”

“I’m not Augustus.”

She stopped chewing.

The man set his glass down.

“Augustus is in a private hospital with two fractured kneecaps.”

Lydia forced herself to swallow.

“Car accident?”

“Disagreement over inventory.”

Her pulse began to hammer.

He leaned forward. “I’m Dominic Rossi. I took over his accounts. Your father’s included.”

The room seemed to tilt.

Dominic Rossi.

Not the son.

The head of the family.

The man who owned half the shipping yards on the East Coast through companies with clean websites and dirty basements.

Lydia’s onion wrists suddenly felt ridiculous.

A waiter appeared, pale and frightened.

“Mr. Rossi?”

“The lady will have lobster ravioli,” Dominic said without looking away from Lydia. “Extra garlic. And a glass of Barolo. I’ll have the ribeye. Rare.”

“I didn’t say I wanted ravioli,” Lydia snapped.

“You smell like raw onions and cheap anxiety,” Dominic said calmly. “I thought garlic might balance the table.”

Heat flooded her face.

He noticed.

Of course he noticed.

She kicked him under the table with one heavy shoe.

“Sorry,” she said brightly. “Long legs.”

For the first time, his mouth twitched.

“Tell me, Lydia Hayes. How hard did you work on this?”

“On what?”

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