“Completely sure,” I tell him.

“Good.” He nods. “Come on, then.”

“Aren’t we going in the cafe?”

“No,” he says.

I follow him back to his truck.

I usually hate uncertainty. My father likes to surprise me with the most unpleasant things possible. But already I’ve learned that I can trust Sebastian—when he has something planned, it’s always a good thing.

Sebastian drives us down to the lakeshore, to a building that looks like the Cathedral of Florence mixed with a spaceship. It’s not until we’re all the way inside that I realize it’s a planetarium.

I feel a rush of warmth so strong it frightens me. I can’t believe that Sebastian remembers all these little things I tell him. I never expected anyone to get to know me like this. To care about my interests and preferences. The only other person who treats me this way is my brother—and even he can be capricious.

I feel like a little kid, running around looking at all the displays, touching an actual chunk of meteorite that’s apparently four billion years old. I lay my hand on the smooth, dense metal, trying to imagine the timescale of this object flying around in outer space, before it crashed down on this particular point of the galaxy.

Sebastian seems to be looking at me as much as any of the displays. He’s smiling at my excitement—not laughing at me, just enjoying my pleasure at the exhibit on modern space travel, and the scale model of the cockpit of the Apollo 13 rocket.

I’m disappointed when the docents begin ushering everyone out of the exhibits, telling us that the planetarium is about to close.

“We should come back another day!” I say to Sebastian.

“Sure,” he says. “But come see one last thing before we go.”

He grabs my hand and pulls me toward a set of doors that look like some kind of theater.

“Aren’t we supposed to be leaving?” I ask him.

“It’s alright,” he says. “Trust me.”

Mystified, I follow him through the swinging doors.

The room beyond is completely dark, but I get the sense of vast, open space over my head. When we speak, our voices echo through the air.

“Where are we?” I ask Sebastian.

“In outer space,” he says. I can hear his grin without seeing it.

At that moment, I hear a clunking sound, and a whirring. Suddenly the whole room illuminates with a thousand pinpricks of light. I realize we’re standing in the center of the vast dome of the building, and that dome is a model of the galaxy.

We’re surrounded by stars, planets, nebulas, and the vastness of space. They float gently around us, so I feel like we’re floating, too. The floor seems to have dropped away beneath me. The only thing stationary and close is Sebastian himself.

I look up into his face, illuminated by the pale blue light. His eyes look bright and clear, and when he smiles his teeth flash white against his deeply tanned skin. It feels like we’re the only two people in the universe. I wish that we were.

Sebastian drops down on one knee. My hands fly up to my mouth, because I was not expecting this, not in the slightest.

“I know we went through the motions this morning to appease our families . . .” Sebastian says. “But I want you to know. Yelena, I’m not marrying you because of your father, or the Bratva, or anything else. I want to marry you because I want to be with you, always. You captivated me from the moment I met you. I’m fascinated by you, impressed by you, utterly infatuated with you. I love you, Yelena. I’ll do anything for you.”

He’s holding up a box and opening the lid.

I didn’t expect a ring. He signed the contract—that was the proposal and the acceptance, without me even there.

But now Sebastian is offering me the choice—not my father, just me alone.

I look down at the ring.

It’s a teardrop-shaped stone on a delicate, filigreed band of pale gold. The filigree looks like ultra-fine lace, like frost on a windowpane. It’s so lovely that I’m almost afraid to touch it. It’s Sebastian who pulls it from its cushioned resting place and slips it on my finger.

The diamond gleams against my skin, like Sebastian plucked down one of those stars and set it on my hand.

“Will you marry me?” he says.

“Yes,” I breathe, still unable to believe this is happening.

Sebastian sweeps me up in his arms, spinning me around so the stars whirl around us all the faster. He kisses me, his arms locked tight around me.

I’m the happiest I’ve ever been in my life. I don’t know how to handle this feeling. It’s so overpowering that I feel like my body can’t hold it all inside.

I keep thinking, This can’t be real, this can’t be real.

And then a cold, malicious voice whispers:

It isn’t real. This whole thing is a fantasy. A lie that you created.

Sebastian doesn’t know that you set yourself out as bait. That you deliberately snared him. That you lured him into whatever trap your father’s planning.

I shake my head hard, trying to force these thoughts away before they ruin this moment for me.

It doesn’t matter that I lied before. It doesn’t matter what my father planned . . . that’s over now. He agreed to the alliance. He signed the contract in blood.

Once Sebastian and I are married, I’ll tell him everything. And he’ll forgive me, I know he will. He’ll understand that my father forced me. I didn’t know Sebastian back then—I didn’t know we’d fall in love.

I can’t risk telling him before the wedding.

Afterward, none of it will matter. We’ll be safe together, the two of us. I’ll be part of the Gallo family. They’ll protect me. I’ll tell them everything I know about my father, his business, and his resentments. They’ll understand. They have to.

That’s what I tell myself, to keep my mouth shut. To keep myself from destroying this beautiful and perfect moment.

I tell myself that everything will be alright, as long as Sebastian and I are together.

13

Sebastian

We have only a month to plan the wedding.

That doesn’t matter to me, because I don’t give a shit about the ceremony. It seems to matter a lot more to Alexei Yenin, who insists that it be a “traditional Russian wedding” in most respects.

To that end, he pays for a wedding planner to carry out his demands, and Yelena and I go along with it, not particularly caring whether we’re married in an Orthodox Church, in a garden, or on a street corner.

Both families agree to keep it small, to avoid any unpleasantness between the Italian families and the Bratva. If we invite one of the other mafia families, we’ll have to invite them all. And there’s no way they’ll be able to keep peace with the Russians who have a complicated, bloody history in Chicago.

Yenin doesn’t even want the Griffins invited. He says it will be impossible for the soldiers who worked under Kolya Kristoff to stand in the same room as Fergus Griffin without seeking retribution.

Papa calls Fergus to discuss this problem, and Fergus agrees that it’s better not to risk sparking tempers.

“I’m not offended,” he says to Papa. “I can send my congratulations from afar.”