The Don Married My Sister, I Had One Day Left

After I gave myself the last dose of painkiller, I stood outside the hotel all afternoon in the vintage couture gown Lucian had chosen for me himself. The black Bentley motorcade that was supposed to come for the bride never arrived. What I heard instead was the chatter of people passing by. "Did you hear? The youngest Don in New York is getting married. He and the bride have been together ten years." That stopped me, because Lucian and I had only been together seven. "They say he bought a blue diamond, the only one of its kind in the world, just to set it in her ring. He's proposing at the church today." The moment I pushed open the church doors, Lucian looked straight at me. "Cassie, I knew you'd come. Ten years ago you lost Elena, the true blood of this Family, and left her to be ground down at the bottom of the world. You had the safety and glory of the Family name while she endured ten years of hell. I let you believe in that engagement for exactly this day. I want you to feel what it's like to be thrown away by everyone." Three people I knew better than anyone sat in the front pew. Marcus spoke first. "You took the life that was supposed to be Elena's. She's back, so it goes back to her. You owe her that." My heart felt like a cold gun barrel was pressed against it. I couldn't get air. Nobody knew that a month ago I had been diagnosed with end-stage neurological failure, and that I had one day left. For my last hours all I had wanted was to hold the hand of the man I loved, with my family around me. I walked out of the church calmly and dropped the keepsake he had given me into a trash can. But now I'd changed my mind. I wasn't going to spend my last day intruding on any of them. Chapter 1 I went back to the hotel to pack, and the butler knocked and came in. "Miss Cassie, this suite is reserved as the Don's bridal suite. Your authorization expired at two o'clock this afternoon. Also, the custom gown you are wearing was purchased on Family business. The balance is thirty thousand dollars, and it has to be settled by you personally." Elena came back and even the dress on my body stopped being mine. My phone buzzed. Lucian. His voice was as gentle as it had always been. "You heard all of it, didn't you." "Yes." "You should understand that none of this is me betraying you. It's me collecting ten years of justice for Elena, after everything she suffered." Seven years of tenderness played back in front of me. When I was young and my father's enemies ran us down and I went down and hurt my leg, he carried me on his back while we ran. When the gang wars broke me, he sat up with me all night. When the Family's rules closed in on me, he smoothed things over for me, and he was gentle then too. All that old gentleness turned into a blade pointed at me. "You've worn the gown, so it's secondhand now. It won't do for Elena. Keep it." To him the wedding was a way to soothe my sister, and two soft sentences were the greatest mercy he could show me. I asked him, "And the thirty thousand?" "Elena had nothing for all those years she was drifting. Everything has to be replaced now that she's home, and that costs a lot. Pay it yourself." Elena's voice came through the phone, thick with tears. "Don't blame Cassie. She just can't take it in all at once." It sounded like she was defending me. What it actually said was that I harbored hostility toward her. Lucian's tone softened. "This is what she owes you. Don't blame yourself." When he was done comforting her, he spoke again. "You have to come to the private Family dinner tonight. You'll apologize to Elena in front of everyone. That's the only way this gets closed." "And then?" "And then we go on the way we always have." He said it like it was obvious. "The wedding is only a ceremony. The one whose name is on the license with me is you. I never once thought of giving you up." In his plan, he got to marry Elena in front of the whole world, but I wasn't allowed to cry, let alone make a scene. The call ended. The butler stood off to one side, uncomfortable. The treatments had already burned through every cent of my savings, and there was only one valuable thing left on me. I didn't want to make trouble for the butler, so I had no choice but to take out the specialized painkiller the hospital had just filled for me. A single ampoule was worth a fortune. Maybe he pitied me, because he left one behind. The cold rain of late autumn hit my face, and I had nothing on but a thin dress. At the bottom of the steps, my brother's black armored sedan sat waiting. The window slid down. His voice was cold. "Get in." "I need to go to the hospital for my medication." I held onto the freezing door. Even standing was hard. "This is the Family's first gathering since Elena came home. Don't throw a tantrum, Cassie." When I still didn't move, Marcus eased up. "Cassie, I know you feel wronged. But you were in the wrong first, so don't hold it against Lucian for putting it harshly." Looking at that face, I remembered when the whole family was on the run. He carried me on his back through all of it, and even when he fell and got hurt he wouldn't let me get so much as a scrape. Marcus used to say that if I got hurt, if I lost a single layer of skin, it meant he had failed as my brother. The brother who had once spent everything he had to keep me safe now thought giving me a hand was too much trouble. "Marcus, I really don't feel well. I can't hold on." My voice shook, pleading. "You've been like this since you were little. The second something doesn't go your way you play sick." He sighed lightly. "Be good. Once you've apologized, I'll drive you to the hospital myself. All right?" In the end I got into the car. It didn't head for the old family estate. It headed for Lucian's private wedding house downtown. The detached villa was filled with flowers, and at the end of the red carpet hung an enormous photograph of Lucian and Elena. The house blazed with light. My mother was gently kneading Elena's shoulders, and the ache in her eyes was impossible to hide. "Elena, all this jewelry must be exhausting you." My father stood nearby with his face in his hands, weeping as he told the arriving guests how much he had missed her. Lucian saw me come in and gave me a flat look. "Finally. There's no child the right age in the Family, so go put on the flower girl's dress. You'll bring the bouquet later." "Why am I the one bringing flowers?" I said. Elena took his arm, her smile soft and pure. "It only counts as a real blessing if you're the one who hands me the flowers, Cassie. And it counts as you making up for it sincerely." Violent dizziness swept over me. Only my grip on the shoe cabinet in the entryway kept me off the floor. Chapter 2 A used ampoule fell out of my pocket. My mother saw it and quickly kicked it under the sofa. "More headache medicine, I assume. There are a lot of guests today, so don't take it out where people can see it." Everyone watched her do it, but nobody cared, because in their eyes this was just another one of my little performances. Lucian came over and smoothed my hair back. "The Family announcement is today. Be sincere about this. Once Elena isn't angry anymore, I'll still take you home tonight and our engagement stands. Be good." The moment he finished, Elena threw a maid's apron at me. "There's nothing else in the house, so just make do with this, Cassie." She led me into a bedroom herself, but she had deliberately left a freshly opened box of ultra-thin condoms on the table. The bed was covered with toys of every kind and lingerie, and my own things had been dumped in the trash. Beside the trash can was a hotel welcome card. Registered guests: Lucian, Elena. The date was the day the organization was attacked. The old estate I was holding came under fire from a rival crew, and the communication lines were cut. One of my men risked his life to send the last transmission to Lucian. I thought help would come fast. What came instead was word that he was dealing with something more difficult. He arrived before dawn, exhausted, held me tight and apologized in a low voice, swore he would never fail me, swore that after the wedding he would make up for every debt twice over. It turned out that the urgent Family business that night was one long good night with Elena. I crushed the card in my fist, and the pain in my chest felt like bleeding. "How long has this been going on?" "Don't ask things that hurt everyone." He lowered his voice. "Elena has been through so much. Spending more time with her is me making amends on your behalf." My voice shook when I asked, "Making amends in bed?" Marcus strode over and pulled the card out of my hand, trying to settle me down. "It's ordinary courtesy between Family members. Lucian has stood by you for seven years. We've all seen how much he loves you." All I could think was how absurd those years of company had been. Elena leaned against Lucian's shoulder, idly stroking the key to the Family vault at her throat. "Whenever I was unhappy, Lucian would fly out to my hiding place in secret to be with me. He said you were too rigid, Cassie. Boring." That summer, my mother and I had gone out to the street to find food. Elena said she was too hungry to walk any farther, so I told her to wait right there. Three minutes, that was all. And when I came back, she was gone. For a full year the Family used every underworld contact it had to search for her, and there was nothing. Afterward my mother bought me clothes and toys, crying while she told me it wasn't my fault. My father dropped his business and watched me constantly, terrified I would do something to myself. Marcus ordered that no one in the Family was ever to bring it up again. I was naive enough to think they were sparing me the guilt because it hurt them to see me suffer. All of it was a carefully woven lie. I looked at Elena. "You came back a long time ago, didn't you?" My mother pushed her behind her back. "That's all in the past. Stop asking." Lucian stroked Elena's hair, his voice extraordinarily soft. "From now on this house runs the way you say it does. Nobody will dare mistreat you again." When Elena nodded, the ring on her hand clicked against the necklace. That necklace was the key to the vault, the thing I had begged for countless times and never gotten. Lucian always said I was too green to manage the organization's internal affairs. The last time, I made a deal with him. If I could land the European arms contract, he would take me into the vault. He gave a short laugh. "It'll all be yours once we're married. There's no rush." But what actually belonged to me was every filthy, exhausting job the organization had. My father looked at me, stone-faced. "Don't fight your sister over something this small. The love we give you doesn't hinge on it." "Everything in there is money I saved over the years." The organization had needed nothing but cash during the expansion, and the older savings were long spent. What sat in that vault now was what I had earned negotiating deals day and night. Lucian used to say it would be a fund for our children someday, and then he turned around and used it to buy Elena a new car and a new house. "It's Family property. Anyone should be able to use it." Lucian said it like it was the most reasonable thing in the world. "All of it is me making amends for you. You keep saying you love me and love your family. Can't you show even this much tolerance?" That sentence sickened me until the room tipped and my vision blurred. When I came back to myself, my last ampoule had somehow fallen out. Elena picked up the painkiller and pretended to be puzzled. "Cassie, you actually went out and bought this just to sell the act?" "Give that back." I moved fast. The ampoule slipped free and shattered on the floor. My mother shielded Elena instantly, her voice full of blame. "Are you insane? What if you'd hurt her!" "That's the medicine keeping me alive." I braced myself on the table, shaking all over. "A little ache here and there. Grit your teeth and it passes," my father snapped. Elena bent to gather the pieces, sniffling. "Don't be angry, Cassie. I'll pick it up for you." But the liquid had already soaked into the carpet. Not one drop was left. Lucian watched the whole thing and gently wiped her tears away. "Don't touch that filthy stuff. I'll have someone buy Cassie more later." Chapter 3 That medicine was the last supply in all of New York. Bringing more in from outside would take a week at best. "Lucian, I don't think I'll make it through tonight." The whole room burst out laughing. Marcus laughed until tears ran. "Cassie, you'd invent a joke like that just to get out of being the flower girl?" My mother wiped the sweat off my forehead. "Cassie, how are you still like this? When you were small and couldn't win against Elena, you played sick. It's been all these years. It's time you outgrew it." "I'm not faking." I had no strength left to argue. "All right, all right, you're not." She nodded the way you nod at a child. "Once you've handed over the flowers and seen Elena through the ceremony, we'll take you to the hospital. All right?" To the cheering of the guests, I carried the bouquet and put it in Elena's hands. The photographer called everyone in for pictures, and I stood in a yellowed apron, squeezed to the very edge of the frame like an outsider nobody had counted on. When the photographs were done, my father produced a property transfer agreement and slid it in front of me. "The Family's port operation was registered in your name. Elena is back now, so it should go to her." That port was left to me by my late grandmother. On her deathbed she took my hand in hers and said a girl needs property of her own if she wants to stand on solid ground in an organization like ours. "You've had ten peaceful years. That's enough." My father pushed the agreement closer. "Sign it and you can still live here. Nobody's love for you changes. Don't worry." Elena pouted. "But Lucian said this house is for me. If Cassie moves in, there won't be anywhere to put my things." Lucian spoke without heat. "Cassie, the organization has a warehouse standing empty. I sent men to fix it up. It's quiet and out of the way, good for you to convalesce." That warehouse was where I hid with him for two years, the worst and poorest years, when he had just come into the underworld and the Family had no footing yet. The walls leaked air on all four sides and rats and roaches crawled through it, and I stayed with him through the darkest stretch of his life without ever complaining about the hardship. Yet now the same place was the charity he was handing me. "I won't sign." Marcus patted my shoulder. "Don't be difficult. Elena suffered more in those missing years than you can imagine. You stay in the warehouse a few days and we'll come get you. It's temporary. Once she's calmed down, we're a family again." The pain tore through me and my vision doubled and blurred. I had no strength left to argue. "I need to go to the hospital." Lucian seized my wrist, forceful now. "Every Family member is here today. If you call an ambulance, are you trying to make them all think badly of Elena? Hold on one more hour. When the dinner is over I'll take you to the hospital myself." "I really can't hold on." The pain had me barely standing. In the struggle my phone slid out of my palm. Elena snatched it up first, something vicious flashing in her eyes. "Are you trying to call someone for help, so you can say we abused you?" She pressed the power button and pushed the phone into her own pocket. "Sign, and I'll give it back." Family relatives and the old men of the underworld arrived one after another. Nobody spared a thought for whether I lived or died. They were all listening to her describe ten years of hardship and wandering, how she had lived on the streets and been preyed on and nearly never saw her family again. The whole family embraced her. It was very warm, very moving. I braced myself against the wall and slowly straightened up. Just then one of my men brought me my medical file. Now they would have to believe I wasn't faking. Before I could get a word out, she found a pretext and had my man seized. Then she slapped me across the face and dropped her voice on purpose. "Cassie, you'll never know how hopeless those three minutes were, waiting for you ten years ago. Today you pay it back with interest." Then she tore my medical records to shreds right in front of me. Chapter 4 When the dinner started, Lucian noticed something was wrong with my face and helped me inside to sit down. He saw how pale I was and assumed I was cold, so he draped a wool coat over my shoulders. "Elena is only sulking. Don't take it to heart." Every time he ordered clothes from a tailor, he told them not to use wool. But today was the one day he forgot I was allergic to it. "If Cassie won't wear it, will you put it on me instead?" Elena said, sweet and coaxing. The guests teased us. "Those two were closest of anyone as children, and now that the younger one's home, the older one's jealous. Cassie was spoiled from the start. Of course she should give way to a sister who's suffered." Marcus put a pen in my hand. "Sign the agreement, apologize to Elena, and this is over for good." The agreement was pushed in front of me again. I shook my head, stubborn. "My grandmother left that to me." My father was out of patience. "Stop being willful, Cassie. Nobody has time for your scenes today. Sign it and nobody will stop you." Elena made a show of pleading. "Mom, Dad, Cassie must be angry with me. Let her calm down by herself for a while." The four of them shut me in the bedroom together. Marcus looked at me. "You come out when you admit what you did." Lucian poured me a cup of hot water and put his hand on my forehead. "Keep faking all you want, you can't fool a thermometer. Stop lying to us." "Take me to the hospital." There was almost no breath behind it. "Sign and I'll take you." As he turned, I caught his sleeve with the last of my strength, but Elena called "Lucian" from outside the door, and he never looked back at me again. "Elena's upset. I'm going to her first. Think about what you've done. When your attitude is right, I'll come see you." The door closed softly, and then it was locked from the outside. The pain in my head knocked me out. When I opened my eyes, the laughter outside was still going. I still had my emergency transmitter in the room. I had pressed one digit when the door was shoved open. Elena crossed the room fast and tore the handset out of my grip. "Still trying to call someone? Cassie, do you have to humiliate me on my very first day back?" "Give it back." I reached for it, but she shoved me down. She stared at my bloodless face and threw the handset straight out the window. "I'm not giving you a chance to call for help." The door was bolted again. I don't know how long it was before the noise outside finally stopped. Lucian came in leading Elena by the hand, my parents and Marcus behind them. "Cassie, have you thought it over?" Marcus patted my cheek. "Stop playing sick. Your last physical came back completely normal. We're not falling for it." By then I was cold all through and my mind was drifting apart. Lucian sat on the edge of the bed. "Look how understanding Elena is. She's the one who asked me to come calm you down. Sign, give her the port land, and you and I go on just as we were." My mother soothed me softly. "Your sister has nothing. Of course you should yield to her." My father agreed. "Don't think playing sick gets you out of it. It won't." Elena leaned into Lucian's chest. "Does Cassie hate me? Fine, I don't want the port. If I'd known, I wouldn't have come back at all, and then I wouldn't have upset her." "Nonsense." Lucian pulled her closer and looked at me with nothing but disappointment. "Are you only happy if you tear this Family apart?" On the bed, I didn't answer at all. He reached out and shook me, his voice as gentle as ever. "Enough now." But my body slid off the bed onto the floor. Lucian went to lift me up, and his hand happened to touch my pulse. He froze where he stood.