The Mafia Princess’s New Groom Chapter 06
Vincent stared at me in shock.
The guests erupted into whispers.
“Well, what did we expect? He’s an orphan the family took in. Got too big for his britches, building his own little crew on the side, sleeping with the princess’s maid. The man never knew his place.”
“All those years the Don treated him like a son. And this is how he repays the family? Bringing his mistress to the wedding in a white dress?”
“The princess handed him the waterfront on a silver platter. He wouldn’t last a week out there without the Mancini name behind him.”
Their voices blurred into a low hum.
My mind drifted somewhere far away.
I remembered the first time I ever saw Vincent.
A scrawny kid, barely tall enough to reach my shoulder.
Eyes glued to the floor, hands clasped behind his back, standing next to me stiff as a little soldier waiting for orders.
“Miss Mancini, your father sent me to look after you.”
His voice was so quiet I almost missed it.
He didn’t dare look at me.
He just stood there, rigid and serious, like a dog someone had kicked too many times.
Then the wind picked up and swept the hair off his forehead.
I saw his eyes for the first time.
Sharp.
Deep.
A little wild, like something caged that hadn’t forgotten what the sky looked like.
Something turned over in my chest.
Just like that, I was gone.
Twelve years old, and I’d already decided this boy was mine.
He was different from everyone else in the family.
No schemes.
No angles.
Just a kid with nothing to his name and loyalty written all over his face.
I thought he was the only clean, honest soul left in my world.
I started talking about him to my father every chance I got.
How brave he was.
How loyal.
How he never complained, never asked for anything, never so much as looked at me wrong.
I wheedled and begged until my father agreed to give him a real shot.
And Vincent didn’t waste it. He clawed his way up, one job at a time.
Every task my father threw at him, he knocked it out of the park.
No hesitation.
No fear.
By twenty, he was my father’s right hand.
Every boss on the waterfront tipped their hat when he walked by.
Everyone called him Mr. Vincent.
That year, he took my hand and led me up to the hilltop behind the estate.
The sky was thick with stars, so many they almost looked fake, like someone had flung a handful of diamonds across black velvet.
He turned to me.
His eyes were the same ones I’d fallen for all those years ago — only now they burned with something fiercer.
Something that made my heart slam against my ribs.
“Isabella, I want every star up there as my witness.”
His voice was low and steady.
“If I ever betray you, let me burn in hell for eternity..”
I believed every word.
I believed him the way only a girl who’s loved someone her whole life can believe—completely, recklessly, without a single doubt.
Now the blade was in my hand.
The room held its breath.
Five hundred guests, and not one of them dared to blink.
Every eye was locked on the knife as the tip found its way to Vincent’s ankle.
Vincent broke.
The tears came all at once — ugly, desperate, the kind of crying that strips a man down to nothing. “Isabella, don’t! PLEASE!”