The wedding was four days away, and Sophia hadn't lifted a finger.
Not because she was careless. Not because she was lazy. But because there was nothing left for her to control. Every decision had already been made, long before her name was ever stitched into the invitations.
The dress. The flowers. The rings.
The man.
Especially the man.
Dante Rizzoli—The Duke of the North—was her future. A man she'd never kissed. Never held. Never even spoken to alone. But in four days, she would belong to him.
That was the arrangement. The price of salvation.
Her father's empire had been crumbling quietly for months now, all because her father was believed to have a hand in Rachel's death.
When the last bank walked away and the government closed in, it wasn't bankruptcy that came to collect.
It was Dante.
No one knew what he truly was. To the public, he was a reclusive nobleman, an old-blood heir with cold eyes and colder intentions. But everyone underground—every politician, every investor, every man who'd ever tried to shake hands with a devil—knew the truth.
Dante Rizzoli didn't answer to the mafia.
He was the mafia.
And Sophia was the offering left at his doorstep.
The room smelled like roses and panic.
She sat on the edge of the chaise lounge, legs drawn up beneath her, the silk of her nightgown whispering as she moved. A silver coin glinted in her hand, warm from the friction of her fingers.
Heads.
Tails.
Heads.
Tails.
She'd been flipping it for hours.
There was no game, no real decision riding on it. The motion was just a rhythm. A small, stupid way of pretending she had a say in anything at all.
"Don't fidget," Alessia said from the vanity, without turning. "You'll crease your slip."
Sophia said nothing.
Her cousin had been running the wedding like a general since the engagement was signed. Alessia didn't sleep, didn't eat properly, and was now operating on espresso and fear alone. But she kept everything moving. If Sophia was the marionette, Alessia was the trembling hand keeping the strings from tangling.
And yet… it was Alessia who had chosen the dress. Alessia who had sent the guest list. Alessia who was coordinating the arrival of a man no one dared to speak to directly.
She was saving Sophia.
And also offering her up.
"Did the tailor drop off the veil?" Sophia asked flatly.
"He's finishing the embroidery," Alessia said. "It's being hand-stitched with Rachel's motif. The rose thorns. Like in her engagement photos."
Sophia's fingers froze around the coin.
There it was again. That name. That ghost.
Rachael.
The dead woman. The original fiancée. The first bride-to-be. The one whose shoes Sophia had been ordered to step into—and apparently, veil too.
They didn't speak of her directly. No one did. But everything—everything—in the wedding was chosen with Rachael's memory in mind.
The color scheme.
The music.
The cathedral in the North.
It hadn't taken long for Sophia to understand what was happening. She wasn't being married.
She was being replaced.
"You don't have to keep doing this," Sophia said quietly. "You can stop pretending it's my wedding."
Alessia turned at last, her eyes rimmed red, her hair pulled into something tight and functional.
"I'm doing this because if I don't, you'll break," she said. "And if you break, Sophia—really break—there's no one left to protect you."
From Dante. From the contract. From the world she was being dragged into.
Sophia didn't argue. She just went back to flipping the coin.
The gown was hanging in the corner of the room, sheathed in protective plastic. She hadn't dared touch it.
She knew what it looked like already, from the photos Alessia had shown her, voice trembling with excitement and fear.
"It's custom, of course," Alessia had said. "Hand-sewn in Milan. The bodice is identical to Rachael's. Her dressmaker was brought out of retirement for this."
Of course it was. Of course she was.
Sophia had smiled thinly at the time, but now, the gown loomed like a coffin in lace.
Not hers. Never was.
She wondered if Dante had chosen it himself, or if someone else had remembered Rachael in such detail that they could reproduce the curvature of her neckline.
Sophia didn't look like her. That much she knew.
But with the right veil… the right lighting… no one would notice.
Or maybe no one would dare mention it.
That night, she dreamed she was underwater.
A cathedral made of ice rose around her, silent and endless. She was walking down an aisle that never ended, bare feet slipping on marble. Everyone was watching her, but their faces were blank—smudged by frost and shadow.
And at the altar stood a man made of mirrors.
She couldn't see his face. Only her own, over and over, twisted into something she didn't recognize. The reflection of a woman trying to smile with her mouth sewn shut.
She woke with her hand clenched around the coin so tightly the metal had imprinted into her skin.
Three days left.
There were fittings to attend. Protocols to rehearse. Security teams to coordinate. The Rizzoli family didn't do casual ceremonies.
Their weddings were public negotiations.
Dante hadn't contacted her directly once since the arrangement was finalized. Instead, his second-in-command had sent papers. Orders. Expectations.
Her signature was needed on a confidentiality contract. Her wardrobe had to be vetted. Her travel routes mapped and monitored.
And above all, she was told to remain composed.
As if her grief was an inconvenience. As if her resistance was unseemly.
At lunch, Alessia set a folder down in front of her.
"These are the vows," she said. "They were written by Dante's counsel. You'll memorize them. There's room for a personal statement if you want, but…"
"But?"
Alessia hesitated. "He's not expecting one."
Of course he wasn't.
She skimmed the lines. Words of devotion. Loyalty. Obedience. Dressed up in elegant metaphor but all pointing to the same message: you are his now.
"What if I wrote something different?" Sophia asked.
Alessia didn't look up. "Then I'd have to burn it before anyone else saw."
There was no humor in it. Only fact.
She found herself in front of the mirror that evening, staring.
Not at herself. At Rachael.
That's who stared back now.
Her hair had been lightened. Styled the same way. The makeup lessons had subtly reshaped her features to match archived photos Alessia wasn't supposed to have.
The resemblance wasn't perfect.
But it was enough.
She touched her own face. Cold. Still.
"I'm not her," she whispered.
The reflection didn't flinch.
Two days.
The chapel was already being decorated. The procession was rehearsing with a body double.
Aaron, her brother, called from overseas and said, "You're brave, Soph. Doing this for Dad."
Brave.
That wasn't the word she'd have chosen.
She hadn't seen her father in a week. The last time they spoke, he'd kissed her forehead with a trembling hand and said, "You'll be safe now."
As if that justified it. As if being safe meant being someone else's possession.
As if safety mattered more than freedom.
That night, she packed a bag.
Not to run. Not yet.
But she needed to remember she could. That her legs still worked. That there was still a version of herself somewhere beyond these walls—beyond the ghost-white dress and thorned embroidery.
She packed the coin.
And one photograph of herself from before. Before all this. Before Rachael began breathing through her skin.
One day left.
The rehearsals were over.
Tomorrow, she would walk down an aisle watched by men in suits, women in diamonds, and guards with earpieces.
She would be bound to a man with dead eyes and a long memory.
And she would do it in the name of survival.
But tonight, she sat in the dark, holding the coin between her fingers, no longer flipping it. Just holding it. Like a weight. Like proof she hadn't surrendered all the way yet.
Because maybe, just maybe—this story wasn't over.
And maybe the girl in the mirror wasn't finished fighting