No Saint at the Altar

On her twenty-fourth birthday Celia Moretti learns she is to marry Dario Bellandi that night - her father's price for a ceasefire. She signs on one condition: her younger sister walks free. The wedding night is bugged, the alliance is watched, and her new husband is the most feared name on the docks. Dario never forces her, but he does not explain himself either. When a rival's son corners her with a gun he answers in blood; when a former lover walks in with her own key, he lets Celia see it. Slowly she stops waiting to be rescued: she reads the shipping ledgers, learns to shoot, and finds the enemy already inside the port. Then the man who swears he will never hurt her locks her to the bed for her own safety, and a rival drags her into a dead terminal, demanding the harbor in exchange for her life. Dario trades everything to reach her and finally says the words he has swallowed since he was twelve. What he cannot buy is whether she will choose to stay.