Her father paid his last debt with his daughter's name on the paper. Camille Bruno has a restaurant in Queens, a knife she loves, and no intention of marrying anyone. On a Tuesday she is told she is engaged to Salvatore Bruno - fifty-one, immaculate, and owed sixty years of favors by her family. He gives her the ground floor of his brownstone and a contractor's number. He does not ask her to be anything. He does not explain why the restaurant that raised her almost lost its lease five years ago, or who quietly paid for it. He is old enough to have been her father's friend. He is rich enough to have bought anything else. He waited five years to tell her anything at all. When a rival family moves on his routes, Camille walks into the room with a tray in her hands. Salvatore watches. He does not stop her. He should have known better.

Ihr Vater bezahlte seine letzte Schuld mit dem Namen seiner Tochter auf einem Blatt Papier. Camille Bruno hat ein Restaurant in Queens, ein Messer, das sie liebt, und keinerlei Absicht, jemals zu heiraten. An einem Dienstag erfährt sie, dass sie mit Salvatore Bruno verlobt ist - einundfünfzig, makellos, und ihrer Familie seit sechzig Jahren Gefallen schuldig. Er überlässt ihr das Erdgeschoss seines Brownstone-Hauses und die Nummer eines Bauunternehmers. Er verlangt nicht, dass sie etwas Bestimmtes ist. Er erklärt nicht, warum das Restaurant, das sie großgezogen hat, vor fünf Jahren fast seinen Mietvertrag verloren hätte - oder wer still dafür bezahlt hat. Er ist alt genug, um ein Freund ihres Vaters gewesen zu sein. Er ist reich genug, um sich alles andere gekauft zu haben. Er wartete fünf Jahre, um ihr überhaupt etwas zu sagen. Als eine rivalisierende Familie seine Routen angreift, betritt Camille den Raum mit einem Tablett in den Händen. Salvatore sieht zu. Er hält sie nicht auf. Er hätte es besser wissen müssen.

Bianca Vitale was taken at a bus stop on an ordinary Thursday and married before the week ended. Not to the man she was promised to. To the man who inherited the problem of her. Alessandro Costa runs his family's ports and answers to an uncle he despises. When the old man decided a magistrate's daughter was worth more alive and inside the house, Alessandro was handed a wife and told to be grateful. He gave her a room, a phone with one number saved, and his word that no one would touch her. Then she used the phone to call her father, and Alessandro heard every word, and understood exactly what kind of woman he had married. A captive mafia arranged marriage romance about the one deal a man like him never expected to want to keep.

Bianca Sorrentino was on her way to a wedding she didn't want to attend. Now she's snowed into a shut-down farmhouse in the Abruzzo mountains with a wounded man, a locked briefcase, and no phone signal. Sal Cuccia says he's a businessman. The gunshot in his shoulder says otherwise. So does the case, which Bianca opens on the second night - and finds her dead brother's face staring back from a stack of surveillance photographs. Four days is a long time to be trapped with the man whose family buried the truth about how her brother died. Long enough to learn he's the one who kept the file. Long enough to stop being careful. When the plows come, only one of them can leave with the evidence.