His Betrothed Read online

  “I will,” he had promised solemnly, proudly holding the trail of lace on the christening gown’s hem, convinced that when the Sciopelli guests looked in his direction, they did so because they recognized a formidable guardian and protector for the young baby.

  On the steps of a swank Glencoe restaurant, satisfied with his final and enduring promise, Mrs. Sciopelli had died. She never asked about her husband.

  Zach walked up the block, past a sprawling English Tudor mansion that served as Sacred Heart’s rectory, through the subdued mourners gathering at the steps of the cathedral. He scanned the rooftops and doorways of the shops along busy Tower Road.

  Aside from the television cameras covering the event for the evening news, the feds manned a video camera on the roof of the dry cleaner. Zach recognized a pair of FBI plainclothes scribbling notes from behind the shutters of the bakery window. Lurking near the uniformed officer directing traffic at the cathedral’s entrance were three others taking down license plate numbers. By day’s end, a photo album of mourners would be available for any law enforcement official who needed it.

  Even the flowers that graced the inside of the church would be photographed by the feds as soon as the mourners left for the grave-side service. Those photos would be studied and puzzled over—who sent the largest arrangement, where the arrangements were placed and, God forbid, if any yellow flowers were sent.

  Yellow flowers were a mark of betrayal and enmity.

  Zach paused at the steps of the cathedral, letting the sun fall flush upon his face. Waiting until he was sure that the cameraman hidden behind the curtains of the deli across the street could snap a few shots. Giving in to a mischievous impulse, Zach waved. He didn’t want any misunderstandings later.

  He was here at the funeral—he made no excuses for himself. He stepped into the dark, cool, marble-floored cathedral. A choir of young boys, perfectly pitched, sang “Regina, Queen of Heaven” from behind a tapestry screen placed on the right side of the sacristy.

  Two glistening polished mahogany caskets were placed in front of the richly appointed altar. The steps surrounding the altar were crowded by a cascade of brilliant colored flowers.

  Not a yellow flower in sight.

  The Martin family wasseated in the pew directly behind Tony Sciopelli, Jr., his wife, Maria, and his two younger brothers, Rocco and Salvatore. He nodded to each of them in turn. He kissed Maria’s cool cheek and awkwardly repeated the ritual with Isabel, Salvatore’s fiancée. She had been a guest of the Sciopellis for just the past month and the double murder would no doubt put off their wedding date.

  As he surveyed the Sciopellis, Zach realized with a start that he had unconsciously thought he would find Angel in the pew where her family was seated.

  If they had married, she would have been there. If they had married, the Martin and Sciopelli families would have been forever joined through their children. That was what her father had wanted, what his father had promised for him. And denying them their wish was the first of many betrayals Zach had made.

  Because he knew that to marry Angel would have been wrong, a betrayal to what was right.

  “Darling, we were worried you wouldn’t make it,” Jeanne Martin whispered, making room for him in the pew. He sat beside his mother and she leaned over to kiss his cheek. Her perfume was an expensive oriental, her black silk shantung suit Dior, but her eyes were worn and tired.

  Still, she was the most beautiful woman in the cathedral, even if Salvatore’s fiancée was supposed to be a famous runway model in Italy.

  His mother touched the scar on his cheek. Funny, as if she were surprised by it every time she saw him. A scrape with a bunch of neighborhood toughs who had been relentlessly bullying his brother, Guy, Jr. Though Zach was younger by two years than Guy and his tormenters, he had charged. His ferocious defense of Guy had brought peace for his brother and a razor-thin white line on Zach’s cheek.

  “Ma, it’s not going away,” he said.

  She smiled. It was their private joke.

  “It saves you from being too handsome,” she said, gently rubbing it.

  Zach nodded hello to his father, Guy Martin, Sr., who coughed a reply. He looked worse than he had a week ago, when Zach had seen him last. The death of his colleague and friend had taken its toll.

  Guy, Jr., held out his hand. His puffy fingers trembled—Zach guessed his brother’s distress was due to the fact that it was already twelve-thirty in the afternoon and drinks hadn’t been served.

  “Hey, Zach,” Guy whispered. “Good to see you. Sorry about you bein’ there and all.”

  “You weren’t at the dinner?”

  “I was. But I was inside. I didn’t get out there until it was damn near over. But I heard you helped her…at the end. I saw you going in the ambulance with her, though I guess she was already gone.”

  Zach nodded.

  “How’s Anna?” he asked, quietly so that no one would hear.

  Of course, Anna would be at home, at the imposing Georgian mansion on the estate overlooking Lake Michigan. Anna never appeared in public, except for the increasingly rare afternoons that Zach was able to take off work to treat her to a movie, the zoo, the circus.

  Some people had even forgotten that Zach had a younger sister, which was how his father would prefer it.

  “Maria lent me her housekeeper to baby-sit her.”

  “That was very nice.”

  “But you haven’t been so nice. Why did you have to buy her the Barbie Malibu Beach House?” his mother whispered with mock severity. “She’s put real sand all over her bedroom floor to make it more realistic.”

  Zach shrugged. “At least she likes it.”

  The last soaring notes of the hymn echoed through the palatial church. Bishop John Ferrigan, dressed in the sumptuous robes of his office, called for a moment of silent reflection.

  Zach crossed himself, but before he could close his eyes in prayer a flicker of movement behind the side altar to Saint Joseph caught his attention. He stared, puzzled, and then the figure, dressed barely suitable in rumpled mourning, peered at him from behind the shadows.

  O’Malley.

  Wanting to believe the best of him, Zach assumed the hunter had feelings of respect for the prey that had been taken down so brutally by another. But it could just as well be that O’Malley was working, storing up even more information about the two families he had worked so hard to bring down.

  Still, being here was a risk. The D.A. wasn’t welcome.

  Before Zach could make any acknowledgment, the shadow was swallowed by the darkness of the Saint Joseph sanctuary and Zach wondered if he had only imagined O’Malley’s presence.

  He’d have to ask him about it later.

  Zach closed his eyes and his thoughts fell into the cadence set by the bishop. He whispered the familiar words of comfort and hope for the dead. Then he heard an audible murmur at the back of the cathedral.

  His mother turned around, the brim of her straw hat brushing against his ear.

  “Oh, heavens!” she cried.

  In the row ahead of them, Rocco muttered an oath and was quickly shushed by Tony, Jr.

  “Our prayers have been answered at last,” Salvatore exclaimed.

  “What is she doing here?” Zach’s brother, Guy, demanded.

  “She came,” his father wheezed triumphantly. “I knew she would come. She was always a good daughter. And I, for one, have missed her.”

  Zach didn’t need to turn around. His heart soared even as he shook his head.

  Trouble.

  ANGEL SCIOPELLI LET the heavy oak door swing shut behind her, suppressing a shiver as the cool, damp air of the cathedral enveloped her. She blinked twice and reached to take off her oversize dark tortoiseshell glasses. Then she noticed the people.

  A few hundred, maybe more, attended the double funeral for the Sciopellis and, although Sacred Heart Cathedral was the largest in the northern suburbs of Chicago, the pews were filled.

  Everyone had
swiveled around, necks craning, to look at her. The expressions on their faces ran the gamut from disdain to disgust

  Angel did a quick inventory of herself. In the taxi from Chicago’s Palmer House Hotel, she had brushed her waist-length blond hair to a glistening sheen. Her black heels were higher than the sneakers she ordinarily wore to her job as a preschool teacher, but not so spiky that anyone could disapprove. Her stockings were dark and sheer—but she wouldn’t give anyone the satisfaction of checking for runs now. Her black linen shift cut just at her knees didn’t have too many wrinkles considering its long wear, and the matching straw envelope purse was classic and conservative.

  The looks she garnered had nothing to do with some flaw in her appearance and everything to do with her merely showing up.

  She shoved her sunglasses firmly on the bridge of her nose, wishing she could take them off because her eyes were having trouble adjusting to the gray, murky lighting of the sanctuary.

  But she needed the protection that the huge frames gave her—no one must see her fear.

  As she stood uncertainly, something across her right shoulder caught her eye. She looked down the row of richly carved marble columns.

  An old man, his dark suit swallowed by shadow, his face burnished by the light cast through red stained glass. He stepped backward, pressing himself against the wall of a confessional.

  Still, she recognized him from the picture on the front page of her morning paper.

  District Attorney Patrick O’Malley.

  “It will end with him or me in the grave,” her father had said.

  And so it had, Angel thought grimly. She wondered if O’Malley were here as a measure of his respect or of his triumph.

  Stepping out into the light, O’Malley stared at her with frank curiosity. She stared back. Then he smiled, an odd thing to do at a funeral and a gesture she did not return.

  Then he walked away, his heels tap-tap-tapping on the marble floor.

  She forced herself to look down the aisle where once she had thought she would walk as a bride. She looked to the two caskets side by side in front of the sacristy and, swaying, she came face-to-face with the finality of her parents’ deaths. What had only been a news story on page one of her morning paper now became a real and visceral truth.

  She scooted into the back most pew, which had a single open spot. Then Angel crossed herself, said a quick prayer and sat down, opening her funeral program. She looked up once to see her brother Tony standing in his place at the front pew.

  He beckoned with the barest motion of his wrist.

  But she shook her head. She wanted to keep her distance, pay her respects and get on the next plane out of Chicago.

  He nodded, as if to say that he respected her choice, and sat down.

  She didn’t want to look, didn’t want to be curious, didn’t want to be interested, but she scanned the row behind Tony to find Zach. And she did. From behind, he looked taller, broader, more sure of himself, than she remembered, his hair darker than the blue-black crows that punctuated the farmland she now called home.

  Seeing him—well, actually, seeing his back—for the first time in ten years, she experienced a longdormant range of emotions. The disbelief. The grief. The endless questioning of herself, of him, of their love. Even, yes, the anger. And then the numbness.

  And the determination that she would never, ever go through what she had endured when she had followed her conscience out of Chicago and assumed the man she thought of as her husband was going with her.

  She put thoughts of him out of her head as Bishop Ferrigan began the service. Instead, she reflected upon her parents. Especially her innocent and beloved mother. If it weren’t for her mother, she wouldn’t have come.

  Only when the service was over and the coffins had made their slow parade down the aisle did she look up, to see Zach Martin get up from the pew behind the last clump of mourners.

  As he approached, she realized that he had grown in the past ten years. Grown not just in height and in musculature, but in the subtle confidence of manhood. Maybe it was better that he hadn’t come with her because, frankly, he intimidated her.

  And she didn’t like to be intimidated.

  “Hello, Zach,” she said, playing it cool.

  “Welcome home,” Zach said with a courtly bow of his head. His scent was sure and masculine. “It’s good to see you.”

  She willed herself not to look at him, fearing that the slightest weakening on her part would open the floodgates of desire and betrayal and questions that she had kept in check for ten long, excruciatingly lonely years.

  “I’m not staying,” she said firmly, putting her funeral program into her purse and snapping it shut.

  “I’m sure you’re a busy woman,” he replied, and she noticed that he asked nothing about the intervening years.

  “Yes, I am,” she said, although the headmistress at the nursery school where she taught had said to take as long as she needed.

  “Did you take a cab here? Would you like a ride to the cemetery?” he asked. “There will be a short service at the tomb.”

  “I don’t think I’d be welcome.”

  “You will be if you’re with me,” he said confidently, and took her arm in his.

  As he led her to the shiny red sports car parked up the block, Angel wondered what crimes he had committed, or had ordered committed, what bargains with the devil he had made. She reflected that there was an injustice that he could be so immoral and yet have the relaxed countenance of a man with a clear conscience.

  His hair was sleek and shiny, maybe two weeks overdue on a cut. His eyes were clear, wreathed only by the lightest feather strokes of lines. His smile was broad, his teeth white and gleaming.

  She decided it was terrible, truly terrible, to accept favors from a man who had betrayed not just her but also the principles of what was right.

  And yet she knew his strength, and she rued the fact that there was no one—no one she could name—upon whose arm she would be able to survive the gauntlet of relatives and family friends who had been ordered to consider her dead ten years before.

  “Thank you,” she said as he slid into the driver’s seat beside her.

  She knew her voice betrayed an impolite chill.

  “My pleasure,” he murmured as if he had not noticed her rebuff, and then he pulled the Camaro behind the slow-moving cortege.

  Chapter Two

  “Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.”

  Bishop Ferrigan shook the final droplets of holy water onto the two newest coffins to be placed in the Sciopelli burial chambers.

  The tomb was an eight-foot-tall granite replica of the entrance to the Gangivecchio Abbey just outside Palermo. The stern marble cherub stooped on its roof bore both sword and shield, eternally guarding the remains of generations of Sciopellis.

  Just inside the wrought-iron doorway, the pall-bearers—foremen of the Sciopelli Construction Company—awkwardly struggled to slide the two heavy caskets onto adjoining shelves.

  That last piece of work for their boss accomplished, the men wiped the moss and spiderwebs from their hands and slipped back to their wives and families scattered throughout the crowd at the grave-side service.

  The red-and-white robed altar boy closed and locked the door of the tomb. Bishop Ferrigan murmured the final prayers of the dead and, blessing the crowd, made a sign of the cross.

  He then stepped aside for Tony, Jr., who placed two bloodred long-stemmed roses on the steps of his parents’ final resting place. He crossed himself and, with the barest nod, silently granted his two younger brothers, Rocco and Salvatore, permission to approach the family tomb. Salvatore, thin and ethereally pale in sharp contrast to his robust brothers, pulled out a handkerchief and wiped away tears. Rocco yanked the two roses from his younger brother’s hand and put them down on the mosscovered steps.

  The three brothers stood together.

  “Angel, come here,” Tony called out, squinting against the sunlight. The clu
mp of mourners turned to follow his gaze to Zach and Angel. Angel had chosen to stand in back so as not to draw attention to herself, but her strategy had backfired badly. “Come on, Angel, please. Make some room for our sister.”

  She stepped forward uncertainly and was borne along the wave of hesitant greetings and solemn handshakes from strangers and long-forgotten acquaintances.

  Her hand was clasped by Tony’s and he hoisted her up the tomb’s steps. Salvatore, who had played monopoly with her for two weeks straight when she got chicken pox, sobbed.

  “It’s all right, Salvatore,” she said, as she had done so often when he was a child and suffered nightmares.

  As he calmed in her embrace, she felt a familiar and long-denied love for him. Rocco stepped forward to awkwardly pat her back. He had always been the one to entertain her, putting on little puppet shows for her and slipping her out of the house to go to movies.

  How could she believe these men, who were her own flesh and blood, were bad? How could she love men who did terrible things? Why didn’t she judge them now as harshly as she had when she was seventeen and full of ideals?

  It would be as if to believe that she herself was tainted in some way.

  “It’s all right, little sister,” Rocco said. “We feel the same way, too.”

  But Angel knew Rocco misunderstood. Her tears were not for her parents—she had shed many tears for them, both before and after hearing of their deaths—but for the love she felt for her brothers. It was as strong as the day she alone got on the plane to Las Vegas—and as confused as ever.

  “Welcome, Angel,” Tony murmured. He pulled her into a big bear hug. “We have missed you every single day for ten years. We’re surprised to see you here.”

  She looked up at him, expecting to meet his eyes. But he looked beyond her, his baby blue eyes gone unexpectedly icy cold and calculating. She followed his gaze out beyond the crowd, as far as the clump of trees where Zach stood.

  Zach’s jaw tilted upward, a challenge.

  “Come on back to the house with us,” Tony purred, abruptly shifting gears. “I won’t take no for an answer. We are family, Angel, and we have ten long years to catch up on.”