The Capo's Unwanted Wife

Dr. Wren Abbas has one greenhouse, eleven orchids, and no interest in the Marchetti family's internal politics. Then her father signs a contract she never saw, and on a Wednesday afternoon in Palermo she is married to Salvatore Marchetti in a registry office with a witness she doesn't know. Sal is the family's least-feared capo. He has spent thirty-four years being underestimated, and he thinks this is a business arrangement. Wren thinks it's a hostage situation. Both of them are wrong within six weeks. She plants an orchid in Sicilian soil and refuses to speak to him for four days. He heats the greenhouse overnight because he saw her rub her hands together. Then she's pregnant, her father starts talking about his rights, and Sal does what Sal does — quietly, completely, without asking her first. She should be furious. She is. She stays anyway.