Chapter 1

After the final fitting for my wedding gown, Salvatore Corleone reached across the seat with familiar tenderness and pulled the seat belt over me, clicking it into place.

"Tesoro, I've already seen you in the dress. I won't be at the ceremony."

I went still.

For a moment, I thought I'd misheard him.

"What do you mean?"

Salvatore smiled as if he were telling me something harmless, then leaned over and pressed a kiss to my forehead.

"There's a girl I've taken a liking to. She's young, proud, and too stubborn to accept being kept in the shadows. So this morning, I made things official with her."

His voice remained maddeningly gentle.

"From today on, she's the woman who stands beside me."

My mind went blank. Even the low hum of the engine seemed to disappear.

"The ceremony is in a week," I said. My voice trembled despite my effort to steady it. "Salvatore, our ceremony is in one week."

"I know."

There was even a trace of apology in his eyes, as though he were the one being forced into an impossible position.

"Tesoro, you're still the woman I love most. But you know what men in our world are like. Sometimes a young woman comes along and makes a man lose his head."

He paused, then added softly, "She's only eighteen. She doesn't understand our ways yet. If I stood beside you at the altar now, she'd take it as a humiliation."

I stared at him.

Salvatore brushed his thumb over my cheek.

"If the ceremony matters that much to you, find someone else to stand beside you that day. Don't deny yourself a wedding just because I can't be there."

His smile was almost tender.

"I'd hate to see you disappointed."

My wedding gown was still lying across the back seat, carefully wrapped after the fitting.

An hour ago, I'd looked at it and imagined myself walking toward Salvatore in white.

Now the sight of it only made me cold.

My fingers tightened around the folded medical report hidden inside my coat pocket.

I had planned to show it to him in the car.

Planned to tell him that after all these years, I was finally carrying his child.

Instead, I slowly pushed the report deeper into my pocket.

Salvatore was right about one thing.

I shouldn't deny myself anything.

Especially not a wedding.

...

Salvatore ran his fingers through my hair out of old habit, wearing the easy expression of a man who believed he'd done nothing wrong before God or the Family.

But every word that left his mouth was poison.

"You know how girls are these days. She wouldn't let me touch her unless I gave her a proper place beside me."

His smile deepened.

"I spent nearly six months winning her over. She finally gave herself to me yesterday."

It felt as if an invisible hand had closed around my throat.

My hands and feet turned cold as I stared at him.

Salvatore didn't seem to notice.

"Right where you're sitting, actually." His gaze drifted over the passenger seat with unmistakable fondness. "She fought me every step of the way at first. Stubborn little thing."

His eyes lingered on the windshield.

Against my better judgment, I followed his gaze.

There were still faint smudges on the glass, traces someone had neglected to wipe away.

My stomach lurched.

Nausea surged into my throat so violently that I nearly gagged.

I gripped the seat belt until my knuckles turned white, my eyes burning.

Salvatore finally seemed to notice something was wrong.

He cupped my bloodless face between his hands, his brows drawing together in genuine confusion.

"Why are you crying? You'll still carry the Corleone name."

There was affection in his dark eyes.

Deep, familiar affection.

That was what made it unbearable.

He looked at me exactly as he always had, as though the man who had just calmly told me he'd given another woman my place, then reminisced about having her in the very seat beneath me, couldn't possibly be him.

The absurdity of it hollowed me out.

For several seconds, I couldn't breathe.

Salvatore sighed, sounding almost inconvenienced by my silence.

"I know you're upset, but she's sensitive. If I show up at your ceremony after making things official with her, she'll cry."

His thumb brushed beneath my eye.

"She's different from the women we're used to. Innocent. Sheltered. She doesn't understand how this life works. All she wants is a man who belongs completely to her."

He paused.

"I pursued her for six months before she finally trusted me. I can't turn around and humiliate her now."

Then he looked at me with the calm certainty of a man who had already decided I would forgive him.

"You've always been sensible, tesoro. You understand our world better than she does. You understand me."

Six months.

I almost laughed.

Our ceremony had taken six months to arrange too.

For six months, Salvatore had sat beside me choosing the church, the reception hall, the flowers, the wine, even the guest list filled with capos, soldiers, their wives, and every allied Family expected to witness me finally take my place beside him.

And during those same six months, somewhere beyond my sight, he'd been pursuing another woman with just as much determination.

Perhaps more.

My fingers curled slowly into my palms.

I closed my eyes.

Without thinking, my thumb rubbed the bare base of my ring finger.

"Then let's end it."

Silence.

Salvatore stared at me for two full seconds.

Then he laughed softly.

"Don't say things you don't mean."

I opened my eyes.

His expression hadn't changed.

"You came to me when you were eighteen," he said. "You've spent ten years beside me. You've lost two of my children."

His gaze settled on my face, almost pitying.

"If you leave me now, what man in this territory do you think would dare take you?"

I stared at him.

Something scorching seemed to roll through my chest, leaving everything it touched raw.

Ten years.

We'd slept beneath bridges together.

We'd split a single cup of instant noodles and pretended neither of us was still hungry.

There had been nights when we didn't even have that, when all we could do was drink water until our stomachs stopped aching.

Back then, Salvatore had been nobody.

And I had been eighteen years old and foolish enough to believe that as long as I stayed beside him, we could survive anything.

We had been so poor that every unexpected expense felt like a death sentence.

When I first discovered I was pregnant, we could barely afford food, much less the medicine and care I needed.

I remembered standing outside in the freezing cold until my entire body went numb.

I remembered climbing those stairs afterward, one slow step at a time.

And I remembered the fall.

The blood.

Salvatore carrying me through the snow with shaking hands.

That was the first child we'd lost.

And now, ten years later, the man I'd once sacrificed everything for was sitting beside me, calmly telling me that no one else would want what remained.