Chapter 1

My husband, the man who had sworn on his own blood that he loathed children, suddenly could not tear himself away from the widow's infant next door. He sat up with the baby every night in the safe house across the courtyard, cradling him with the devotion of a father.

Meanwhile, he looked through me as if I were furniture.

He didn't come when my car was run off the road. He didn't come after they cut the glass out of me on the surgeon's table. Not once.

So the night of the gathering to mark my return home, I made my decision.

In front of all of them, the famiglia, the associates, the men who'd sworn oaths at my table, I stood and said, "I'm renouncing the union."

A silence dropped over the room like a blade coming down.

Someone murmured, "The accident must have rattled something loose in her head."

My husband, Salvatore Rossi, threw his wine in my face and snarled, "I kept my distance because of the accident, because you were healing, and now you're jealous of a six-month-old baby?"

I wiped the wine from my face, slow, unhurried. My eyes settled on the faint red mark on his neck, set too high for any infant to have left it. My voice came out cold.

"Since you love her child so much, once the oath is severed you'll both be free to have each other."

——

Salvatore's face twitched, the counterfeit tenderness in his eyes giving way to panic. He tugged his collar up in a clumsy attempt to hide the mark, and both his palms smoothed the front of his jacket, composure worn like a mask. His eyes burned red with fury.

"Adriana, what the hell is that supposed to mean?" he snapped.

"I've been minding Gia so I could learn to be a better father. For the children we're supposed to have!"

"And now you want to throw away ten years over something this small? Have you lost your mind?"

I didn't answer. I reached into my bag, drew out the renunciation papers I'd had my Consigliere prepare, and set them down on the table in front of him, calm as still water.

"Sign them. We put it before Lombardi tomorrow and it's finished."

The whole room went still. My friends stared at me, stunned. My family traded frantic looks.

They couldn't take it in. We were the union everyone in the underworld envied. The perfect story. The bond no blade could cut.

But I wasn't performing anymore.

Salvatore gaped at the documents, shaken that I'd carried it this far. Even my mother, who never spoke out of turn at these tables, began to tremble.

She rushed forward. "Adriana... you can't mean this."

My father snatched the papers up and scowled. "Ten years, Adriana. You and Salvatore were always solid, always good together. What happened to you?"

Salvatore's brothers pressed in, every one of them desperate to turn me.

"Adriana, don't do this. It's a misunderstanding, nothing more."

"The woman's a widow under our protection, alone with a child. Salvatore was only being decent."

"He held off on children because he wanted your empire to stand first. How can you not see how much the man loves you?"

Their words drove into me like a thousand needles. I said nothing.

I picked the agreement up again and pressed it back into Salvatore's hands. "This union is over. I can't do it anymore."

Then my father crossed the room. Before I could move, he struck me so hard my head snapped to the side.

"You ungrateful girl!" he roared. "You'd renounce a man like Salvatore? I ought to beat the sense back into you!"

"You think you can cast him aside after everything he's done for this family? Have you no shame?"

My cheek throbbed. My mouth filled with the metallic taste of blood. I didn't flinch.

My mother clutched my arm, her voice shaking with desperation.

"Please, talk it through," she begged. "Don't make a rash thing of this."

"You'll never find a better man. And if this is because you've given your heart to someone else, don't look to me for a blessing."

I raised my head slowly, my face stinging, my pride in pieces on the floor. All around me, the voices murmured and judged.

And just as he always did, Salvatore stepped in to play the hero.

He held me gently, wiping the blood from my lip, shielding me as though I were the most precious thing he owned.

To every eye in that room, he was the perfect husband.

But only the two of us knew the truth.

Only the two of us knew the rot beneath the surface.

"Adriana," he murmured, his voice tender and threaded through with manipulation. "Even if you've given yourself to someone else... no one will ever love you the way I do."