Chapter 1

At my engagement party, Lorenzo and I were standing on the stage, receiving toasts from the whole family.

Then Bianca Russo came flying out of the crowd with that bucket.

“You cursed jinx! Stay the hell away from Don Moretti!”

She spun toward Lorenzo, eyes wet, voice cracking.

“What does she have that I don’t?”

Lorenzo slapped her clean across the face and had two of his men drag her out.

“Listen to me. I don’t fuck around with street rats. You touch Aria again, and I’ll bury you myself.”

But Bianca didn’t stop.

She wouldn’t stop.

She jumped me outside my building.

Threw hot coffee in my face.

Paid some guys to corner me in a parking garage.

Every single time, Lorenzo shut her down.

Hard.

Then one night, she wired a bomb to my car.

I spent a month in the ICU.

My right leg never walked straight again.

Lorenzo lost it.

He broke both her legs with a tire iron and pulled strings to get her sent upstate to federal prison.

Everyone in the family said the same thing — “Don Moretti would die for that woman.”

Until the day I went down to the wine cellar for a bottle of red.

I heard voices through the wall.

Soft.

Wet.

Familiar.

It was Bianca.

“My leg still aches when it rains. You were rough with me, baby.”

Lorenzo was quiet for a second.

Then, flat: “Then remember it.”

She giggled.

“What would little Aria think if she knew you were punishing me… in bed?”

“Enough.”

“I’m kidding. Just keep me company every day, and I won’t stray.”

My blood turned to ice.

So this was our undying love.

---

This.

“Softer, Lorenzo. Jesus, you’re always so rough.”

Her voice came through the wall again.

“Does your precious Aria ever see you like this, Don? What would she do if she heard us right now?”

“Shut up.”

“You like me better. You only keep her around because you feel sorry for her, right?”

“Focus, little girl.”

“Lorenzo, I want out. I’ve been in this basement for months. I’m losing my mind down here.”

“Not yet. It’s not time.”

My nails dug into my palms until I felt blood.

Bianca was supposed to be locked up upstate.

So how the hell was she in my house?

In my basement?

How long?

A month?

Six months?

Or had she never seen the inside of a prison at all?

I turned and dragged myself up the stairs.

At the bedroom door, my knees gave out.

I hit the floor and stayed there.

I lay flat on my back, staring at the ceiling, tears sliding sideways into my hair.

Everything came rushing back.

When I was eighteen, my parents were killed in a mafia crossfire meant for my father.

He was a made man.

They shoved me under a car and covered me with their bodies while the bullets and rubble came down.

They died.

I lived.

After that, I couldn’t handle closed spaces.

Elevators, tunnels, low ceilings — I’d stop breathing.

Lorenzo built this penthouse for me.

A glass ceiling over the whole top floor.

He said, “Aria, no walls will ever cage you here. Look up. There’s always sky.”

He took me to the best doctors.

Flew me around the world when the nightmares got bad.

Held me every single night I woke up screaming.

I finally gave him my heart.

All of it.

Back then, he loved me like it hurt him.

Now…

A pair of hands lifted me off the floor.

Lorenzo was frowning.

“What the hell are the staff doing? My wife is on the ground and nobody sees her?”

I looked up at him.

He had cleaned up.

Not a mark on him.

Nothing to show what he had just been doing.

Except the collar.

He had flipped it up, but I could still see the edge of a bite mark on his neck.

I pushed his hand away.

“I sent them home early.”

Something thudded downstairs.

I stared into his eyes.

“Someone’s down there?”

His pupils flickered.

He smiled.

“You’re hearing things, baby. Probably the pipes.”

I didn’t say another word.

Lying in bed that night, I couldn’t close my eyes.

When I woke up, Lorenzo was gone from beside me.

He was on the couch, looking troubled.

“Aria. Bianca’s trending on Twitter.”

I opened my phone.

TMZ had a whole spread up.

“Don Moretti’s former protégée released early on good behavior. Nowhere to go, no family. Begs for forgiveness.”

“Will the Don show mercy?”

“Take her in, Lorenzo! Have a heart!”

Lorenzo sighed.

“The whole city’s watching. If I don’t take her in, tomorrow we look cold-blooded. The Consigliere is on my back about the family’s image.”

“Just… let her stay a little while, baby.”

The words weren’t even out of his mouth before someone burst into the room and dropped to their knees in front of me.

Bianca.

Slapping her own face.

Sobbing.

“Aria! I’m garbage! I know I was wrong! Please forgive me!”