Chapter 1

At the family dinner, I received a photograph that shattered my world—Adrian Moretti kissing his mistress, Bianca.

Adrian's hand was on her backside.

The second I saw it, something inside me snapped.

The next day, I had Bianca dangling above the endless sea.

Then I wrapped myself in explosives.

When Adrian arrived, my eyes were red and I said:

"Adrian. We've loved each other since we were seventeen. I'm willing to forgive you this once — as long as you promise never to see her again."

Adrian said nothing.

The next second, he raised a gun to his own shoulder and pulled the trigger.

Blood sprayed through the air.

He looked down at me, white as paper.

"Natalie. Let her go."

I stared at him, and tears slid down my face.

In my entire life, I had only seen Adrian beg twice.

The first time was after I took a bullet for him, when he begged me not to die.

The second was after I divorced my ex-husband, when he knelt before the elders of the Moretti family and begged them to let him marry me.

And this time, he was begging me to spare the woman he chose over me.

He lifted his head, his eyes full of exhaustion.

"The money and the title are still yours. Just let her go."

Something stabbed through my chest. It was absurd.

"Why on earth would I do that?"

"Because she's pregnant."

"Bianca was a virgin when she came to me. Unlike you—"

His eyes dropped to my abdomen, and a faint, mocking smile touched his mouth.

"Bianca is untouched. She's never been married. She's never carried another man's child."

In that moment, every ounce of love and hatred between us turned into one cruel joke.

I met the undisguised disgust in his eyes, and suddenly I had nothing left to say.

This time, I would let him go.

And at last I could let myself go, too.

...

The sea wind swept into the cabin, thick with salt.

I stared at the blood pouring out of Adrian's shoulder.

The ruined, bleeding wound sat in exactly the same place as the one I'd taken for him all those years ago.

Not an inch off.

That scar had been our unspoken pardon. The one thing neither of us could argue with.

And now he had put a bullet through the very same spot.

He was paying back the life he owed me. Just to buy Bianca's freedom.

Adrian pressed a hand over the bleeding.

"Bring her down."

The guards rushed forward to untie the ropes.

Once Bianca was down, she sobbed like a terrified rabbit.

I stood where I was, torturing myself, and for the first time studied her face properly.

Clean. Young. Vividly alive.

She looked so much like me at eighteen.

Except that when she cried, she looked far more like an innocent victim than I ever had.

Seeing me unmoved, Adrian's mouth curled into something derisive.

"Every time you've lost your mind these past few years, when have I not let you have your way?"

"Natalie, I've done right by you."

He dropped his eyes, avoiding mine.

Exhaustion ran all through his voice.

"But I get tired too."

"Bianca isn't like you. She's emotionally stable. She listens."

"When I look at her, I don't have to be reminded every second of how powerless I used to be."

His words nearly hollowed me out.

I looked at the exhaustion carved into his face, and the tears came, and my mind drifted back ten years.