Chapter 1

When the doctor later called it a threatened miscarriage, all I knew that morning was the blood soaking through the leather of Dominic Marchetti's back seat.

He looked at the stain the way a made man looks at something that will cost him, with disgust, and put me out of the car onto the curb.

"You couldn't see your own body coming? How unlucky," he snapped.

That night, just after I got home, he tossed a scrap of lace at me like a coin to a beggar.

"Bianca stained these. Wash them."

I opened my phone and saw the post his childhood sweetheart had put up on her page for all the Family to admire.

[When it's my time of the month, my silly brother frets more than I do.]

The photo showed Dominic in the kitchen of the estate, sleeves rolled, carefully tending a pot of brown sugar and peach gum soup.

Without hesitation, I called the man I answered to overseas.

"Give me the assignment with the Vitale Family. I'm ready to take it."

——

"…You're certain?" he asked. The line hummed with the distance between two territories. "If you come, you're gone at least three years."

"I'm certain," I said.

The moment I ended the call, Dominic walked out of the kitchen.

He's a fine cook. He never bothers with it unless it's for her.

"Who were you talking to?" he asked.

I didn't answer. I went straight to the bedroom, only to find Bianca Costa lying across our marriage bed.

She looked up and gave me that soft, victorious smile.

"Adriana Ferraro, your bed is so soft. It really helps with my cramps."

"You don't mind, do you?"

Dominic came in behind her words, not sparing me a glance.

"Let Bianca rest here tonight. You take another room."

I didn't argue. I picked up my work laptop and walked out without a sound.

Behind me, that sugared voice carried down the hall.

"Dominic, the peach gum soup you made is wonderful."

And in a low, doting tone I hadn't heard turned toward me in months, he answered, "If you like it, have more."

That very morning I'd lost the beginning of an heir. My blood had soaked into the seat of his car.

But he'd decided it was nothing, gotten irritated, and left me standing at the side of the road.

I was shivering, frightened, unable to flag a car down in the pouring rain.

By the time I reached the hospital, the doctor only shook his head.

"If you had come sooner, we might have saved the child."

Back at the estate, I went into the study and found the approval for the Vitale assignment waiting in my inbox. I signed it without hesitation.

Meanwhile Dominic went to the bathroom. When he didn't find the warm bath I drew for him every night, he finally remembered I existed.

He noticed I was pale, working alone in the study.

He started toward the door, as if there were something he meant to say.

But before he could speak, Bianca called for him.

He paused. He smiled. He turned back to her room.

He didn't come out again the whole night.

The next morning, as I opened my door, I saw him stepping out of Bianca's.

For a second, neither of us moved.

He tried to explain. "Bianca had terrible cramps last night. Someone had to stay with her."

"I understand," I said quietly, and brushed past him toward the kitchen.

He frowned and followed.

"Adriana, listen to me. When Bianca wakes, don't be cold with her, all right? She's a gentle thing, easily wounded. Don't put your weight on her."

Since the day she came back from the American branch, our marriage had been nothing but arguments.

Every time I tried to say what I felt, what I feared, he'd wave it away to protect Bianca's fragile little heart.

But now, I am done.

My thumb found the bare spot on my left ring finger, the place where his token used to sit, and went still. I drew out my phone and set it in front of him.

"Don't worry. With you at her side, she won't feel any weight at all."

On the screen was Bianca's newest post, put up in the dead of night:

[My silly brother stayed up all night with his warm hands on my stomach to take the pain away. He's worn out.]

The photo showed Dominic asleep beside her, one large hand resting low on her belly.

He opened his mouth to explain. Nothing came.

And I didn't need to hear it.