Chapter 1

Rain streaked the Manhattan skyline when the anesthesia finally released me.

The heart monitor kept beeping, steady and indifferent, as if it needed to remind me that I was still alive. My daughter, who had lived beneath my heart for thirty-four weeks, had been placed inside a white bereavement blanket I couldn't bring myself to look at again.

When the nurse returned my phone, I had more than twenty unread messages.

Not one was from Dante.

I opened my chat with my attorney and typed one sentence.

[Prepare the divorce papers. Follow the prenup. I won't consider counseling or mediation.]

Then I sent Dante the same decision.

The man who hadn't answered while I bled inside a crushed car called almost immediately.

"You want a divorce?" His breathing was measured, the way it got when he was forcing himself to remain calm.

"Yes."

"Because I refused to play along with your test?"

He didn't sound furious. That would have hurt less. He sounded disappointed, as though I were the one who had failed him.

"Valentina showed me screenshots of your conversation with Sofia," he continued. "You planned to call us at the same time and see which woman Luca and I chose first. Elena, I can handle jealousy. I can handle you feeling threatened by my history with her. What I won't accept is you using our unborn child as leverage."

I stared at the IV bruising my hand until his words made sense.

Sofia and I had never planned a loyalty test. The screenshots could only have come from Valentina, and she knew exactly which nerve to hit.

Moretti men were raised among betrayals, payoffs, and people who smiled while calculating the price of a knife in the back. Nothing enraged them faster than the idea that someone was manipulating them.

Valentina had handed them a conclusion first. After that, every plea for help had been twisted to fit it.

"Dante, I didn't test you."

Silence held for two beats before his voice hardened. "Then explain this. Your appointment was normal in the morning, but hours later you claimed the baby was gone. At the same time, Sofia suddenly wanted to leave Luca. What are we supposed to think?"

My chest had already been split open, yet somehow it found room to break again.

"You're supposed to think we both lost our children."

"Enough."

He had never cut me off like that before.

"Valentina's heart rate went over one-eighty. She still has shrapnel lodged near her heart from the bullet she took for my mother. As a doctor, I couldn't abandon her."

"I never asked you to abandon a patient."

I had asked him to believe me once. I had asked him to hear his wife say, "I'm dying," and at least order a nurse to call emergency services.

The words stayed trapped behind my teeth.

Dante exhaled, rubbing his forehead if the rustle on the line was any indication. "We'll talk when you've calmed down. I'm not signing anything, and our child isn't a weapon you get to use in an argument."

The call ended.

I stared at the dark screen and laughed once, without humor.

[Once a man decides you're lying, even your death can become part of the performance.]

A muffled sob came from the other side of the room.

Sofia was awake. Her skin looked almost translucent, and both hands were pressed over her empty abdomen as though her body still believed there was someone left to protect.

She had walked out of the bakery carrying a warm paper box when she saw our Cadillac spin beneath the impact. The rear door had collapsed inward. She dropped the tart and pulled at metal hot enough to blister her palms. Glass cut her knees, but she rammed her shoulder against the jammed lock until it gave.

I was unconscious when she dragged me free.

She didn't wait for an ambulance. A shooting nearby had tied up the closest units, so she stopped a hotel shuttle, invoked the Moretti name, took the driver's keys, and drove me to St. Vincent herself.

Only after she reached the emergency entrance did she notice the blood soaking her skirt.

The strain and impact had caused a placental abruption. She saved my life and lost her son doing it.

"Did Luca call back?" I asked.

She shook her head and handed me her phone. The call log showed one conversation lasting thirty seconds.

Sofia had told him I'd been in a wreck and begged him to locate the vehicle and dispatch help. Luca had decided it was the second act of our scheme because Valentina's alarm had gone off at the same time, and a hooded figure had appeared on her backyard camera.

"You two keep accusing her of craving attention," he'd said. "Who is manufacturing a crisis right now? I'm handling a possible intrusion tied to the Moretti family. Don't drag police resources into a domestic stunt."

He had disconnected before Sofia could give him the intersection.

She looked at me, tears sliding soundlessly into her hair.

"I gave him a chance, Elena."

This time, I didn't tell her to forgive him.