Chapter 1

After I lost the child, I often lay awake until the sky went gray at the windows of the Falcone estate, and my condition kept getting worse.

My husband took me to a specialist the Family kept on retainer, a quiet man in a quiet office, who said it was the grief of a lost pregnancy settling into something darker.

"How is it treated?"

"Plenty of company from family—"

The doctor hadn't finished when Salvatore Falcone's phone started buzzing against the polished table.

I saw his little courier's photo light up the screen.

He was on his feet before he knew it, one hand already smoothing his tie flat.

"Admit her. The best rooms, the best machines, whatever it costs. I want her nerves put right, no matter what."

Then he turned back to me, as if he owed me the courtesy of an explanation.

"If I weren't bringing you here, I'd never have sent the girl out on Family business alone."

"Gemma Vitale's stranded at the club in the rain right now. I have to go for her myself."

"You stay here and get well like a good girl. The moment you're better, I'll be the first one through that door to bring you home."

He left in such a rush he gave me no chance to speak.

He seemed to have forgotten that I fell and lost the baby because Gemma spilled a bowl of hot soup across my feet at Sunday dinner.

And now, for her sake, he was arranging to have a doctor treat me like something broken and inconvenient, the kind of woman the Family quietly buries in a private sanatorium.

In that moment, I finally understood: the child I'd fought so hard to carry meant nothing beside carrying an umbrella out to his courier.

"Mrs. Falcone, there's really no need to admit you. I can prescribe something so you won't lie awake all night."

"Once your body has recovered, you can try the treatments again."

The doctor had watched Salvatore brush me aside, and he offered his advice with genuine kindness, keeping his voice low the way men do in that house.

"No need for the medicine. And I won't be doing the treatments anymore."

The doctor looked a little startled.

"You're stopping? Then you and Mr. Falcone may find it very hard to have a child in this lifetime—"

"If we don't, we don't."

I had plenty of ways to have a child. After all, the one who couldn't sire one wasn't me. It was Salvatore, with his severe infertility. In a bloodline where the throne passes only through true blood, it was the kind of flaw that ends a man.

……

For the sake of his pride, and to keep his place as successor to the Falcone throne, I had never told him the truth.

I had even quietly paid the family doctor to draw a sample under the cover of a routine checkup.

After more than two hundred injections, the doctor finally cultivated a single child for us.

And in the end, the child I'd struggled so hard to conceive was gone the day after it was confirmed, thanks to his courier, Gemma.

The doctor said that getting even one child from Salvatore was a miracle, and he couldn't promise the miracle would come twice.

So what I'd lost was most likely the only child we would ever have.

And what he was about to lose was his claim to the Falcone throne.

For a man in his world, that was a fatal blow.

How laughable, that I'd worried myself sick for his sake while he slept soundly through every night.

And still had the energy to run an umbrella out to his little courier.

If he wasn't the least bit worried about the seat beneath him, why should I be the one sweating over it for him?

Once I saw it all clearly, the knot of resentment lodged in my chest dissolved completely.

Walking out of the doctor's office, I called a consigliere and asked him to draw up the terms that would end our union.

I'd barely gotten back to the estate when my mother-in-law seized my hand, twisting the heavy ring on her right one, her fury barely held in check.

"Your father-in-law has his counselor drafting a pact right now to sign thirty percent of everything over to that bastard's name! All because that woman is carrying twins for him!"

"You give me a straight answer this minute. When exactly can you and Salvatore give this family another child!"

"Otherwise the next head of the Falcone Family is going to be that bastard, and soon!"

The bastard she meant was the Old Don's disowned true-blood son, Lorenzo Falcone.

I smiled a little and told her softly,

"Regina, he and I. We can't have children—"

Before I could get to the part about wanting out of the marriage, her face turned grave, and her fist closed hard over that ring.

"Since you can't have them, then let the one who can!"

I froze for a beat, then let out a soft laugh.