Chapter 1

By the tenth year of my marriage to the Moretti Don, I was finally tired of it all.

I stopped checking which villa Lucien Moretti had gone to at night, or which woman he had slept with.

And I no longer cared whether he loved me.

Even when the family doctor sent over birth control pills, I swallowed them without so much as a frown.

Lucien returned to the Moretti estate after dark.

He stood beside the bed and said my name in a low voice.

“Clara, I haven’t been back the past few days because Vivian got hurt.”

“She chased a crew that had hijacked one of our shipments into an alley and got slashed.”

“You know what she’s like. If I hadn’t gone, she would’ve kept pushing herself.”

I lifted the covers and shifted farther into the bed.

“It’s fine. Go to sleep. You still have to meet with the committee tomorrow.”

Lucien seemed to pause.

“You’re really not upset?”

I nodded.

Who didn’t have someone they never quite got over?

Funny thing was, mine had just come back too.

...

Lucien remained beside the bed, unmoving.

“I’m the Moretti Don. I can’t exactly stand by and let her cause trouble on my turf.”

I finally opened my eyes and smiled.

“You’ve always been compassionate.”

My gaze dropped to the streak of red on his cuff.

Vivian’s favorite shade of lipstick.

Years ago, when the Sterling family needed to marry one of its daughters into the Moretti family, my half sister Vivian had dropped to her knees in front of me.

“Clara, I don’t want to be trapped in some Mafia estate.”

“I still want to ride motorcycles. I want to run gun routes. I want to be myself.”

“Marry Lucien in my place. Please.”

I said yes.

Later, I became the Donna of the Moretti family.

Vivian remained wild and free.

But after our marriage, Lucien went to see her every night at a private house in the suburbs.

There, they lived like a real couple, free and unrestrained.

And I stayed behind in the heavily guarded Moretti estate.

Lucien reached for me.

I turned my face away.

His hand froze in midair.

A moment later, he pulled a paper bag from his coat pocket.

Inside was a rabbit-shaped caramel, already half melted out of shape.

“Saw it on the way back.”

“The medicine tastes bitter.”

“Have something sweet.”

I stared at the misshapen candy rabbit, unsure what I was supposed to feel.

Years ago, when I told him I liked sweets from street vendors, he said food sold outside was filthy.

“The Moretti Donna shouldn’t stuff herself with candy like a little girl.”

And now he had actually remembered to buy me something sweet.

I didn’t take it.

“Thank you, Lucien.”

Lucien frowned.

“Clara, I brought this back for you myself, and you’re still giving me that look?”

“Are you still upset about Vivian and me?”

Of course I had been upset once.

On our wedding night, Vivian sent someone to the estate saying she was about to take on a small crew that had betrayed the Morettis all by herself.

Lucien had just taken off his suit jacket. The moment he heard her name, he stood up.

I asked, “Do you really have to go now?”

He said,

“You know what she’s like. She’s never been afraid of anything.”

“If no one stops her, she’ll walk into that warehouse with a gun tonight.”

He didn’t come back until dawn.

There was a faint red mark on his neck.

He said Vivian had fought him when he tried to bring her back and had scratched the wrong person in the struggle.

I had made scenes.

I had cried.

Eventually, I stopped asking.

Lucien was about to explain again when a guard’s voice came from outside the door.

“Don, someone just came from Miss Sterling’s place.”

“She slipped her security detail and left word that she’s heading to the docks tonight to settle things with the crew that crossed into our territory and stole our shipment.”

Lucien’s expression changed.

I closed my eyes again.

“Go.”

He didn’t move.

I added, “If she really charges into the docks, you’ll blame me tomorrow for keeping you here.”

Lucien’s voice hardened.

“Clara, do you have to be this sarcastic?”

I said nothing.

A dull heaviness pulled at my lower abdomen.

I frowned and endured it.

There was no point telling him.

He wouldn’t care anyway.

In the end, Lucien still left.

Before he went, he tossed one last sentence over his shoulder.

“Get some rest. Stop using your health to punish me.”

The door closed.

Then came three soft taps against the window.

An old silver ring slid through the narrow gap in the frame.

A single letter was engraved on the inside of the band.

V.

Heat rushed behind my eyes.

My heart began to pound.

Vale.

Beneath the ring was a small note.

Only one line was written on it.

“Clara, if no one in the Moretti family will protect you, I will.”

Three years ago, the man I loved most, Adrian Vale, had supposedly died in a shootout along a smuggling route in the north.

No body had ever been found.

If this ring was here, then he wasn’t dead.

My hands trembling, I hid the ring beneath my pillow.