Chapter 2

When I come to, I'm lying on a leather sofa in the estate's private clinic. Oak-paneled walls. Antiseptic and old money.

Luca is beside me. Unshaven. Hollow-eyed. His voice is raw.

"Elena. You win."

"Just promise me you won't do this again, and we go back to how things were."

I open my mouth to explain — he grabs the glass off the side table and hurls it against the wall.

"The evidence was right in front of my face!" he snarls. "You still want to play me for a fool?"

"I'm already forgiving you. What more do you want?"

There's nothing I can say. So I lie there, tears sliding into my hair, repeating the only truth I have.

"I didn't do it. I'm innocent. I swear on my father's grave."

He doesn't hear me.

After that day, things go back to "normal."

But nothing is the same.

He doesn't touch me. Every time his hand accidentally brushes mine, he goes rigid — then pulls away like I've burned him.

Before the incident, I was always at the estate for Sunday dinner. Don Marco poured my wine. Donna Caterina kissed both my cheeks and called me figlia mia.

Now — every time I walk in, Donna Caterina storms at me and slaps me across the face. Grabs my hair. Screams "Puttana! Disgusting puttana!" and shoves me toward the door.

The old Luca would never have let anyone touch me.

But now he watches. Eyes flickering with something — pain, maybe. And does nothing.

When I beg him to stop her, his face twists.

"My mother's been half out of her mind since that night. You owe her this. Let her get it out."

I want to go to the police. The moment I bring it up, Luca explodes.

"I've spent everything keeping this quiet. You want the other families to find out? You want them to know the Romano Underboss got cuckolded by his own fiancée and his own father?"

"You want a war? Because that's what happens when this gets out."

And just like that — what Silvia staged that night tears a wound between us that never heals.

The alarm on my phone drags me out of the memory.

Time to pick up Mia.

I'm waiting outside the preschool gates when I check the thread one more time.

Silvia's deleted everything. Account gone. But people already screenshotted every word. Her confessions — mirrored, archived, everywhere.

Now the mob is interested in me. The "poor ex-fiancée."

Within hours, they dig up my identity. A woman who came from nothing. Built herself from the ground. Ran one of the most respected anti-trafficking foundations on the East Coast — until she was publicly disgraced and blacklisted.

But alongside that — they find the old smear. The story Luca planted five years ago. That I "drove the Goddaughter to attempt suicide." That I was removed from the foundation and shut out of every circle in the city.

I used to think being framed — drugged and placed in the Don's bed — was the worst thing that could happen to me.

I was wrong.

Everything after pushed me closer to the edge. One thing after another. Until there was nowhere left to fall.

The wedding was approaching. Luca texted me to come to the estate — said we needed to discuss arrangements.

I went with my heart full. Hopeful. Thinking — finally. The family is accepting me again.

I pushed open the door to his private quarters.

And saw Silvia straddling him on the bed.

She turned her head. Looked right at me. A slow, venomous smile.

"Luca," she purred, running a nail down his chest. "Are you going to call off the engagement with Elena?"

Luca didn't look up. Lazy. Bored.

"I can't even stand to touch her anymore. Marriage is out of the—"

His words die in his throat.

Because I'm already standing right in front of them.