Chapter 2

Back in the car, my palms were soaked in sweat. But my eyes were sharper than they'd ever been.

I pulled out a secure phone I kept for family business only and dialed a number I hadn't touched in a long time. It connected on the first ring.

"Francesca." My father's voice, that of Giovanni Moretti, the supreme Don of the European Mafia Alliance. "You're finally calling home."

The moment I heard him, something inside me almost cracked. But I held it down. I'd been stupid enough to believe in some fairy-tale love story, and it had cost me everything.

"Papa," I said, and took a breath. My voice came out steady and hard. "I was wrong. New York isn't where I belong. Kane isn't worth my time. Give me one week, and then I'm coming home as your heir."

I hung up and immediately got my lawyer on the line to kill the asset transfers. Then I started clearing everything I needed to leave the country cleanly.

Two hours later, I let myself back into my private apartment, exhausted and ready to be done with all of it.

Alicia Holt was still there.

She was wearing the white silk robe I'd had made in Paris, a one-of-a-kind piece from a couture runway, six figures for the fabric alone. She had it dragging across the floor, the hem soaking up wine stains and whatever else she'd tracked through my home. She was treating a hundred-thousand-dollar garment like a gas station bathrobe.

She was sprawled across my custom leather sofa like she owned the place, one hand wrapped around a glass of my Pétrus.

When she saw me, she didn't even flinch. Instead, she smiled — that particular brand of saccharine-sweet that functions as a knife.

"Oh, Francesca! You're back so late. Don't get upset. Kane said you're always so easygoing, you wouldn't mind me borrowing the bathroom and a robe." She glanced down at the silk with exaggerated disappointment. "Honestly though? It wrinkles if you look at it wrong. Not exactly practical. We don't really do delicate where I come from — you know, real life, rough edges, all that. This is a bit too precious for actual people, don't you think?"

That act — all sugar to your face and a blade in your back. It turned my stomach.

I didn't spare her a look. I kept my eyes on Kane.

"Explain," I said, my voice like ice. "Why is this woman in my apartment?"

Kane didn't apologize. He didn't even try.

"Hey, come on, you're reading this wrong," he said, easy as breathing. "Alicia got something on her outfit, so I told her she could use the shower. You know how it is — girls who grew up in the life don't sweat the small stuff. She didn't mean anything by it. You're not seriously going to make a whole thing out of this, are you?"

I looked at him and felt something in my chest go very, very still.

I thought of the first night a man cornered me in an alley and how Kane had stepped in front of me without hesitating, taken a beating until his face was a mess of blood. I thought of the time I'd stumbled at a crime family dinner and embarrassed myself, and how he'd flipped the table, put a gun to the man who laughed, and dared anyone else to say a word.

I'd thought that was love. I'd even used my family's resources, quietly and without him ever knowing, to clear the path that let a bastard son with no standing build his own territory and rise.

Everything he had, I had given him.

Alicia, emboldened now, pressed closer to him. "Francesca, you grew up behind closed doors. You don't understand what it's like out here, the life Kane and I come from. We have history. You can't really be threatened by that, can you?" She leaned into his side with a small, victorious smile aimed right at me, savoring every second of it.

I almost laughed.

She wanted to tell me I didn't understand the life? If she ever found out who my father was, the man every crime family in Europe answered to, she'd be on her knees begging before she finished the sentence.

Then Kane said the thing that made it impossible to stay quiet.

He turned to me with the casual ease of someone asking for a glass of water. "Actually, since you're heading back to Europe, that Manhattan apartment is just going to sit empty. Why not let Alicia move in? It's nothing to someone like you. She can look after the place. That works, doesn't it?"

He wanted to hand our safehouse — the place we'd built together and filled with every memory we'd made — to the woman he was sleeping with.

I was done.

I pulled the door open. My voice was flat and final.

"No. Get out. Both of you. Now."

Something shifted in Kane's face, a flicker he couldn't quite hide. He wasn't used to seeing me like this. The warmth was gone, and there was nothing left in my eyes for him to work with.

For a moment he just stared. Then, like flipping a switch, the mask came back on.

"Hey, don't be like this. You're tired, right? I'll take Alicia home, and we can talk properly tonight when I'm back. I'll make it up to you. Promise."

He took Alicia's arm and walked out.

Make it up to me? There was nothing left to make up for.