Chapter 4

Matteo went rigid.

I caught his hand.

"That isn't her blood."

I could see it clearly. The blood had sprayed upward across the outside of her skirt. It belonged to the guard lying at her feet, not to her.

Bianca shook her head through her tears.

"She's lying to you. That report is old. She hit me because she wants to steal you back."

The ceiling cracked above us.

Matteo stood between us.

On his left was the wife carrying his real child.

On his right was a lie he trusted with all his heart.

I did not beg him.

I simply refused to release his hand.

After several seconds, he peeled my fingers from his one at a time.

"Use the loading passage," he said. "I'll give her to the guards and come back for you."

"You won't come back."

"I will."

He turned, ran into the smoke, and lifted Bianca into his arms.

Her arms locked around his neck at once.

As he carried her past me, she looked over his shoulder.

There was no pain on her face.

No fear.

She even smiled.

Then Matteo disappeared with her into the smoke.

Standing at the entrance to the burning basement, I finally understood something.

Sometimes a person has already given you an answer.

You have simply loved him too long to admit what it means.

The ceiling split again.

A burning beam crashed across the stairs, sealing the exit. The impact threw me to the floor, and my stomach struck the edge of the preparation table.

Pain tore through me.

I looked down and saw blood spreading across my skirt.

"No..."

I covered my abdomen with both hands and felt real fear for the first time.

Not because I might die.

Because the child whose heart had only just begun to beat might die with me before ever seeing the world.

The smoke thickened.

Just before I lost consciousness, three measured blows sounded from the underground loading passage.

Someone pried the steel door open from the outside.

A man walked toward me through the smoke. He wore no Moretti insignia. A silver serpent pin gleamed on his lapel.

The Valenti family.

The Morettis' greatest enemy.

"Lucia Moretti?" The man crouched beside me.

"Not anymore."

He saw the black file in my arms and the blood on my skirt.

"Can you walk?"

I shoved the file at him.

"Save my baby."

Those were the last words I spoke before everything went dark.

When I woke again, I was lying in a windowless clinic.

The monitor beside the bed beeped in a steady rhythm. An unfamiliar doctor was removing his gloves.

"The bleeding has stopped," he said. "The baby is safe for now, but you cannot leave this bed for the next month."

I closed my eyes.

Only then did the tears slide down my face.

The man sitting against the wall was Dante Valenti. His jacket hung over the back of his chair, and ash from the fire stained his cuffs.

"Where is Matteo?" I asked.

Dante did not answer immediately.

He switched on the television.

The news was covering the funeral-home fire. A reporter stood before the smoking ruins while police carried out a body beneath a white sheet.

"A woman's remains were discovered at the scene," the reporter said. "A wedding ring belonging to Mrs. Moretti was found beside the victim. Authorities tentatively believe the deceased is Lucia Moretti."

I looked at my left hand.

My ring finger was bare.

I had left my wedding ring on the annulment papers when I signed the name Vitale. Fire could destroy a sheet of paper, but a ring could survive long enough to testify for it.

"Who is the woman they found?"

"Your assistant, Rosa. She was shot and fell on the other side of the mortuary. The body is beyond recognition."

Only yesterday, Rosa had been complaining that her fiance had forgotten to order their wedding cake.

Now she would be buried under my name.

And I would go on living inside the tomorrow she had lost.

The report cut to the steps outside a hospital.

Matteo stood there with Bianca sheltered in his arms. A journalist asked if he had confirmed his wife's death.

Soot covered his face, and his right hand was wrapped in gauze.

That hand had held mine only hours ago.

"Matteo cannot answer questions right now," Bianca said for him. She leaned weakly against his chest. "Lucia was emotionally unstable. Perhaps she went back to the basement to take something valuable."

With one sentence, she took my life and my dignity.

Matteo looked down at her.

He did not contradict her.

I turned off the television.

"She did not miscarry," Dante said. "The doctor at the hospital is one of ours. The blood on her belonged to a dead guard. Her baby's readings are normal."

I began to laugh.

I laughed until the wound in my abdomen hurt. I laughed until tears filled my eyes again.

So he had not chosen between two children.

He had chosen between the truth and Bianca, and he had chosen her again.

"Why did you save me?" I asked.

Dante glanced at the smoke-blackened file beside my bed.

"Your father once saved mine. The Morettis killed him, and they have been looking for what he left behind ever since."

"The men who attacked tonight?"

"They work for Enzo. They knew the file was hidden in the basement."

I remembered the way Bianca had stared through the glass at the black cover.

"Someone told them."

"Yes," Dante said. "And that person wanted you dead too."

The television screen remained black.

If I returned to New York now, Lucia Moretti would rise from the dead.

Matteo would learn that I carried his child. Bianca would cry and explain. The Morettis would claim me in the name of their heir and lock me inside a guarded house until the baby was born.

Then they would decide how my child and I were permitted to live.

I had already given them seven years.

I would not give them my child's entire life.

"How long before the death certificate is issued?" I asked.

Dante studied me.

"Seven days at the earliest."

"Make sure it is issued."

"Do you understand what that means?"

"What is the dead woman's name?"

"Lucia Moretti."

I placed a hand over my stomach.

"Then give me a name that does not belong to him."