Chapter 2

At one in the morning, I heard a car outside the estate.

Then came deliberately hushed voices in the foyer.

“Keep it down. Don’t wake your mother.”

“She’s definitely asleep already.”

Ethan sounded amused.

“Vanessa said she’d take me shopping for new fencing gear tomorrow. Dad, don’t suddenly get busy again.”

“I heard you.”

Neither of them came to check on me.

After his shower, Adrian took off the ring that marked him as head of the family and set it on the nightstand.

When he lay down, he reached for my waist.

I shifted toward the edge of the bed.

He must have assumed I was deeply asleep. His breathing soon settled.

At six, the alarm went off.

I silenced it and went back to sleep.

At seven thirty, the bedroom door swung open.

“Mom, where’s my fencing bag?”

Adrian stood behind Ethan, holding a tie.

“I’m meeting with the Rinaldis today. I need the dark gray one. Where did you put it?”

I sat up slowly.

“Find your own bag. Ask the house manager about the tie.”

They both stared.

“What’s wrong with you?” Adrian asked.

“Yesterday was my birthday.”

Ethan tugged at the strap of his backpack.

“Didn’t Dad say we’d celebrate today?”

He said it so casually.

As if the hours I’d spent waiting had been nothing more than an appointment they were free to cancel.

Adrian draped the tie over a chair.

“There were things yesterday I couldn’t explain in a text. Vanessa’s just come back. The relationship between the families needs to be—”

“There were no other family members in that photo.”

He stopped.

“Just you, her, and Ethan.”

“One dinner doesn’t mean anything.”

I picked up my phone and opened the photo.

Ethan’s expression changed when he saw his comment.

“I was joking.”

“About which part?”

He said nothing.

“That her place is more fun than home? Or that you were staying with a teammate?”

“Mom, stop interrogating me.”

“All right.”

I lowered the phone.

“I won’t ask again.”

Whatever Ethan had been about to say caught in his throat.

Adrian’s face darkened.

“Don’t let your personal feelings make our son think his family could fall apart at any moment.”

I looked up at him.

“Was I the one who had him lie for me?”

His jaw tightened.

Few people spoke to him that way.

I never used to, either.

I had always thought that, after the strain of the council table, he deserved some peace at home.

Somewhere along the way, providing that peace had become my job.

“Watch your tone, Claire.”

I pushed back the covers and got out of bed.

“Ask the kitchen for breakfast. Check your training schedule with the driver. The tie you want should be on the second shelf on the right in the dressing room.”

I walked to the door.

“You have your answers. Now I’d like some rest.”

Before I closed it, I heard Ethan mutter, “She’s worse than my coach.”

“Leave her alone,” Adrian said. “She’ll get over it in a couple of days.”

I stood behind the closed door and remembered Ethan as a little boy.

There had been trouble near the perimeter of the estate that year. Two gunshots in the distance.

He had clung to my neck in terror and refused to let go all night.

I held him on the edge of his bed until dawn.

Later, Adrian told me the boy couldn’t afford to be soft. He needed to understand the family he had been born into.

I insisted that Ethan attend a regular school, play sports, and make friends who wouldn’t bow their heads just because his last name was Bellandi.

Adrian and I had fought about it countless times.

Now Vanessa let Ethan sit beside the family’s men at their card games. She let him listen to things no thirteen-year-old should hear.

To him, that meant she understood him.

I was simply the person who always said no.

After washing up, I went into the dressing room.

Adrian’s suits occupied the most prominent space.

Ethan’s training clothes, formalwear, and jackets for family events hung neatly in separate sections.

My clothes were crowded into a corner against the wall.

As I pulled out a cashmere dress, an old business card slipped to the floor.

Claire Bennett.

Corporate Restructuring and Risk Advisory.

The last time I’d worn that dress had been six years earlier.

The day I handed in my resignation.

Adrian hadn’t yet risen to his current position.

The Bellandis were in the middle of a transfer of power. His mother had suffered a stroke after an attack on the family’s motorcade.

Both his sisters said the person caring for her needed to be someone they could trust. They couldn’t leave everything to outsiders.

Adrian had held my hand.

“Just a few months.”

Then his mother’s condition stabilized.

Ethan needed rides and someone there for him.

Later, Adrian took over the family.

“It’s not safe for you to be out meeting those people,” he told me. “We don’t need the money.”

I slipped the business card into my purse.

The woman in the mirror looked unfamiliar.

But not entirely unrecognizable.

I put on a little makeup and threw away an old lipstick that had gone rancid.

Adrian returned while I was fastening my earrings.

He stood in the doorway, watching me for a few seconds.

“Where are you going?”

“I have things to do.”

“Have Marco drive you.”

“I’ll make my own arrangements.”

His expression changed.

In this house, a driver was never just a driver.

They knew every place I stopped, every turn I took, every person I met.

I used to call that protection.

Today, I didn’t want them with me.

Instead of pressing the issue, Adrian produced a blue jewelry box.

“Your present.”

I opened it.

A diamond bracelet.

“Vanessa picked it out. She said the things you usually wear are too plain.”

I didn’t lift it from the box.

“The clasp contains nickel.”

“What?”

“I’m allergic.”

His face went blank.

In our third year of marriage, he had given me similar earrings.

The skin behind my ears had swollen and bled. He had gone to the clinic with me.

Now he looked as though he were hearing about it for the first time.

“We can exchange it.”

“Don’t bother.”

I closed the box and pushed it back toward him.

His irritation finally showed.

“I’m trying to make it up to you.”

“I didn’t ask you to.”

“Then what exactly do you want?”

I picked up my purse.

He put an arm across the doorway.

“We have guests tonight. A few of the men, and representatives from the Rinaldis. Wear something appropriate. You’ll sit beside me.”

“I have plans.”

“Cancel them.”

I looked up at him.

“Why?”

“Because you’re my wife.”

“Did you remember that last night?”

His eyes hardened.

A maid passing in the hallway immediately lowered her head and retreated.

Adrian noticed and dropped his voice.

“Don’t make a scene in this house.”

I looked at the hand braced against the doorframe.

That hand had signed away other people’s futures.

It had also held mine after Ethan was born, while Adrian whispered, “Thank you.”

For ten years, I had kept believing that second man was still there.

“I’m not making a scene,” I said. “I just have things of my own to do.”

He didn’t move.

Neither did I.

After a moment, he slowly lowered his arm.

When I reached the foyer, the house manager was already waiting with a phone in his hand.

“Ma’am, Mr. Bellandi asked me to arrange a car—”

“That won’t be necessary.”

I stopped and looked at him.

“My own car is still in the garage, isn’t it?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Give me the keys.”

He hesitated, then handed them over.

Ten years earlier, I had married into the Bellandi family as an adult with a job, a bank account, and a driver’s license.

At least today, I could still drive myself out.

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