Chapter 2

I did not know how long I stood there before I dragged myself home.

Downstairs at the apartment building, the Soldato on guard looked me over several times. My hair was a matted mess, dried blood still streaked across my face, and my jacket was torn open at the shoulder. I looked nothing like the wife of the Salvato family's Don. He hesitated before dialing Damiano.

The voice on the other end was curt. "I'm busy. Don't bother me."

I snatched the phone out of his hand and hurled it against the wall. Then I turned and walked away.

However, I did not have a single bill on me. When I first heard Damiano had gone to the conflict zone in Solverno, I had emptied every account without a second thought to charter a private jet. All I wanted was for him to come back alive, no matter the cost.

The tears on my face had not even dried when my phone rang. It was my mother.

"I just heard you flew to Solverno to find Damiano. You scared me half to death. Are you back safe?"

I forced down the trembling in my voice. "I'm back."

"God! You just found out you're pregnant and you go running off to a place like that..."

Her words made my hand drift to my stomach. The morning Damiano left to "negotiate a deal," I had just walked out of the clinic. I chose to go after him without hesitation. Even knowing I might die there, I did not want this child to come into the world without a father.

By the time I collected myself, the call had already ended. A pair of arms wrapped around me from behind, and the familiar scent of rum and cigar smoke enveloped me.

It was Damiano.

"What happened? How'd you end up looking like this?"

He turned me around to face him, and the tenderness in his eyes looked so genuine, as if the man in that elevator with his arms around another woman had been someone else entirely.

I managed a hollow smile. "It's nothing. I just fell a few times on the way back."

It was just like our marriage. Every time I chose to forgive him, I fell all over again.

"Flights back from Solverno aren't easy to come by, are they?"

He froze for a split second, then scooped me up in his arms with painstaking care. I caught the flicker of guilt that passed through his eyes.

"As long as I get to see you, it's worth any price." His voice was still rough, and his expression held pure heartache.

Damiano set me down on the couch and opened the first aid kit to tend to my wounds. When he saw the dark bruises covering my knees, his brow furrowed. He dabbed ointment in slow circles with his fingertips. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have left you here alone."

Halfway through the sentence, his phone lit up. He glanced at the screen, stood, and walked to the window to exchange a few hushed words. When he came back, he leaned down and pressed his lips to my temple.

"Cara, something urgent came up with the family. I'll be right back."

I did not answer. I just watched him pull on his coat and grab his car keys in one fluid motion.

How many times had this happened? How many nights had I waited up past midnight, drifted off only to jolt awake again, and he would walk through the door and say he got held up on the road? I had never once pressed him on it.

My eyes burned, and I could no longer hold back what I had been carrying.

"Damiano, if you walk out that door, don't bother coming back!"

He reached for my shoulder, and I pulled away. He let out a sigh.

"Valentina, don't do this. I'll be back tonight and I'll make it up to you."

The door closed behind him.

That night I fell asleep the moment my head hit the pillow, only to be jolted awake by the sound of an explosion. In the dream, I was back in Solverno. I sat up gasping for air, and when I finally steadied myself, my eyes landed on the oversized wedding portrait hanging on the wall.

The first time I discovered his affair was when Valeria left a bright red lipstick mark on that very portrait. I had destroyed everything in the room that night.

Damiano had knelt in the broken glass and begged me, swearing he would never make that mistake again. The image of his knees, bloody and torn from the shards, was still seared into my memory.

I could not understand it. He had seemed so sincere back then. So why had he gone back to Valeria?

I unlocked my phone and found Valeria's social media account. Back then, Damiano had publicly declared that he had "dealt with" her, but in reality he had hidden her away.

She did not dare show her face in public, so she posted faceless intimate videos on the dark web instead, each one racking up tens of thousands of views.

I opened one. In the video, a hand held hers, and a thumb traced slow circles over the back of her hand. I tortured myself watching them one after another until I reached the most recent upload.

In that one, the hand rested on her waist, and on the little finger there was a faint, barely visible scar.

My blood ran cold.

On my 18th birthday, men from a rival family had come for me. Damiano had shielded me with his own body, and the blade grazed his hand, blood trailing down his little finger the entire way.

His lips had gone white from the pain, but he was still smiling when he told me, "It's just a scratch."

I found the phone number listed in the account bio and dialed it. It rang twice before someone picked up.

Damiano's voice came through the receiver, irritated at being interrupted.

"Who is this?"