Chapter 2

(Celeste Moretti’s POV)

The video showed Cervinia’s snow-covered mountains in the background, picture-perfect and postcard-pretty. Bianca stood between Stefano and Tiziana, bundled in an expensive pink ski jacket I didn’t recognize. She was holding a half-eaten gelato cone, her face bright with happiness.

“Try it, Mama Tiziana!” my daughter chirped, holding the cone up to Tiziana’s mouth.

Tiziana took a delicate bite, laughing—that light, tinkling laugh that had charmed Stefano’s entire family. Then she turned to Stefano, her eyes sparkling with something I recognized all too well. Something that looked dangerously close to love. “Want some?”

I watched, frozen, as Stefano leaned down without hesitation and bit into the gelato exactly where Tiziana had just bitten.

My stomach turned violently.

Stefano had always been obsessive about boundaries. He’d never shared food with me. Never used my utensils. Never drank from my glass. “It’s unhygienic,” he’d said once, pulling away when I’d offered him a bite of my dessert.

But now he was sharing ice cream with Tiziana, in front of our daughter, without a moment’s hesitation.

The intimacy of it was staggering. It wasn’t just about the food. It was the way he looked at her—soft, warm, present in a way he never was with me. It was the way she smiled at him, confident in her place by his side. It was the way Bianca beamed at both of them, her face radiating pure joy.

They looked like a real family.

And I was the outsider looking in.

“I’m posting this to somewhere else,” Tiziana announced, her voice bright with laughter.

The video disappeared seconds later. A message appeared in the group chat: “What was that? It disappeared before I could watch.” Adelina, Stefano’s mother.

Then Bianca’s reply: “Oops, wrong group chat!”

They had another group. One without me. A private family group where I didn’t exist. Where they could share their moments and their laughter and their gelato without my inconvenient presence.

I stared at my phone, my hands trembling so violently that the screen blurred.

The pain in my chest was so acute I couldn’t breathe. It felt like my ribcage was collapsing inward, crushing my heart and lungs until there was nothing left but hollow emptiness.

I didn’t go straight home.

I first went to a law office downtown and met with a lawyer, but that lawyer, named Tom, did not satisfy me. The way he looked at me made it feel as though I were some idle, parasitic wife trying to use a divorce to extort a fortune from a wealthy husband.

Then, finally, I returned to the Conti estate. I’d been gone for three days. No one had called to ask where I was.

The house was exactly as I’d left it—grand, cold, imposing. A monument to old money and older traditions.

Adelina sat in the drawing room when I entered, perfectly coiffed and dressed in an expensive silk blouse, sipping red wine from a crystal glass. She looked up as I walked in, her eyes sweeping over me with thinly veiled disapproval.

She didn’t ask if I was all right. Didn’t ask where I’d been. Didn’t notice—or chose not to notice—that I was moving carefully, still recovering from physical trauma.

“You’ve been absent for three days,” she said coldly, setting down her wineglass with a sharp clink. “Do you have any idea how that looks? The guests at my luncheon yesterday were asking about you. Mrs. Bertolini specifically mentioned how odd it was that the lady of the house was nowhere to be found. You’ve neglected your duties.”

Your duties.

As if I was a servant. An employee who failed to show up for work.

I said nothing. What was there to say?

That I’d been in the hospital losing my baby? That her son had been too busy playing house with another woman to care?

Adelina wouldn’t care. She’d find a way to make it my fault anyway.

That evening, Stefano finally returned from Cervinia.

I heard him before I saw him—his voice in the foyer, laughing about something, his footsteps confident and unhurried. He walked through the front door like a king returning to his castle, shrugging off his expensive wool coat.

He tossed it at me without even looking.

I caught it reflexively, the heavy fabric landing in my arms.

“Deal with the luggage,” he ordered, his tone casual, distracted. “Everything needs to be unpacked and the ski clothes need to be cleaned.”

He walked past me toward the stairs, scrolling through his phone, not sparing me a single glance.

Then he paused, as if suddenly remembering something. “Oh, right.” He looked up briefly, his expression mildly curious. “How did the checkup go?”

Something inside me shattered.

It wasn’t dramatic. It didn’t make a sound. But I felt it break—that last fragile thread that had been holding me together, holding me to this marriage, holding me to the delusion that maybe, somehow, things could get better.

It snapped.

My vision went red. Blood roared in my ears. My hands clenched into fists so tight my nails bit into my palms.

“Stefano!” The scream tore from my throat before I could stop it. Raw. Anguished. Furious. “Because you weren’t there, the baby is gone! Do you understand? The baby is gone! You’ll never have a second child!”

He stopped. Turned. Frowned at me like I was a stranger screaming at him on the street.

“What are you talking about?” His tone was sharp, annoyed, as if I was being unreasonable. “Stop being hysterical.”

“You’re always like this,” he continued, his expression hardening with contempt. “Dramatic. Irrational. Emotional. No wonder Bianca doesn’t like being around you. Look at yourself. You’re a mess.”

I stared at him. Really looked at him, perhaps for the first time in years.

This man I’d loved since college. This man I’d given up my career for, my friends for, my entire identity for.

He felt nothing for me. Absolutely nothing.

I was less than a stranger to him. I was an inconvenience. An obligation. A burden he tolerated because society expected him to have a wife.

“Is that so?” My voice came out eerily calm, detached, as if it belonged to someone else. “Does Bianca only like that woman? The one who couldn’t wait for her husband’s body to get cold before seducing his brother? Does she like ‘Mama Tiziana’ better?”

Stefano’s face darkened instantly, fury flooding his features.

“How dare you!” he hissed, taking a step toward me, his voice low and dangerous. “Tiziana just lost her husband. She’s grieving. She’s vulnerable. And you’re jealous of a widow? You’re cold-blooded, Celeste. Absolutely heartless. I can’t believe I married someone so cruel.”

He turned on his heel, heading toward the dining room.

“Think about what you’ve said,” he threw over his shoulder. “And fix that attitude before Bianca sees you like this.”

The door slammed shut behind him.

I stood alone in the foyer, his coat still in my hands, the sound of that slammed door echoing through the empty house.

A single tear slid down my cheek. Then another.

I wiped them away roughly, anger replacing the grief.

I was done crying over this man.

I was done begging for scraps of affection.

I was done pretending that this marriage was anything other than a prison.

I pulled out my phone with shaking hands and scrolled through my contacts until I found Carmelita's name. My best friend. The only person who had told me from the beginning that marrying Stefano was a mistake.

She answered on the second ring.

“Cici? What’s wrong? You sound—”

My voice shook, but my resolve was absolute.

“Lili,” I said quietly, each word deliberate, final. “Do you know any good divorce lawyers?”