Chapter 1

“You were quiet at dinner.”

Luca glanced at me at a red light, one hand resting on the steering wheel. Behind us, his security car stopped at a discreet distance.

“I’m tired.”

He reached over and covered my hand with his. His thumb moved over my knuckles in the familiar, absent-minded way that used to make me feel loved.

“Still upset about your birthday?”

I looked out at the wet pavement.

“I told you. There was a threat at the bridge. My men wouldn’t let the car through.”

I slipped my hand free.

“All right.”

I knew there had been no threat. I knew exactly which hospital he had been at, and whose coat he had been carrying.

He let out a breath, taking my silence for forgiveness.

“Bianca has a chance to secure backing for her importing business. Some of the families are meeting her tomorrow. I’ve told her she can use Bellavista.”

I turned toward him.

“You’ve told her what?”

Bellavista was the waterfront estate my grandfather had left to me alone. I had spent two years restoring it. Every contract, every stone on the terrace, every tree in the courtyard had passed through my hands.

It was also where we were supposed to get married.

“The investors need somewhere private,” Luca said. “It’s three days, Elena.”

“You didn’t ask.”

His jaw tightened. “I didn’t think I needed permission to help your sister.”

“You needed permission to use my property.”

The light changed. He drove on.

“Bianca’s trying to build something that belongs to her. This meeting could get her legitimate contracts. Give her a chance.”

“I paid for her degree. I funded her first shipment. My parents bought her apartment. How many chances do I owe her?”

He pulled up outside our house and turned off the engine.

“Her parents died saving you.”

There it was. The sentence that ended every argument.

“My family owes the Bellinis too,” he continued. “Your father’s alliance kept us alive. If you’d died that night, everything would have changed. I’m not going to turn my back on their daughter.”

A fragment of memory surfaced: smoke under a door, a man lifting me, the rough scrape of a sleeve against my cheek. Someone telling me to keep my eyes closed.

The man I remembered had answered when a paramedic spoke to him.

Whenever I mentioned that, my mother said trauma confused children. Bianca’s father had died at the warehouse. That was the story, and I had learned not to question it.

“Then help her with your property,” I said. “Not mine.”

Luca studied me. His anger softened, but only around the edges.

“Come here.”

He touched my cheek. When my grandfather died, Luca had sat on the floor outside my bedroom until I was ready to open the door. He had stayed with me through the funeral arrangements and driven me to Bellavista afterward.

He knew what that house meant to me.

I had loved him for seven years. When he leaned closer to kiss me, I turned my face away.

“I love you,” he said. “I’m marrying you. Being kind to Bianca doesn’t change that.”

“It changes things when being kind to her means being cruel to me.”

He dropped his hand.

“That isn’t fair.”

I got out of the car.

He followed me up the path and caught my wrist.

“I gave her my word, Elena. Do you understand what it means for a De Luca to withdraw a promise in front of the other families?”

“Do you understand what it means to give away something that isn’t yours?”

I pulled free. His fingers left red marks above my bracelet.

He saw them. For a second, his face changed.

“Elena, I didn’t—”

I was already inside.

Upstairs, I dragged a suitcase from the closet and began packing sweaters. Luca appeared in the doorway before I had finished the first stack.

“You’re leaving over a venue?”

I kept folding.

“Put the suitcase away. We can talk.”

“We did talk.”

He caught the lid before I could close it.

“You know I’d do anything for you.”

“Then tell Bianca no.”

The silence was answer enough.

Finally, he stepped back.

“If you want to punish me, go ahead. But I won’t chase you from hotel to hotel until you decide you’ve made your point.”

I zipped the case.

“You don’t have to.”

At the door, I took our house key off my ring and set it on the table.

Luca watched me do it. His mouth opened, then closed.

He was still waiting for me to turn around when I left.