Chapter 2

When I got back to the estate, seven or eight black wooden crates were stacked in the entrance hall.

The butler told me they had come from a wedding photography studio. The recipient was Bianca, but the address was the estate Enzo and I shared.

I opened the top crate and found a wedding album bound in black leather.

In the photographs, Bianca nestled against Enzo. He posed with her in the chapel, the vineyard, and the old family home. In one shot, he was even kissing her temple.

Ten years together, and he and I did not have a single formal photograph.

Enzo always said photographs helped enemies identify weaknesses, so even at our engagement he let the photographer shoot nothing but two clasped hands.

And now he had posed through an entire wedding shoot with Bianca.

I turned to the last page of the album, and my breath caught.

The lace veil on Bianca's head belonged to my mother.

My mother, Elena Moretti, had left it to me before she died, asking Enzo to place it on me himself on our wedding day.

The veil had been locked in the safe on the second floor. Apart from me, only Enzo knew the code.

A car pulled up outside.

Enzo came in a moment later, carrying a pale-faced Bianca. Her arms were around his neck, and there were a few drops of red wine on her expensive white gown.

"Someone from the Bellini family followed her tonight." Enzo headed straight for the stairs. "She's staying here for now. She'll leave once my people deal with the threat."

"Put her down."

He stopped, and only then saw the opened crate in front of me.

Bianca slid out of his arms at once, her eyes red-rimmed. "I gave them my own apartment address. I know I did."

"You can't get your own address right, but you can handle the family's legal documents on the underboss's behalf?"

"The studio logged it wrong." Enzo cut in. "I'll have them take it all back."

I didn't answer. I pulled the photograph of Bianca wearing my mother's veil out of the album.

"Who gave her permission to touch this?"

Enzo was quiet for a moment.

"I did.

"The Bellini family knows exactly what a De Luca engagement looks like. Without the family jewels and the inherited veil in those photos, they would never have believed it."

"So you opened the safe and handed her the one thing my mother left me?"

"I lent it to her for one shoot and put it back afterward. Nobody actually took anything from you, Sofia."

In Enzo's mind, putting something back erased the fact that he had crossed my boundaries. As long as he never actually stood at the altar with her, nothing he gave away counted as betrayal. Yet everything he had given her was something I had waited ten years for and never received.