Chapter 2

Viola POV

The wineglass slipped from my hand and shattered on the floor. Red wine splashed across my black dress. Everyone at the long table turned to look at me.

No one got up.

I looked at Nicholas.

He sat at my grandfather’s right, my father’s signet ring lying before him. He neither touched it nor looked up at me.

Camilla rested her hand on his arm and gave me a small smile.

Beneath the table, my hands began to go cold.

After dinner, I found him on the terrace. His back was to the door as he looked out into the darkness beyond the estate.

“When you turned me down, you said you were my guardian.” I walked up behind him. “But you watched Camilla grow up, too. Why can you marry her, but you can’t love me?”

“That’s different.”

“How?”

He finally turned around.

“You’re stronger than she is, Viola. You’ll be fine without me.”

I looked at him for a moment, then let out a laugh.

Mother had always called me strong. When she forgot my birthday, I told her I didn’t mind.

Nicholas was the one who found me crying afterward. I had asked him not to tell her.

He knew I had been hurt. He knew I simply hadn’t wanted to ask Mother for anything again.

Now he was telling me I would be fine without him.

“You can just say you want to marry her.” I heard my own voice. “You don’t have to use how much I can take as your reason.”

His jaw tightened.

“Viola—”

“If you choose her tonight, I won’t wait for you anymore.”

The wind on the terrace was cold. I stood in front of him, waiting for an answer.

He never spoke.

I turned and left. He didn’t come after me.

The next day, I didn’t attend the wedding.

I withdrew from school and booked the earliest flight to Paris. The plane was still on the runway when his messages began arriving, one after another.

He said things weren’t what I thought. He asked me to come back and give him a chance to explain.

Finally, he said, please.

I snapped my SIM card in half.

But I was still wearing the platinum ring he had bought me at a flea market when I was sixteen. I moved it from my right hand to my left and hid my hand inside my sleeve until the plane took off.

I could leave him. I couldn’t yet throw away everything that reminded me of him.

After arriving in Paris, I changed my number and applied to another art conservation program. I attended classes during the day and organized the storeroom of a small gallery at night.

At first, I took inventory and maintained the tools. Later, I began restoring pieces under supervision.

My first payment for a restoration job covered the deposit on a new apartment. The room was tiny, its window facing a brick wall. I set my tools on the table, kept the key with me, and finally slept soundly.

After graduation, the gallery offered me a full-time contract. I began building savings of my own—enough for rent, and enough to buy a plane ticket if I ever needed to leave.

Then, three months ago, one of my father’s former associates reached me through my school email.

He told me my father’s coffin had finally been approved for transfer from the temporary crypt to the Bellanti family burial grounds.

Only then did I learn that, after his death, someone had accused him of betraying the family. The dispute had dragged on for three years, leaving him on the cemetery’s outskirts instead of beside the Dons who had come before him.

The email included the date of the reburial.

I requested leave from the gallery and bought a ticket to Italy.

When my father was alive, he had never missed the days that mattered most to me.

This time, I would be there to bring him home.

“Where are you going?”

Nicholas’s voice brought me back to the airport.

I gripped my suitcase handle and headed toward the pickup area. He walked beside me, his men trailing well behind us.

“I’ll drive you.”

“I’ve already called a car, Nicholas.”

He paused, then walked toward a black sedan at the curb. One of his men opened the door, and he took out a bouquet of white roses.

When my father was alive, he had given Camilla and me a bouquet each, every year.

I stopped before I could help myself.

“You’re going to the cemetery.” Nicholas came back and held out the flowers. “Now it’s on my way.”

Tiny drops of water still clung to the petals. As I looked at them, my throat began to tighten.

He remembered the flowers my father used to give me. He knew where I most wanted to go after coming home.

I reached out, but before my fingers touched the wrapping, I saw the wedding band on his ring finger.