Chapter 1

I pushed open the iron gate to the courtyard. Matteo turned at the sound and froze when he saw me, the smile stiffening on his face.

“Vera?”

He instinctively got to his feet and came toward me with his arms open, as though he meant to embrace me the way he always did when he returned from a trip.

But the little boy caught hold of his clothes.

“Papà, who is she?”

Matteo stopped. Behind him, the woman dropped the tart, her face turning pale.

I looked at the child and asked only one thing.

“How old are you?”

“Six.”

For a moment, I couldn’t move. If my child had lived, he would have been six too.

Six years ago, I was driving when men from the rival Parino family rammed my car from the side and sent it rolling. The doctors later took a fully formed baby boy from my womb, and I remained unconscious for three days.

When I woke, Matteo was sitting beside my bed, gripping my hand so tightly that his knuckles had gone white, his eyes bloodshot.

He kept telling me, “I’ve made them disappear, Vera. We’ll have another child.”

Only now did I realize that, around that same time, the woman living here must have been close to giving birth as well.

I looked at the boy again.

“What’s your name?”

He buried his face against Matteo’s chest and answered in a muffled voice, “Stefano.”

The scent of orange blossoms drifted toward me, suddenly bitter. Tears stung my eyes.

That was the name Matteo had chosen for our son.

He used to say that our boy would grow up to become a Mafia Don. I had laughed at him for putting so much pressure on a child who hadn’t even been born yet and told him that, if we had a girl, I wanted to call her Stella—our little star.

After I lost the baby, no one dared mention Stefano’s name again.

A flicker of panic crossed Matteo’s face. “Vera, there’s a reason for this…”

The woman’s eyes immediately filled with tears.

“I’m sorry, Donna. Matteo was unconscious after being shot, and I heard him saying that name. I didn’t know…”

“If it offends you, I’ll change my son’s name right away.”

Matteo gave her a pained look before turning back to me, his voice softening.

“Vera, Chiara didn’t know what the name meant when she chose it. He’s been called Stefano for six years. Changing it now would only upset him.”

I did everything I could to keep my voice calm.

“I understand.”

He paused, clearly not expecting me to give in so easily.

Chiara wiped away her tears and looked at me pleadingly.

“Matteo never wanted to keep this from you. Six years ago, the Parino family was hunting him. He was badly wounded and collapsed outside my home. I was the one who fell in love with him first.”

So that was when it had happened, during the hardest period of our lives.

The conflict between the Vitale and Parino families had reached its most brutal stage, with neither side willing to stop until the other was destroyed.

Matteo disappeared for almost half a year. I was pregnant at the time, and I nearly lost my mind trying to find him.

Never once had I imagined that while I was searching everywhere for him, he was living in another woman’s home like her husband.

“You saved the life of the Don of the Vitale family and gave him a son. You shouldn’t have to spend your life hidden away without a place beside him.”

I slipped the ring that symbolized my position as Donna from the ring finger of my left hand.

“You deserve this.”

Matteo’s expression darkened.

“Vera, what are you doing?”

For the first time, there was anger in his voice when he spoke to me.

“You are my only wife. No one can replace you.”

“Chiara has lived at the old estate for six years and has never appeared publicly. Everyone understands that she will never threaten your position as Donna…”

He stopped in the middle of the sentence.

I looked at him and felt the cold spreading all the way to my fingertips.

“So everyone helped you hide her from me for six years.”

At last, I knew why all three of my attempts to come back to Sicily with him had fallen through.

Chiara sank to her knees with the child beside her, her eyes full of tears.

“Donna, all I want is for my son and me to stay by Matteo’s side. I would never dare fight you for anything.”

Matteo immediately helped her to her feet, his voice gentle.

“You saved my life and gave me Stefano. I won’t leave you hidden away without any place in my life.”

Then he turned to me, his gaze steady.

“Vera, you’ve done so much for me and for the family. I’ll make sure you’re taken care of, too. You will always be the Donna of the Vitale family.”

I forced the corners of my mouth upward.

“If you take away the title of Donna, then what am I to you?”

He hesitated before answering.

“You’re the person I need most.”

After all these years together, everything I meant to him had been reduced to being needed.

I turned away on unsteady feet. My heart felt like a frozen lake, and with every step I took, another crack seemed to split through the ice and spread farther beneath the surface.

Matteo took two steps after me.

Then the boy suddenly burst into tears, crying for his “Papà.”

Chiara told Matteo not to worry about the child and urged him to go after me first.

“There’s no need,” he said from behind me. “Vera will put the family first. She won’t leave me.”

But I no longer wanted to put his family first.

I wiped away my tears and looked down at the ticket already booked on my phone.

Seven days from now, I would leave the Vitale family behind and fly to Albania.