Chapter 1

THE PERSON YOU ARE CALLING IS UNAVAILABLE.

The cold automated voice echoed through the hotel room where I had spent the night waiting.

I lowered my phone, then called again.

UNAVAILABLE.

No matter how many times I called, Matteo refused to answer. His friends weren’t picking up either.

The next morning, I took the first flight home and went straight to the Vitale family’s headquarters, still dragging my suitcase.

One of Matteo’s childhood friends stood outside the reception room. At last, he could no longer hold back his laughter.

“You actually flew back, Elena? Matteo made a bet with us. He wanted to see whether you’d go crazy when you learned he’d called Nora to tell her he was safe and told us to ignore your calls. We were all back before eleven. If you don’t make a scene today, he’ll start calling you again and announce the wedding date while he’s at it.”

The others in the room joined in. Every face carried the same avid expression, the look of people waiting for a spectacle.

At that moment, Nora stepped out of the reception room.

She carried a glass of champagne in one hand and her phone in the other. Before every dangerous meeting, Matteo had promised to call me as soon as he was safe. It was a promise he had made after his convoy was attacked, when he saw how badly those thirteen hours of silence had frightened me.

When Nora saw me, she lowered her phone as if flustered.

“Please don’t misunderstand, Miss Rossi. Mr. Vitale only called to tell me he was safe and that I should get some sleep. I thought he’d called you too.”

Her words were apologetic. The triumph in her eyes was not.

Matteo stood at the far end of the room with one hand in the pocket of his suit. His expression was careless, almost bored.

He did not so much as glance at Nora.

He was watching me, waiting to see what I would do.

The old me would already have rushed forward and demanded to see when he had called her. I would have demanded to know why he could reassure an assistant while leaving his fiancée terrified all night.

This time, my eyes did not sting. I did not show him my unanswered calls or raise my voice.

I simply slipped my phone into my purse and settled the strap on my shoulder.

“I see. Then don’t bother calling me. I won’t be waiting anymore.”

I turned toward the elevators.

The hint of a smile vanished from Matteo’s mouth.

He strode after me and closed one hand around my wrist, his voice edged with warning.

“What game are you playing now, Elena? I already told you that if you behave today, I’ll start calling you after meetings again. If you walk out of headquarters now, you can forget about the wedding.”

I lowered my gaze to his fingers locked around my wrist.

In the past, the moment he threatened to cancel the wedding, I surrendered. I had waited five years for him. For five years, I had waited to become the wife he would acknowledge before everyone.

Now I merely pried his fingers away, one at a time.

“All right. Then there won’t be a wedding.”

The elevator doors slid shut.

Through the narrowing gap, I saw one of his friends start after me, only for Matteo to raise a hand and stop him.

“Leave her,” he said with a cold laugh. “She’s playing hard to get again. Before midnight, she’ll be crying on the phone and begging me to take her back.”

He sounded utterly certain.

As though anyone in the world might leave him except me.

By the time I returned to the apartment we had shared for five years, it was dark.

I pulled a roll of oversized black garbage bags from the utility closet and shook one open.

The matching mugs on the coffee table. The albums on the bookcase. Our toothbrushes in the bathroom. The framed engagement photograph on the wall.

I threw them all in.

At the bottom of my wardrobe was a faded teddy bear. Matteo had won it for me at a winter market five years ago, before he formally became heir to the Vitale family.

Back then, his father had assigned him the least important edge of the family business. He had no driver or entourage and lived in a cramped apartment. My hands had been red and raw from the cold. He enclosed them in his own, breathing warmth over my fingers, his eyes full of concern.

“When I truly control the Vitale family, Elena, I’ll give you a home where you never have to watch anyone’s face or ask anyone’s permission.”

He eventually gained that power.

But instead of making me feel safe, he gave Nora the reassurance he deliberately withheld from me. Then he turned my fear into a wager among his friends.

I picked up the bear and dropped it into the bottom of the bag.

My phone lit up with messages from Matteo.

ELENA, THAT’S ENOUGH.

I’VE GIVEN YOU A WAY OUT. TAKE IT BEFORE I LOSE MY PATIENCE.

Beneath them was an airline notification.

YOUR FLIGHT DEPARTS IN THREE DAYS.

I did not answer Matteo. I opened my contacts and deleted his private number, his work number, and the encrypted account we used for family communications.

The apartment slowly emptied around me.

Matteo had divided security into a series of rewards. Only when I was quiet enough, obedient enough, did he return a small piece of it to me.

He believed that if he left me waiting long enough, I would naturally become the woman he wanted.

He did not understand that when someone is abandoned in the same place over and over, the final lesson she learns is not how to wait.

It is how to leave.