Chapter 1

The Five Families Commission chose whom the Valenti heir could marry. His wife had to bring the family a powerful alliance.

I had no family name, ports, or votes to offer.

Even so, Nico Valenti stood before the entire Commission and declared that I was the only woman he would marry.

To be with me, he broke his engagement to the Donatis and offered to surrender his inheritance. At his family trial, five capos broke three of his ribs with gunstocks, and Salvatore Valenti shot him through the left shoulder to force him to renounce me.

With blood soaking through his shirt, Nico still looked up at me beyond the door and smiled.

“Don't be afraid, Tessa. You're the only one I want.”

In the end, the Commission compromised. Once Nico fulfilled his duty to the family, he could leave Chicago and they would no longer interfere with us. But before he surrendered the Valenti succession, he had to give the Donati family a male heir.

Nico promised that once the child was born, he would sign away his inheritance and take me out of Chicago. He spoke as though we already had a departure date.

He had taken a bullet rather than give me up. When he said this was the only way to get us both out alive, I believed him.

First, I waited while he followed the Commission's schedule with his former fiancée, Alessia Donati, until she became pregnant. Each time he returned, he held me and called it a transaction.

Their first child was a girl. The Commission refused to recognize a daughter as the primary heir, so Nico returned to Alessia until she became pregnant again.

“Wait a little longer,” he told me.

By then, I had already waited through one pregnancy and a birth. He asked me to do it all again.

Just when I thought the ordeal was finally ending, their daughter, Gia, drank milk laced with a concentrated dose of digitalis at her baptism. The bottle had come from the clinic where I used to work.

Everyone decided I had poisoned her.

They locked me overnight in the freezer of an old Valenti slaughterhouse. Before the iron door closed, Nico stood outside, his eyes bloodshot.

“I told you to wait.” His voice held no warmth. “Gia is only a child. Why would you hurt my daughter?”

My daughter. The words entered my heart like a rusted blade. I dug my nails into my palms until blood ran between my fingers.

When the freezer opened the next morning, I released my mangled hands.

This time, I was done waiting.

...

I called Salvatore Valenti from an unregistered phone and forced my voice to remain steady.

“I'll leave Nico, on one condition. Give me a new identity and send me somewhere he'll never find me.”

Silence lasted two seconds before Salvatore laughed openly. “You should have come to your senses sooner. One night in the freezer finally taught you your place. A woman with no family and no leverage had no business imagining she could become the wife of the Valenti heir.”

I tightened my grip on the phone. “When?”

“Ten days. I'll put you on a cargo plane out of Chicago. Afterward, never appear before Nico again. Keep your word, and I guarantee he'll never find you.”

The line went dead. I leaned against the estate's cold stone wall and slowly exhaled.

Ten days. In ten more days, I would be free.

In the great room, Nico sat before the fire with Gia in his lap. She played with the family ring no one else could touch, tugging it from his finger while he watched patiently.

Alessia reclined nearby beneath a cashmere throw, her rounded belly turned toward him. They looked like a real family, and I looked like the intruder.

“Tessa?” Alessia noticed me first. Her smile vanished as she instinctively pulled Gia against her.

Nico looked up, his expression tightening at once. “Marco, take Gia upstairs.”

The house manager carried the child away. No one asked why I was so pale or why my lips were blue from the cold. They only watched me as if I might strike again.

The man who once wanted only a child with me now regarded me like a killer.

After Gia left, Nico crossed the room and reached for my face. I turned away. His hand stopped in midair.

“Were you hurt in the freezer?”

I looked toward the bullet scar on his left shoulder. He had taken it rather than give me up. Yesterday, he had watched them lock me in.

“No.” Cold had scraped my voice raw.

He took my hand, felt the chill in my skin, and frowned. “I did everything I could to stop Salvatore. Gia was poisoned, and they found medicine linked to you. The Commission wanted you held until the investigation ended. I convinced them to make it one night.”

“Alessia is carrying the boy they demanded. Once he's born, I can surrender the succession and take you away. I can't allow another incident now.”

His thumb moved over the back of my hand, just as it used to. “And Gia is innocent. No matter how much you hate the agreement, you should never have hurt her.”

I tore my hand away. “I told you I didn't. Digitalis can stop a child's heart. I studied pharmacology for years. Do you truly believe I would use it on Gia?”

My sudden anger startled him. After a pause, his voice gentled. “Let it go. Gia survived. There is no point pursuing this now.”

Not I believe you. Gia had survived, so he was willing to stop punishing me for a crime he still thought I had committed.

“I should apologize too,” Alessia said behind us.

She approached with one hand at her waist and regret arranged perfectly across her pale face. “When Gia started convulsing, I panicked. You've never been a mother, so you may not understand the instinct to protect your child. No one can think clearly while watching her baby die.”

She swept her hair from her shoulder. Firelight caught a strand of pale-blue glass beads around her wrist.

My breath stopped.

It was my mother's bracelet: ordinary blue glass beads surrounding a small medal of the Virgin. It was worth very little, but she had worn it for years before giving it to me. After her death, I kept it on my wrist.

I strode across the room and seized Alessia's arm. “Where did you get this?”

She recoiled. Nico immediately caught my hand and pulled me away.

“I gave it to her.”

I stared at him. “What?”

“Alessia asked for it. She said giving up something you treasured would show you were sorry about Gia. I thought it would persuade her to stop pressing the Donatis for punishment.”

“It wasn't yours to give away. It is the only thing my mother left me, and you knew that.”

Hesitation flickered in his eyes. “I know it matters. But she agreed to let the matter go. When this ends, I'll buy you something better.”

He had known exactly what he was taking. He had never asked me.

“I don't want something better.” I reached for Alessia. “Give it back.”

The instant my fingers touched her, she stumbled backward and clutched her stomach.

“It hurts.” Her face drained white, sweat shining on her brow. “Nico, the baby...”

His expression changed. He shoved me aside and caught her.

“Tessa! She's carrying my child. Haven't you caused enough?”

I struck the glass liquor cabinet. Pain exploded through my skull, and I slid to the floor with blood running through my hair.

Nico never looked back. He lifted Alessia and rushed for the door.

“Will our baby be all right?” she sobbed against his shirt.

“Yes.” He looked down at her with a tenderness I had not heard in months. “I'm here. You and the baby will be fine.”

The doors slammed behind them. I sat among broken glass, watching blood drip onto the expensive carpet.

He never turned around.