Chapter 5

Dante stormed into the master bedroom and found that more than half of my clothes and luggage were gone.

He panicked and drove straight to the old Moretti family house.

When he pushed the door open, I was sitting calmly on the sofa, looking over financial reports. Ernesto and several Moretti elders stood behind me, their faces hard.

Dante breathed a sigh of relief when he saw me. He came over and reached for my hand. "Helena, stop this. Come home with me. Last night was my fault. I shouldn't have taken the main convoy. But I was out of my mind with worry. Sofia almost slit her wrists..."

I pulled my hand out of reach and looked at him like he was a complete stranger. "Sit down, Dante. I asked you here to talk business."

Dante frowned. "What business?"

The Moretti family's old accountant, standing off to one side, spoke up. "Mr. Falcone, last night federal agents seized weapons container number three at the Port of New York. The early evidence shows Sofia sold the customs access codes on the black market, using your name."

Dante stiffened, and the words burst out of him before he could think. "That's impossible! Sofia can't even read a ledger. How could she sell access codes? Someone must be framing her!"

"Framing her?" I scoffed and tossed a stack of high-resolution surveillance photos onto the coffee table.

In the photos, Sofia was handing a storage drive to a federal informant. The whole exchange had been caught on camera.

Dante stared at the photos. He swallowed hard, and the color drained from his face. He was silent for a long time. But when he finally looked up, he said something worse than anything I'd expected from him.

"If this goes to the Falcone family council, Sofia is finished." Dante paused. "Helena, let's get divorced first. We'll separate the Falcone and Moretti families, legally and financially. The shell companies involved are in your name. If you just sign a statement saying you're the one who actually controls them, the investigation will turn to the Moretti family first. In six months, once this blows over, we'll get remarried."

I raised an eyebrow. "A fake divorce?"

Dante took my hand. "The divorce is only temporary. The lawyers already have the property and custody agreements drawn up. I'll transfer most of my legitimate shares to you, and you can have sole custody of Leo for now. Once I've dealt with Sofia's mess, I'll bring you both home."

He thought I would go along with his plans one more time.

He thought that if he called framing me "protection," I'd risk an investigation for Sofia.

Dante knew that falsely claiming I controlled those companies would damage the Moretti family's reputation and could put me under criminal investigation. He still put protecting Sofia first.

"I'll sign the divorce agreement," I said. "Everything else goes to my lawyer first. Then we'll talk."

Dante thought I'd agreed to all of it, and he visibly relaxed.

Dante had called his lawyer on the way over to draw up the agreement. It didn't just divide the property. It also gave me sole custody of Leo, the right to take him out of the country long-term, and the right to decide where he lived. Dante was in such a hurry to shield himself from the risk that he never looked closely at the clauses his lawyer had added at my lawyer's request.

I signed my name, Helena Moretti, on the divorce agreement and the custody papers. I did not sign the false statement claiming I controlled those companies.

Then I took the written promise to remarry he'd handed me, tore it in half, and threw it into the fireplace.

Dante froze. "Helena, what are you doing?!"

I stood up. "Dante, my New York lawyer is filing this agreement with the court. The custody and property rights you just signed away are real. A promise to remarry has no legal weight. This isn't a fake divorce."