Prologue – The House of De Luca

The silence in the De Luca mansion wasn’t peaceful. It was heavy—like a fog that clung to Isabella’s skin, to her lungs, to the faint sound of her heartbeat echoing through the marble halls.

Chicago’s winter pressed against the tall windows, the city lights blurred by frost. Inside, warmth was an illusion.

Isabella sat by the grand dining table, a long stretch of mahogany that could seat twenty but never did. Dinner was a ritual of appearances—Caterina at one end, regal and cold; Adriano at the other, untouchable; and Isabella somewhere in between, the ghost in white silk.

“You’re quiet again,” Caterina remarked, her tone sweet as poison. “Not that I expected conversation from a Romano.”

Isabella lifted her gaze. She had learned not to respond. Every word was a trigger, every reaction a victory she refused to give.

Across the table, Adriano’s fork scraped against his plate. That sound—metal on porcelain—always made her tense. “Leave her,” he said, his voice low, measured. The kind that could still a room. “She doesn’t need to talk.”

Caterina smiled, pleased. “Of course not. She never does.”

It wasn’t defense. It never was. Adriano didn’t stop his mother out of care. He stopped her because he owned the silence in this house—and Isabella was part of it.

She lowered her eyes to the untouched pasta in front of her. Her hands were steady, but inside, she was shivering. Not from fear, not anymore. It was something worse—resignation. Two years of marriage had turned her into a statue of herself.

The woman who had once laughed in her father’s garden, who had danced barefoot to Italian songs at family dinners, was gone.

Now, there was only Mrs. De Luca.

When the plates were cleared, Caterina rose gracefully, kissed her son’s cheek, and left without acknowledging Isabella. She didn’t need to. Her disdain filled every inch of space she left behind.

Adriano stood next. “You have ten minutes,” he said, not looking at her.

“For what?” Her voice came out softer than she intended, brittle.

His dark eyes lifted to hers, and for a brief second, she thought she saw something—an old flicker of the man she thought she’d married. Then it vanished.

“To be ready,” he said. “We have guests tonight.”

He didn’t explain further. He never did.

Upstairs, in the bedroom that wasn’t really hers, Isabella stared at her reflection. Her body trembled as she fastened the diamond clasp around her neck—another gift she hadn’t asked for, another collar disguised as jewelry.

She knew better than to question him, but something inside her was beginning to crack. Two years of humiliation, whispers, and half-truths had built a wall around her heart, but tonight it felt thinner.

Guests.

In the De Luca house, guests never meant friends.

Downstairs, laughter drifted through the hall. Isabella descended the staircase, her heels echoing against the marble. She recognized the voices—men from the old circles, names she’d heard whispered in her father’s study years ago. The underworld of Chicago’s Italian power was alive again, breathing, plotting.

And then she heard it. A laugh. Female. Familiar in a way that sent her pulse skittering.

When she reached the bottom of the stairs, her eyes found her husband first. Adriano stood near the fireplace, a drink in hand, that cold composure etched into every angle of his face. But beside him—

She froze.

The woman was tall, elegant, with dark auburn hair cascading down her back and lips curved in a smile too perfect, too knowing.

“Isabella,” Adriano said, turning to her at last. “You remember Gianna Moretti?”

Her name hit like a gunshot.

Gianna Moretti.

Of course she remembered. The daughter of the man her father had betrayed. The family that vanished when the FBI came for them.

The ghost of Chicago’s old blood feud—now standing in her living room, alive, beautiful, and looking at Isabella as if she already knew she’d won.

“Of course,” Isabella managed, forcing her lips to curve. “How could I forget?”

Gianna’s smile deepened. “It’s been a long time, hasn’t it? I’ve heard so much about you.”

“Likewise.”

The air between them was charged, heavy with unspoken history.

Adriano placed a hand on Gianna’s back, casual, almost careless—but Isabella saw it. The small gesture, the intimacy of it. A spark of connection that didn’t belong in public.

Her chest tightened.

The whispers she’d ignored for months suddenly made sense—the late-night calls, the business trips, the scent of another woman clinging faintly to his shirts.

She wasn’t just a pawn. She was the cover story.

As the evening dragged on, Isabella sat in silence, watching her husband and the woman from the past talk in low, private tones. Every so often, Gianna’s eyes would flick toward her, amused. Testing.

Isabella smiled when expected, nodded when required.

But something inside her shifted that night. Not the kind of break that made her weaker. The kind that sharpened.

When the guests finally left, she lingered in the dim light of the parlor. Adriano was by the window, unbuttoning his cuffs, his expression unreadable.

“You didn’t tell me she was coming,” Isabella said quietly.

He didn’t turn. “Didn’t think you’d care.”

“She’s Moretti,” she said, the name like acid on her tongue. “And you bring her into this house—our house—without warning?”

He faced her then, eyes dark as the Chicago night behind him. “This house stopped being yours the moment you walked in, Isabella.”

Her breath caught.

He walked past her, slow, deliberate. The scent of his cologne trailed after him—rich, dangerous, the same scent she’d once thought meant safety.

At the doorway, he paused. “Don’t wait up.”

And he was gone.

Isabella stood there for a long time after the sound of his footsteps faded.

Her reflection in the glass of the window looked foreign—haunted eyes, perfect hair, flawless dress. Everything Caterina expected her to be. Everything Adriano needed her to appear.

But not who she was anymore.

She turned away from the window, from the empty room, from the life that had been built on someone else’s lies.

For the first time in two years, she felt something close to anger.

Maybe it was the beginning of freedom.