Chapter 8

A month passed after the black box appeared outside my apartment.

For the first few nights, I barely slept. Every sound in the corridor made me sit upright, every unfamiliar car outside my building sent me rushing toward the window, and every knock on a neighbour’s door made my heart pound as though Nico had finally come to collect what he believed belonged to him. I kept the emerald necklace inside the black box and buried it beneath a pile of clothes at the back of my wardrobe. I should have thrown it away. I thought about dropping it into the deepest part of Lake Washington or leaving it somewhere no one would ever find it, but I couldn’t bring myself to do either. Perhaps I kept it because it frightened me. Perhaps I kept it because some broken part of me still remembered the night Nico had placed it around my neck and told me the emerald matched my eyes.

After that single message, however, nothing happened.

There were no more packages, no threatening notes, and no Contini men waiting outside my apartment. Nico didn’t call me again. He didn’t send Leon to persuade me to return, and he didn’t appear at my door with that cold, commanding expression that used to make everyone around him obey before he spoke. The silence should have comforted me, but instead it became another presence in my apartment—quiet, invisible, and impossible to ignore.

Maybe the necklace had been his final warning. Maybe he only wanted me to know that he could find me, even if he had no intention of bringing me back. Or perhaps he had finally accepted that I was no longer his concern.

I didn’t know which possibility hurt more.

Settling into Seattle was harder than I had expected. I missed my aunt’s voice calling me downstairs in the mornings and the smell of coffee drifting from the kitchen. I missed Uncle Angelo pretending not to worry whenever I returned home late. I even missed Bianca entering my room without knocking and holding two dresses in front of her while demanding that I choose which one looked better. Whenever I remembered her, guilt tightened inside my chest. She had trusted me. She had hugged me on her wedding day without knowing that her husband’s kiss was still fresh on my lips.

There were moments when I wanted to call home and confess everything, but I never did. How could I explain that the man Bianca married had once held me as if I were his entire world? How could I admit that I had kissed him again after he became her husband?

So I called my aunt every few days and told her that work was going well. I told Uncle Angelo that the apartment was comfortable and assured him that I didn’t need money. Whenever Bianca’s name came into the conversation, I found an excuse to end the call.

Despite the loneliness, I was beginning to enjoy parts of my new life. Seattle was peaceful in a way I had never known a city could be. People woke early, hurried to work with coffee in their hands, complained about the rain, and made plans for the weekend. Their lives were not shaped by alliances, territories, or family names. They worked hard, saved money, argued over parking spaces, and spent months planning ordinary vacations.

No one walked into a restaurant and inspected every exit. No one lowered their voice because a dangerous man had entered the room. No armed guards waited beside black cars while their employers conducted business behind closed doors.

Sometimes, while travelling to work, I watched families talking about school or couples discussing where they should have dinner. Their problems seemed so simple. I knew that was probably unfair. Every person carried something painful, even if it wasn’t visible, but I still envied their normality.

I had spent years surrounded by wealth, yet all I had ever wanted was the freedom to make small decisions for myself. I wanted to choose where I lived, what work I did, and whom I loved without wondering how it would affect an empire.

I wanted a life in which love didn’t feel like a prison.

My job at Rowe and Hart Communications helped. The agency occupied two floors of a glass building in downtown Seattle and handled publicity campaigns for luxury hotels, restaurants, and lifestyle brands. I had joined as a junior account executive, which meant I spent most of my days researching competitors, correcting presentations, organising client files, and completing tasks nobody else wanted to do. It was not glamorous, but the work was mine. I had earned the position without Uncle Angelo’s influence or Nico making a private call on my behalf.

For the first time, my surname didn’t open doors for me.

Shelly Bennett sat at the desk beside mine. She was talkative, endlessly curious, and completely incapable of keeping her thoughts to herself. During my first week, she had asked whether I was running away from a failed relationship because, according to her, no woman moved across an ocean alone unless there was “either a man or a murder involved.”

I had laughed and told her that she watched too many crime shows.

By the end of the month, she had become the closest thing I had to a friend in Seattle. She brought me coffee whenever she stopped on her way to work, invited me to lunch even when I tried to refuse, and filled the silence whenever my mind wandered toward memories I didn’t want to revisit.

On Thursday afternoon, she dropped a glossy magazine on my desk.

“You need to see this,” she announced.

I continued typing. “If it’s another article about why we should all wake up at five in the morning, I’m not interested.”

“It’s worse. It’s about rich people in love.”

My fingers stopped over the keyboard.

The magazine lay facedown, but something inside me had already become uneasy. Shelly pulled out the chair beside my desk and opened the magazine across my notes.

“Look at them,” she said. “They’re beautiful, wealthy, and apparently incapable of taking a bad photograph. Some people really do get everything.”

Nicholas and Bianca stared back at me from the page.

The photograph had been taken somewhere along the French Riviera. Bianca stood beside a white railing with the sea behind her, wearing a pale blue dress and enormous sunglasses. Nico’s arm rested around her waist. He wore a white shirt with the sleeves folded to his forearms, and although he wasn’t smiling, the expression on his face appeared softer than the one he showed the rest of the world.

The headline stretched above them in elegant gold letters.

THE CONTINIS: ITALY’S NEW POWER COUPLE

For a moment, the office disappeared around me.

I stared at Nico’s hand on Bianca’s waist. I knew that hand. I knew the faint scar near his thumb and the strength hidden beneath those long fingers. I remembered those same fingers against my face and the cold touch of his wedding band against my cheek.

“Arie?” Shelly touched my arm. “Are you okay?”

I forced myself to look away from the photograph. “Yes. Why?”

“You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

“I’m fine. I didn’t sleep well.”

She studied me for another moment before returning her attention to the article. “Nicholas Contini is terrifyingly handsome, but he looks like he would have someone killed for speaking to his wife for too long.”

If only she knew.

“They’ve been travelling for nearly a month,” Shelly continued. “Paris, Monaco, Greece, and now the south of France. That is not a honeymoon. That is an international exhibition of wealth.”

“Aren’t we supposed to be working?” I asked.

“We are working. Claire asked me to collect examples of luxury campaigns, and apparently these two are luxury in human form.”

Shelly began reading pieces of the article aloud. It described the wedding as the union of two influential families and called Bianca the perfect woman to stand beside one of Europe’s most powerful businessmen. The photographs showed them boarding private aircraft, leaving expensive restaurants, and walking together beside the sea.

The perfect couple.

The words sank into me like pieces of broken glass.

For one month, Nico had not contacted me because he was busy living the life he had chosen. While I struggled to sleep in a strange apartment, he travelled across Europe with his wife. While I taught myself how to exist without him, he allowed the world to photograph his hand resting possessively around Bianca’s waist.

I had wanted him to leave me alone. Now that he had, some foolish part of me felt abandoned all over again.

“Could you put that away?” I asked.

Shelly closed the magazine. “You definitely hate rich people.”

“I don’t hate them.”

“Then what did Nicholas Contini do to offend you personally?”

My heart stumbled, but Shelly was smiling. She had meant it as a joke.

“Nothing,” I replied, turning back toward my computer. “Men like him simply don’t interest me.”

It was the biggest lie I had told since arriving in Seattle.

Before Shelly could question me again, our department director stepped out of his office and clapped his hands to gain everyone’s attention.

“Conference room in ten minutes,” Mr. Hart announced. “Ethan Hale is arriving early, and I want the entire presentation team ready.”